budget

[Matthew Pounsett]

On 21 September 2017 at 09:50, Phil Longstaff <phil.longstaff at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I find envelope budgeting good for some expense types but not as good for
> others. For something like groceries or rent which are even over the year,
> it is good. For something like a trip which has 0 expense for most months
> but a large expense in 1 month, it is not as good because to make it work
> out over the year, you need to budget the expense over 12 months. On the
> other hand, if you think of the budget as "put money away for the upcoming
> trip", then it does work out. Put $200 per month into savings and then when
> it gets big enough, spend it on the trip.
>
> I've taken a more direct tack with envelope budgeting.   For example,
assuming the savings account Assets:Current Assets:Savings Account
represents a real bank account, I have also created Assets:Current
Assets:Savings Account:Travel, and have a monthly auto transaction that
transfers money to the Travel subaccount from its parent account.  This
goes in my budget as a monthly transfer (stashing cash in an envelope) and
then comes out in large chunks as its spent on trips.

This also works well with other expense types where I have to make
absolutely certain that an amount of money in my accounts is clearly
"reserved" for a specific purpose, but where there isn't a regular monthly
expense (e.g. property taxes, which are billed six times a year here, at
apparently irregular intervals).

In the accounts list, comparing the "Balance" to the "Total" columns shows
the difference between what's in the real bank account vs. what's
"unreserved" (or, not transferred to a subaccount).

The only thing I haven't worked out is Present is to Total as ____ is to
Balance.  This would be helpful for distinguishing the two when
future-dated transactions are in use.