[GNC] Confused About Budgeting monthly transfers

[David Carlson]

Jon,

Larry has suggested a perfectly good method to account for both your cash
flow in your budget as well as tracking the value of your IRA.

There are other methods which may be suggested by others.  One thing to
watch for is that whatever method you choose for accounting for your real
time transactions, you need to make your budget projections follow exactly
the same method.  Thus, if you show the IRA contribution as an expense in
your primary cash database, it should be shown that way in your budget.
Conversely, if you show it as a transfer to an asset account, show it that
way in your budget.

David CArlson

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 5:00 PM larry johnston <larryej1953 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Jon,
>
> If I understand your question, it relates to transferring or spending money
> going into an IRA. I had a similar problem with RRSP's in Canada. When you
> transfer funds they aren't actually spent even though you have them in an
> account that you can't use. My solution which I am sure is not proper
> accounting, but seems to work for me, was to set up a separate  GNUCash
> file for RRSP's and then instead of transferring the money I spent it in my
> main file and recorded it in the RRSP file. Then my budget worked for me.
>
> Larry
>
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 3:17 AM Jon Griffith <jon at jongriffith.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm a first time user of gnucash and I've run into a challenge that I
> can't
> > figure out.
> >
> > Preface:  My budget is a plan.  My budget is a zero based budget, meaning
> > that I start with the income I'm expecting, and I "spend" all of it until
> > nothing is left every month.  Part of that "spending" is transferring $$
> > into savings, which is a net zero Income/Expense transaction.
> >
> > Hypothetical:  Every month I receive $3000 net.  I need to "spend" 15% of
> > that by moving it to my Roth IRA.  So, I transfer $450.00 to my IRA from
> my
> > Checking account (Liquid to Non-liquid asset transfer).
> >
> > I would figure that on my Budget, I could enter $450.00 as a value for
> the
> > IRA asset account and it would be subtracted from the total at the bottom
> > of the budget in the "transfer" row thereby reducing what I have left to
> > spend for that month.
> >
> > Problem:  Some asset accounts affect the transfer value on the budget and
> > some don't.
> >
> > I understand how to do a transfer from a register, but "planning" for
> that
> > transfer such that it affects the budget bottom line seems to be spotty.
> > What am I missing?
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnucash-user mailing list
> > gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
> > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> > -----
> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> >
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>


-- 
David Carlson