[GNC] "Travel" vs. "Public Transportation"

[rsbrux]

Sorry, forgot to change subject line!

On Mon, 2026-06-22 at 16:08 +0200, rsbrux wrote:
> Thanks for the very sensible advice. We don't really need to know our
> travel expenses in that much detail, and since we are retired, almost
> all of our travel is discretionary (with the possible exception of
> medical appointmemts ;-).
> The only use I can think of for a separate account would be to
> calculate which kind of annual pass (e.g. reduced fare) for public
> transportation might be most economical. However, we could probably
> figure that out by using a report filtered by payee (assuming there
> is
> such a thing).
> 
> On Mon, 2026-06-22 at 08:43 -0400, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org
> wrote:
> > To: rsbrux <rsbrux at yahoo.com>
> > Cc: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org List" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> > Subject: Re: [GNC] "Travel" vs. "Public Transportation"
> > Message-ID:
> > 	<
> > CANYJ2e3Oq4kNxuq_-xiSSbTZtLThYBwHg_0oCSooZc2z7Bmk1g at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> > 
> > I think of personal travel as discretionary. You decide to go on
> > what
> > I
> > would call vacation and what the English would call holiday.
> > 
> > Generally, I think of public transportation is such things as day
> > trips
> > around town, commuting, etc.
> > 
> > 
> > Just having come back from vacation, I was bringing my accounts up
> > to
> > date
> > yesterday, and I made a choice to move travel out from under
> > entertainment
> > to a top level expense, and create subcategories for lodging,
> > restaurant,
> > fuel, air and rail transportation, etc. This allowed me to produce
> > a
> > very
> > nice report showing what our trip cost and why.
> > 
> > On the other hand, if I took the bus downtown, I would have a
> > category for
> > that outside of travel.
> > 
> > The most important question though is how do your books serve you,
> > as
> > opposed to how do you serve your books. Record things that make
> > sense
> > in
> > understanding your finances.
> > 
> > Ed
> > 
> > On Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 05:33 rsbrux via gnucash-user <
> > gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > I just noticed that I have two overlapping expense accounts,
> > > "Public
> > > Transportation" and "Travel". I think that both accounts were in
> > > the
> > > default GnuCash account tree, but "Public Transportation" is not
> > > a
> > > sub-
> > > account of "Travel", which is what I would have expected.
> > > We live in Europe and often travel by train and/or bus for both
> > > short
> > > distances and on vacation, so I'm not sure where to draw the line
> > > between these two.
> > > What arguments can be made for and against maintaining two such
> > > separate categories?
> > > _____________________________________________
>