On Dec 7, 2008, at 12:55 AM - Dec 7, 2008, The Watkinson Family wrote: > > Chris, this is not actually the behavior of MoneyWell. The amount > that you have designated to be allocated will be allocated regardless > of the amount in the bucket. If you say you want to allocate $1,100 > into the bucket, $1,100 will be added assuming that you have enough > money in your income buckets to add (if you do not have enough money > to cover all the allocations, the money will be allocated in order of > the priority you have designated). > > This means that if the bucket is negative, you'll have an amount less > than $1,100 after allocation. If your bucket is positive prior to > allocation, you'll have more than $1,100.
Terrific. That's perfect and exactly what I want for this bucket application. But as I mentioned, and as you also pointed out, I'm not sure I want that behavior on all buckets. The piping idea is intriguing. Put a pipe on some buckets and not on others. It's a good visual analogy, too. It sounds like the current behavior is to pipe between similar buckets from month to month. Adding the option, first, to elect not to do that piping (for spend buckets that you don't want to accumulate funds in), and then second to pipe to a different bucket (e.g. Savings or Discretionary) would be very powerful. I think I did see Kevin mention this as a 2.0 feature. Can't wait. > >> I don't intend to use these expense buckets each month, but I want to >> keep filling them so I can accumulate a larger bucket. So I stick it >> in my spend plan to divy up my salary toward those goals. I keep >> these >> funds in a separate account (I'll add my vote for tying buckets to >> specific accounts), so I'll do a transfer into that high-yield >> savings >> account in the amount of $1450/month. I have a spendplan with the >> above monthly amounts entered. > > Your intended use of MoneyWell is precisely why buckets should not be > tied to accounts, in my opinion. Suppose, given your example, you've > been Saving for two months when your car breaks down. You would have > $2,900 in Savings. Suppose you have $3,000 in your checking account, > and all your money is allocated across buckets. > > If your Emergency Fund were tied to your Savings account, you would > have to repair your car from money in Savings. Typically, we don't > write checks from Savings accounts (we can only make 6 withdrawals/ > month). Alternatively, you could borrow money from another bucket--so > you fix your car with money in the Grocery bucket (you don't have a > Emergency Fund bucket for your checking account), and then create the > transfer from Savings to Checking and then replace the money that was > used. So, now, every time you look at your Grocery bucket, you'll > have a big expense that is for car repair. The graphs should appear > correct, assuming that you paid for the repairs and paid yourself back > in the same month, but this is very unnatural. > > Right now, MoneyWell allows you to spend money to repair your car > right out of your checking account or credit card and assign the money > to your Emergency Fund. If you need more money in checking to pay > other bills, you can transfer the money from savings to checking, but > using MoneyWell essentially guarantees that you have all the money > that you have allocated to buckets available to you in either checking > or savings. > > I think that most people ultimately would prefer to not have to worry > about where the money is (where is my Emergency Fund money??). > MoneyWell makes it so that it doesn't matter. A dollar in the > checking account is the same as a dollar in savings. A dollar in the > emergency fund bucket is the same as a dollar in the grocery bucket > It doesn't really matter where the money is stored--savings, checking, > cash, etc. As long as you are using MoneyWell to track that account > and assign transactions from that account to buckets, you won't > overspend money that you have. You will have to make sure that you > have funds available to cover future bills that target that account > (and that the money isn't being stored in a different account), but > that is something that we have always had to do. So, I understand what you're saying, but there is real danger in completely divorcing yourself from where your money sits. If I've placed that abstraction layer behind the real world allocation, then I don't have any easy way to tell where I need to move funds around, should I need to pay a large bill. Some sort of a dialog box or warning that you're creating a money flow that requires a transfer is really all I'm looking for. Good answers. Thanks. -Chris Chris Robb, Manager of Operations Internet2 Office: 812.855.8604 Cell: 812.345.3188 **************** Imagination. Collaboration. Innovation. May your New Year be filled with Discovery! http://www.Internet2.edu/NewYear2009/ Chris Robb [EMAIL PROTECTED] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
