On Dec 21, 9:24 pm, Robert <[email protected]> wrote: > I've almost now gotten my brain around the Moneywell concept (great > looking stuff!) My one sticking point is in trying to figure out the > optimal way to use Moneywell with my wife so that we can track ALL of > our expenses/income, even if I'm the one who will most likely "take > charge" of the actual program. For example, between us we have: > checking accounts (one individual account for each of us) > two savings accounts (each joint) > two separate savings accounts for our son > various individual credit card accounts (Macy's, Chase Visa, etc., all > of which we always pay in full at the end of the month)
We keep a master computer to run MoneyWell on (my laptop, though she knows my password and logs in to check bucket balances occasionally). I download, reconcile, etc.. We tend to tell each other if we make a major purchase, usually with forewarning, so we get those into MoneyWell right away. Besides that, I wait for the incidental purchases to show up via bank download. It helps that we pay for most everything with his and her credit cards, so I can tell that a Starbucks purchase on her card comes from her allowance bucket, etc. For cash, we track it with a single cash bucket. We spend so little with cash that I periodically write it down to the real values in our pockets attributing it to best guesses as to where the money went (often 1/3 his/her allowance and 1/3 "misc"). We put all "personal" spending (haircuts, gym, personal trainers, lattes, gadgets, clothes) into a single allowance bucket for each of us. Within that we each budget "in our heads". This keeps the number of buckets low (no need for his and her versions of each). We came from Mvelopes, and we both liked the way we could both log in and see the data. In the end, though, I think tracking finances works better with one "owner" that knows the software best. She didn't find that she logged in to check things that much, and we found that when we were both in there mucking with things, we would each do categorize in a reasonable but different and incompatible ways. > However, my wife lacks an Iphone and may have less inclination to > account for > everything actively as she goes (though I could at least download her > bank account info after the fact and enter it into the program myself, > and I suppose she could also potentially save cash receipts to be > entered later?) My wife spent years doing manual entry into Quicken, so saves receipts out of habit (and appreciates not having to deal with entering them now!). For now, she sends me an email with amounts for the non- incidentals above. Frankly, though, I make so many data entry errors when doing things manually that I prefer to download transactions every few days than enter transactions as they happen. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
