On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 2:44 PM, lterenzi <ltere...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I am wondering if all the years of standard accounting practice has > just made it impossible for me to really wrap my head around this. >
The envelope method can take some time. I know it took me a little of time to "get it" after years of MS Money. > For instance my daughter is in a Girl Scout Troop. We just collected > $800 form parents to buy tickets to an event. We deposited it and then > will write a check back out for the same amount. Do I just treat this > as a regular transaction since it is never a budgetable / plannable > expense? You can mark transactions as having an "optional" bucket which means they have no affect on your buckets. In this case, the deposit and the check would be set as optional. Just right click a transaction and select "Bucket Optional" ( Or something like that ) > > Also, We can pay all our monthly bills with my wife's check alone. She > is the only one with a steady paycheck. Should I just try and create > our spending plan with her check in mind and leave my money as extra? > (Contractor - I may make $4000 this month, none next) > I would base your spending plan on that. And then move your income into some other income bucket you can allocate from when you get money throughout the year. > In regards to bills. In the winter our electric may be $150 and gas > may be $30.00 in summer it's $200 and $80 respectively. Do I chage > these as I go? This is tougher. You can try to average it out yourself and save the average and then in some months you have leftover money that you will use in the months it goes over the average. I already have average billing from my electrical utility so I don't do this too often. My water and gas bills are basically the minimum charge, so they don't change much. > > Our daughter is in a wheelchair. With that comes all sorts of > different and unexpected medical costs. I cant budget for them. I can > budget Dentists, Eyes, Pediatrician but not that. We just grab from > savings if something pops up. > What we do with unexpected expenses like that is transfer money from savings into our income bucket and allocate to our Medical bucket for it. We do budget for a few doctor's visits during the year as our kids have their normal checkups. But we aren't building up a bucket for medical expenses we don't expect. > I know the whole point of this is too not feel boxed in but the more I > get into this the more I feel that way... > > Maybe it is just a reprogramming thing... am I missing something? Am I > making this too complicated? Should I start using this to just keep > track of monthly bills and as I use track where my money is going and > create new buckets from there? Some of this is reprogramming from worrying about account balance and more worrying about spending balances (i.e. your buckets ). My wife and I really like it because it shows us at a glance how much we have left to spend on groceries or gas. It also shows us that when we want to eat out, we have take money from some other planned spending. It hasn't stopped us yet, but it's certainly been eye opening. I hope some of those answers help. I'm sure other users will jump in with their thoughts, as well as Kevin, the developer of MoneyWell. Lastly, I would recommend watching the video tutorials a few times, it starts to cement how it all works. Patrick --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 no-thirst-software@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to no-thirst-software+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
