On Mar 24, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Lance wrote: >> I would also recommend reducing the number of buckets to the minimum >> possible. Do you really need to subdivide all those things? I have >> recently combined some buckets and it makes things simpler. >> > > Honestly I don't care about subdividing everything for expense > tracking purposes and would prefer to merge buckets, but it seems I > need the separation for spending plan purposes since there is no way > I've found to handle this inside MoneyWell. > Lance,
If you have consistent monthly amounts, then it's pretty easy to use the totals for your combined buckets. > For people who have managed to reduce their number of buckets, what > process do you use to set the spending plan amount every month? For > example, if you have a generic bucket named "Utilities" that tracks 5 > different monthly bills, how do you come up with the total spending > amount for each month so you know how much income to allocate there? > > Do you use a separate spreadsheet (or pen & paper) to estimate and sum > up all your bills for the month and then enter that into MoneyWell? > I'd like to avoid having to maintain a separate spreadsheet and do > everything inside MoneyWell. Having separate buckets for every monthly > bill is the only way I've found so far that accomplishes this. I use my spending history to manage my spending planned amounts for each bucket. It's pretty consistent now, but when I started using MoneyWell, I had to toggle the history method to compare the past 12 months with last year and the last month. The reality is that most of us with complex households (more than one or two adults) can't keep a consistent spending plan going if we wanted to. It's always a juggling act so the goal is to juggle without dropping too many balls. MoneyWell was designed to easily see what cash you have in the bucket list so you can rob one bucket to pay for another that costs more this month. I do have two known issues that I can always rely on though: 1. My income is limited, and 2. Credit cards and other unsecured debt is bad for me When I used Quicken, I would always fail because my budget never matched reality. Something always came up to crash the numbers on my Quicken budget or even my personal spreadsheet to help organize my budget. Now I work on spending less by only spending what I have allocated to my buckets (even if I have to take from one or the other) and building up a war chest of savings to cover those times when expenses overcome number 1 above. I do have plans to offer more bucket organization but I'm being careful to not change MoneyWell so you can easily hide your buckets with cash (or worse, the ones that have negative cash). It's a tricky balancing act but I'm so used to juggling balls that I think I can pull it off. Thanks for your feedback! Peace, Kevin Hoctor [email protected] No Thirst Software LLC http://nothirst.com http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
