> What else is tripping people up? I suppose it could be a variety of things. I, for instance, want to use only one financial application. While MoneyWell is intended to control cash flow, I also want to track non-cash flow accounts, such as loans, debts, and investments. I'll use the term "cash-flow account" throughout to refer to an account, that if I were to use actual buckets, I would liquidate it to put cash in my buckets. They include accounts like checking, savings, credit cards (which reduces the amount of money that I have to put in a bucket), and cash.
Transfers can be a big challenge to figure out how to interact with buckets. When transferring money between cash-flow accounts, no bucket should be assigned. When transferring money from a cash-flow account to another account, the withdrawal should be assigned to a bucket. Conversely, when transferring money from a non-cash flow account to a cash-flow account, the deposit should be assigned to a bucket. This is non-intuitive without giving the whole process some thought and is easily confused during execution. Getting it wrong however, can easily mislead you into thinking you have more money than you actually have for expenses. That's at least one of several ways to get tripped up. Another way would be if you started using MoneyWell sometime in a given month, say,Mar, and started tracking your cash flow on 1 April, using the cash you had at the time by adding up all your cash-flow accounts, and then realizing later that you forgotten a transaction back in Mar. When you go to add the transaction, you might forget to apply the correction to your starting cash flow amount. This transaction, being before the cash flow date, will not affect bucket totals, but it will change cash available and account balances, effectively reducing the amount you should have put in the buckets. You could inadvertently overspend this way without realizing it. I implemented a tool using Excel several years ago that basically used a bucket/envelope method and tracked all my accounts. I found two calculations extraordinarily useful after using the system for nearly two years. The first was the total of all my cash flow accounts minus the total of all buckets with positive balances (this could be calculated using a smart bucket if the appropriate logic were in place). This amount told me how much money I had overdrawn my buckets/envelopes. While it is ideal to never have to overdraw a bucket, sometimes a person might make an intentional choice to spend next month's money now, or it is near the end of the month and you buy groceries on the 31st instead of the 1st. Also, folks who travel for business might have a negative bucket until they are reimbursed. As long as a recovery plan is in place, it is not critical when a person overdraws a bucket, and a money flow may not be desirable. However, the deficit has to be covered by other buckets or by a hidden buffer not accounted for in the bucket/envelope system. If you were to overdraw a bucket, and then spend all the money from the other buckets, you won't have enough money to cover your expenses (or you'll dip into the hidden buffer). This number told me that I needed to reserve a certain amount of money to cover the expenses. If the number was smaller than my Savings bucket/envelope (or another one used for reserve), no immediate problem. I just needed a plan to get fixed, whether it was the next paycheck or the reimbursement, or whatever. I occasionally received extra money that I would choose not allocate, this sometimes this calculation was positive. Meaning I had more money in accounts than I had planned to spend. Consequently, I called this calculation my Buffer. The second was a balance checker similar to what has been exhaustively discussed. This could also be implemented by users if the appropriate logic were added to smart buckets (in particular being able to exclude certain transaction types). I don't remember if smart buckets were being added in 1.5, but in any case, it seems that increased smart bucket functionality has great potential to allow folks to double check their bucket integrity whenever they do arrive. This could provide a non-intrusive solution for everyone. Lance, Dave, et al, what do you think? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
