[No Thirst Software] Re: Money left in account, but no cash available for flowing?
Good thinking, Drew. In fact, it's excellent thinking. Thanks, stuff just suddenly clicked into place here! :D I do believe you solved my problem. I kinda had the nagging feeling that assigning account transfers to an income bucket felt wrong somehow, yet I couldn't quite explain to myself how. You just did. :) With a new paycheck coming this friday, I now feel confident that I'll be able to get it right this time. ;) On 9 Jun, 05:38, Druzyne drew.k...@gmail.com wrote: What I basically did, was transfer an amount of money equal to what was overspent in my expense buckets from my savings account, registering this in an income bucket. I allocated the money to the expense buckets, and then transferred all of the money back to the savings account. I basically conjured up spendable money out of nothing. :S I'm confident that the fault lies with my bookkeeping and not with me actually overspending, but I'm still interested in finding out where my logic fails here. The one thing I've done that I'm unsure of, is this: every month, I transfer a fixed amount of money into my savings account, assigning it to the Savings expense bucket. However, this month I had to pull some money out of the savings account due to unforeseen expenses (that's what the savings account is there for after all). I transferred money from the savings account into the spending account assigning this transaction to the Emergency dip into savings income bucket, allocated the required amount of money to the Unforeseen expenses expense bucket and payed off the expense, registering this with the same expense bucket. Is this the right way to go about such a use of savings money? Henrik, I'm not sure if this will correct your issue, but there's a different way I handle having to pull out of savings. When transferring the money into your spending account, I would have assigned the deposit to your Savings bucket, thereby negating what you spent by moving into savings earlier. Then, the money that is in your Savings bucket you can flow to the expense bucket where it is needed. I may be wrong, but when you assigned the transfer back to your spending account to an income bucket, it was like printing yourself another paycheck, which might have thrown things off. It's better to look at this type of transaction as unspending on Savings, rather than as income. //Drew --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[No Thirst Software] Re: Money left in account, but no cash available for flowing?
Wow... I can't tell you how much I appreciate you putting all that effort into such an excellent and informative post. Things are, very much, crystal clear now. Your setup is conceptually similar to what I was trying to achieve, but I got confused by all the buckets and I most certainly violated some of the rules you stipulated. I know for certain that I on at least one occasion transferred money from below the line to above the line without assigning the transaction to any buckets. Too late to fix now, what with all the juggling I performed in order to align things again (I wouldn't know where to even begin to undo it all), but now that everything's aligned I'll most definitely keep this in mind going forward. So, once again, thanks! :D On 9 Jun, 13:13, The Watkinson Family thewatkins...@mac.com wrote: There must be something else going on here Adding money to a savings expense bucket has the same net effect as adding money to an income bucket. Look at this way... I could unspend Savings and put the money back into the Savings bucket that I took out. Or I could put the money into an income bucket and then move it to the Savings bucket--either way has the same net effect. Here's another area where the problem may lie. There are two sides to each transfer--the withdrawal, and the deposit. In MoneyWell, it is possible to assign either side of the transfer (or even both sides) to a bucket. While each transfer presents three options for assigning the transfer to a bucket (withdrawal side, deposit side, and both sides), these three options do not produce the same results. Let me try to step through the process that you should be using to track your Savings: When Allocating Income each month, you should be assigning money to your Savings bucket. This bucket represents the amount of money that you plan to transfer into your Savings account. When you are ready to transfer funds from checking to savings, you'll create a transfer from Checking to Savings, assigning the withdrawal side of the transfer to your Savings bucket. At this point, your Savings bucket should be at 0 (you don't have any more money to transfer to Savings) If you need to use money from Savings, you'll transfer the money from your Savings account back into Checking, assigning the deposit side of the transfer to a bucket. There are merits to using income buckets or expense buckets, but the choice is up to you. Using an income bucket allows you to use the Allocate Income feature to disburse the money to expense buckets. Here's how I set up my MoneyWell document in order to keep all this stuff straight: First, I decide how much cash I have on hand to fund my spending plan. Some people might prefer to include Savings accounts balances in this formula, others may not. You would also include the balance on certain kinds of credit cards. Any credit card that you use on a recurring basis each month, paying the balance each month should be included in this formula as well. I refer to these as Spending Plan Accounts. I might also refer to it as cash on hand/cash available. Second, I decide how many other accounts I want to track in MoneyWell. This could include additional Savings accounts, money market accounts, credit cards (accounts I don't pay off each month), auto loan balances, retirement accounts, home mortgage, etc. These accounts affect my net worth and are of enough concern to me to track on a monthly basis, but they do not contribute to the money that I have on an on-going basis to pay for groceries and other monthly expenses. I'll set up the MoneyWell document like this: Spending Plan Accounts - Other Accounts Note: The -- above is an account that I use as a divider between the two types of accounts that I simply provide the name of multiple dashes. Setting up MoneyWell in this way provides a quick reminder to me how I should assign to transfers to buckets. There are three rules to follow: When transferring funds on the same side of the line, do not assign the money to a bucket on either side of the transfer When a transfer crosses the line in a downward direction (from a Spending Plan Account to an Other Account), assign the withdrawal side of the transaction to an bucket. This money is treated as though it is being spent by your cash available on your other other accounts When a transfer crosses the line in the upward direction (from an Other Account to your Spending Plan Account), assign only the deposit side of the transfer to a bucket. This money is being treated as income from your other accounts into your cash available. There are two rules for spending money: When spending or depositing money from/to an account that is above the
[No Thirst Software] Re: Money left in account, but no cash available for flowing?
Ok, I've managed to get things aligned, but something doesn't sit right with the way I did it. What I basically did, was transfer an amount of money equal to what was overspent in my expense buckets from my savings account, registering this in an income bucket. I allocated the money to the expense buckets, and then transferred all of the money back to the savings account. I basically conjured up spendable money out of nothing. :S I'm confident that the fault lies with my bookkeeping and not with me actually overspending, but I'm still interested in finding out where my logic fails here. The one thing I've done that I'm unsure of, is this: every month, I transfer a fixed amount of money into my savings account, assigning it to the Savings expense bucket. However, this month I had to pull some money out of the savings account due to unforeseen expenses (that's what the savings account is there for after all). I transferred money from the savings account into the spending account assigning this transaction to the Emergency dip into savings income bucket, allocated the required amount of money to the Unforeseen expenses expense bucket and payed off the expense, registering this with the same expense bucket. Is this the right way to go about such a use of savings money? I'm feeling incredibly dense here, so if anyone could set me straight here, even pointing out the obvious, I'd be grateful. :S On Jun 7, 5:30 pm, HenrikWL henrik.w.l...@gmail.com wrote: The thing is, there was no starting balance for the accounts. I started using MW at the same time I changed banks, so all of my accounts had zero balance in them. I guess the closest thing to a starting balance transaction was the couple of deposits of money that were transferred from my old bank, but the way I assigned these to an income bucket was via the Change money flow start date and set the starting cash flow amount there. I have tried setting this amount to zero and assigning the initial transactions to income buckets, but the whole thing ends up exactly the same. The only way I can think that this kind of thing has happened was if we recieved cash that we forgot to register in Moneywell, but rembered to register when we used them. And while we're on the subject of cash, I have no way of knowing if the cash balance is correct. I find the cash account to be impossible to keep track of, what with the two of us (me and my wife) receving and spending cash from a number of different sources, and with cash lying around the house, in pockets, in the car, etc. :S But still, I would think that this lack of control would lead to the opposite problem: that there was no money in our accounts, yet still more to spend in our income buckets. :S Oh well. The amounts in question aren't vast, so I guess I could just transfer them into the savings account (which is never available for spending anyways) and then just pull the missing spendable amount back into the spending account, registering the transaction in an income bucket. On Jun 7, 3:58 pm, Patrick Burleson pburle...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 6:16 AM, HenrikWLhenrik.w.l...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, there's weirdness. I currently find myself in the situation that all my expense buckets are empty, yet I have money left on my spending accounts. All incoming transactions to these accounts have been allocated to income buckets, and all outgoing transactions have been allocated to expense buckets (except transfers between them that have been purely administrative), and to my mind, I should still have allocateable money so long as I have money in my spending accounts. The account balances in MW match the account balances in my bank, so I have not left out any transactions so far as I can see. Where do I even begin to investigate? Check your Starting Balance transaction for the accounts and make sure they were assigned to an income bucket. That'd be my guess. 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[No Thirst Software] Re: Money left in account, but no cash available for flowing?
The thing is, there was no starting balance for the accounts. I started using MW at the same time I changed banks, so all of my accounts had zero balance in them. I guess the closest thing to a starting balance transaction was the couple of deposits of money that were transferred from my old bank, but the way I assigned these to an income bucket was via the Change money flow start date and set the starting cash flow amount there. I have tried setting this amount to zero and assigning the initial transactions to income buckets, but the whole thing ends up exactly the same. The only way I can think that this kind of thing has happened was if we recieved cash that we forgot to register in Moneywell, but rembered to register when we used them. And while we're on the subject of cash, I have no way of knowing if the cash balance is correct. I find the cash account to be impossible to keep track of, what with the two of us (me and my wife) receving and spending cash from a number of different sources, and with cash lying around the house, in pockets, in the car, etc. :S But still, I would think that this lack of control would lead to the opposite problem: that there was no money in our accounts, yet still more to spend in our income buckets. :S Oh well. The amounts in question aren't vast, so I guess I could just transfer them into the savings account (which is never available for spending anyways) and then just pull the missing spendable amount back into the spending account, registering the transaction in an income bucket. On Jun 7, 3:58 pm, Patrick Burleson pburle...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 6:16 AM, HenrikWLhenrik.w.l...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, there's weirdness. I currently find myself in the situation that all my expense buckets are empty, yet I have money left on my spending accounts. All incoming transactions to these accounts have been allocated to income buckets, and all outgoing transactions have been allocated to expense buckets (except transfers between them that have been purely administrative), and to my mind, I should still have allocateable money so long as I have money in my spending accounts. The account balances in MW match the account balances in my bank, so I have not left out any transactions so far as I can see. Where do I even begin to investigate? Check your Starting Balance transaction for the accounts and make sure they were assigned to an income bucket. That'd be my guess. 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[No Thirst Software] Re: Soubts about buckets and multiple accounts
I just had to chime in on this. This is exactly how me and my wife arrange our household economy. We pool all of our earnings in one big pool, but set aside an NQA bucket each every month that we use for personal stuff. This makes it perfectly fair even though my income is higher than hers, because our NQA buckets are equal in size. So I say go for that arrangement, Drew! :D On Jun 2, 8:07 pm, Karen kar...@gmail.com wrote: Wow, Drew. I'm impressed--a healthy money relationship before you even get married! Love the NQA buckets. :-) Karen On 2-Jun-09, at 2:54 PM, Druzyne wrote: Currently I'm using 2 different documents, one for my personal accounts and another for my house accounts. If I use only one document for all the accounts, how the spending buckets will be treated? Do I have to duplicate buckets for the two accounts (Personal Restaurants and House Restaurants) or I can use just one (Restaurants) and I can view the bucket for the two accounts? Oletros, I personally think you'd be saving yourself a lot of extra work and confusion by having just one document with both your personal and joint accounts. For starters, you'd have a single transfer transaction for contributions to the joint account - rather than having to open another document and recreate the transaction. Also, you'll get the benefit of being able to see all your money at once. Since the separate accounts indicate separate purposes, it's not inappropriate for there to be a bucket for each. How many duplicates are there? If you're looking to consolidate buckets, you might be able to combine some of the household expenses, or some of the personal expenses in one bucket. For example, an Entertainment and a Vacation bucket could be combined into a Fun bucket. Soon I'll be joining my accounts with those of my fiancee, and I think MoneyWell perfectly allows the independence many find in personal accounts. Much like a virtual account, we each will have an NQA bucket (No Questions Asked) for personal discretionary spending. Whether we save for big-ticket personal purchases, or blow it on a lot of small things, is completely up to us individually. We think it will work because we trust each other to stick to the limits, but we don't have to justify these purchases to each other. That's the theory, anyways - we'll see how it holds up in practice :) //Drew --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[No Thirst Software] Am I doing this right?
I'm loving MW, but there is something I'm wondering that I figured I'd better get straight right away. Here's the thing: I started using MoneyWell right after I'd changed banks. The new accounts had their first transactions being the money left over in my old bank accounts, so I totalled them up and set the money flow start date to their date (14th of May) and added their total to an income bucket. So far so good. I got my salary from my employer, assigned that transaction to the Salary income bucket, and flowed the money into the expense buckets. So far so good. During the month, I was in total control of what I was spending where, and how much I had left to spend on each category. No other personal finance app I've tried has given me this clear and easy-to-access information before. I'll definitely buy this app because of this. Today, when I opened MW, all of my expense buckets were empty. I scratched my head a bit, but found out that changing the money flow start date to 1st of June (leaving the other two fields displaying what they did when I set up MW in the second paragraph here) brought the bucket amounts back to what they were yesterday. Now, my question is: is this the right way to do it? Are you supposed to change the money flow start date each month? Or will this lead to problems later? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
