Laura, I have an irregular income and I love the buckets. I'd somewhat implemented the YNAB system of living off last month's income to set up my monthly allocation. On the first of the month, I just use last month's income numbers as a basis for my spending plan. It's actually pretty straightforward once you get in there and start messing around with it. My personal take is that the bucket system (envelopes, even) helps me plan for month's where I don't make as much by evening out my spending and savings.
Give it try, it's a lot easier than you probably think it is, especially when compared to M$ Money. Dennis On Feb 27, 1:10 pm, Kevin Hoctor <ke...@nothirst.com> wrote: > On Feb 27, 2009, at 9:39 AM, mitten wrote: > > > > > I'm a Microsoft Money refugee (tired of having to run a virtual > > machine to do accounting) and looking pretty seriously at MoneyWell. > > > My question is: if I want to just use MoneyWell as a checkbook manager > > - like putting 'categories' on transactions (I don't care if they're > > called 'buckets'), reconciling my accounts, etc., can I do that? > > > I realize that the bucket thing is a major part of the software and > > one of the premier features of it. It looks really cool, but for our > > situation (two freelance incomes) it looks very complex and hard to > > use. If I just get going with MoneyWell as a checkbook manager, will I > > be able to start using the buckets later, once I understand how to > > make them work for our situation? Or do I need to use buckets to do > > the more basic functions like monthly reconciliations? > > > I did read the article about irregular income, which was nice and all, > > but didn't give any practical information about how to actually use > > MoneyWell and its buckets for irregular income. I've looked at what I > > can with the trial version, but it's really hard to see how it would > > work. > > > But if I can get started without buckets and add them later, then it > > looks like I'm about ready to buy a license! > > Hi Laura, > > You should use buckets at least like you do categories in MS Money. If > you don't want to bother with tracking cash flow and allocating income > right away, just set your cash flow start date to a future date (Edit > > Change Cash Flow Start Date) and MoneyWell will treat your buckets > like categories and show you the amount spent for the month instead of > what you have to spend. > > Peace, > > Kevin Hoctor > ke...@nothirst.com > No Thirst Software LLChttp://nothirst.comhttp://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 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
