[moneydance] Envelope Budgeting/Category Balances...

[Graham Borland]

Robert Kuropkat wrote:
> Just downloaded MoneyDance and looking to crowbar the Envelope Budgeting
> System into it.  I found a discussion on the forums for this with this
> mention in particular:
> 
> http://moneydance.com/trac/wiki/Envelope_Budgeting
> 
> which outlines basically what I had come to work out myself when I saw
> that Categories have a "balance."  My question on the forum and here
> [apologies for the cross-post] is what breaks by doing this?

I wrote the Wiki page you mentioned, although I haven't really updated 
it since my initial attempt. I have been using the technique very 
successfully, though, and avoiding MD's built-in budget manager completely.

The main problems are:

1. To get the categories showing with positive balances when they have 
balance available to spend, they have to be Income categories. This is 
unfortunate because then Income/Expense type reports and graphs become 
useless. For me personally, this isn't a big deal; all the information I 
need for my day-to-day budgeting is contained in the category balances 
and transaction history. Some people might find the lack of useul 
reporting and graphing capability a deal-breaker though.

A solution to this would be to add a new category type, which behaves 
like Expense from a graphing/reporting point of view, but like Income 
from a balance-accumulation point of view.

Or, just keep all the categories as Expense categories, as long as you 
don't mind them displaying a *negative* number when you've money 
available, and a *positive* balance when you've overspent. For me, that 
would be too confusing.

2. Following on from point 1, transferring money between categories is 
tricky. For example, you might want to transfer money from your 
"Emergency fund" category to your "Car maintenance" category to pay for 
some unexpected repairs. To get the money moving in the right direction, 
the amount has to go in the opposite column (in the transaction entry 
field) from the one you'd intuitively expect, i.e. Deposit rather than 
Payment (or vice versa, I can't remember which).

3. The only way to get an overview of category balances is the Edit 
Categories window (ctrl-shift-C). This is not particularly easy to use 
nor nice to look at. It would be far nicer if categories could be 
displayed on the home page, parallel to the real bank accounts.

Incidentally, I have also found a neat way to manage repayment of 
existing long-term debt. Maybe I'll get around to updating the Wiki page 
sometime soon.

-- 
Graham Borland
graham at moonbog.net