[moneydance] Envelope Budgeting/Category Balances...

[Brett Russ]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:43 AM, Chuck <chuckf410 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You may not /need/ reports, but they are helpful in creating the budget for next month. With the reports you can compare the original budget that you did going into April to what you actually used during the month and use that info to forecast to some degree your budget for May.
>
>  This is why I use a separate spreadsheet for my envelope tracking. I'd love to do it within MD but there is no easy way that I have found without sacrificing some other aspect of MD.
>

Couple things:

-what is the advantage of envelope over MD's budget if, by clicking on
the budget graph on the home page, I can instantly see what categories
are over/under budget?  Isn't the end result the same--as soon as I
enter an expense, it will be instantly reflected in either the
envelope sub-accounts OR the budget tracker?  I guess I don't see how
envelope let's you plan ahead any better than the budget does, and
besides that MD wasn't designed for it and doing it seems to tweak the
brain.  BTW, I haven't tried MD 2008 yet, but my understanding is that
budgeting now allows for tracking sub-category expenses in the parent
budget line item.

-Chuck, it'd be super if you could strip the personal info out of that
spreadsheet and pass it along as a template for others to use.
Probably not at the top of your list I'm sure, but I would like to
experiment a bit with the env. method.

"Sell me on envelope" :-)
thanks,
BR