If your cash flow forecast seems useless, you should check the settings
under customize and work to get your scheduled items correct. Mine predicts
what it's trying to predict incredibly well.

Of course, I wonder if you are asking something of cash flow forecast that
it's not designed for as well. It's not about Income and Expense. It's about
forecasting balances in specified accounts going forward. It answers
questions like "will I have enough cash on hand at date X to send $100 to
the phone company?" This is why it shows every transfer. This is why it
shows net pay. If your settings in customize cash flow are set to exclude
forecasting from the budget, it should be completely decoupled from your
budget. You can have it use trended information or not as well.

Back to where we started: the principal component of the loan payment is
important to cash flow since you have to have cash on hand to move it to the
liability account when the payment is due. It's not relevant to income and
expenses since the "expense" (note it's not all an expense, but that's a
detail) to purchase the item you took a loan on occurred when you made the
purchase decision. Interest due on loan payment this month is an expense
this month since if you didn't owe the money this month, it would not be an
expense you had to incur this month. The reason Money does it this way and
financial people recommend doing it this way is to separate the cost of the
purchase from the cost of renting the money to make the purchase. Making
these separate decisions enables you to see the opportunity cost of buying
today by renting money vs. when you have the cash in hand.

"Jonathan" <liljonny[at]comcast.net> wrote in message
news:r5e1q0tipv15kg50rf152v8899vmkocvjq[at]4ax.com...
- quote -

I find the cash flow forecast completely useless. For instance
Natural Gas is listed as monthly in the budget and showing up as
weekly in the cash flow, plus the payee The Gas company is showing up
separately even though it is set to budget category: bills natural
gas. My pay check is showing up as net and SDI is also showing. It
also shows transfers to and from accounts that is not income or
expense.

Jonathan




On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:45:09 -0700, "Dick Watson"
<littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote:

- quote -

You may be trying to get the wrong information out of the Income vs.
Expenses graph. It's great for telling you if you are spending within your
means--i.e., getting richer or poorer over time. The question you are asking
is "will I have enough cash to send all of the places it has to go?" That's
a cash flow question wrt the principal payment. It's better answered by
looking at the right lines on the Forecast Cash Flow pane or selecting just
the accounts of interest.

If you really want to look at your loan payment and house as just a bill,
you can make life easier by skipping the loan and the asset and so on and
just setting the whole thing up as a bill. But this will mess up lots of
features like net worth accounting.

"Jonathan" <liljonny[at]comcast.net> wrote in message
news:jq81q05eund8f8b6rji8f5tjkuqkkaeirq[at]4ax.com...
- quote -

I feel that is one thing that should be changed, When I see the chart
on the home page of Money 2004 I keep forgetting that does not include
principal. If I see the expenses greater than income, I know I need to
cut back on spending but without principal included this is almost
useless. Could it be possible to make it so the user decides if it
includes principal or not?

Jonathan




On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 20:59:01 -0800, DRUAngell
<DRUAngell[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

- quote -

Money looks at the interest as the only expense incurred NOW. The principal
is an expense you incurred the day you bought the car--a lot of which wasn't
really an expense since you gained an asset worth most of what you paid for
it. Now, the principal portion of your loan payments is just a transfer from
your cash to offset your liabilities. There are ways you can "fake this
out," but it's not something you really want to "fix" since doing so does
not reflect what your real situation is.

"DRUAngell" <DRUAngell[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C1799331-C959-41DE-BDAE-7306DE713F61[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I've been using Money since Money03...I'm using Money 05 now. I've got a
very simple financial life and I've never really tried to use any of money's
wonderful features.

I've noticed a few things though in all versions that are confusing me and
it must just be the way I have my accounts setup or something but I can't
find it.

When I look at different reports it's only using the interest. For example,
on my home page in Money I like to show vehicle expenses for the year.
However, as of right now it's only showing $930 for Car Payments on the
year....i make $350.00 payments every month. I look into each line item that
it shows and it's only using the Interest for it's calculations. Why is
this, and where/how can I fix it?

Any information on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!