Here's the deal with budget: it deals with new expenses that you can control
now. In the case of your student loans, the only expense now is the
interest.

But here's what I would do to get this to deal reasonably well with BP:

1) Make sure the liability account for the loan balance is set, in its
Account Details, to not be included in Budget Planner.

2) Schedule the (approximate average) interest expense in addition to the
transfer. Do this in the same transaction in the account MAKING the payment
not in the account that you took out of BP in #1. This would be, say, a
split of, say, a $1,000 transaction with $250 going to the interest category
and $750 being a Transfer to the (now out-of-budget) liability account. You
don't have to enter it this way--but you certainly could. You'd just have to
go back and adjust the splits to the statement interest amounts.

With this, BP should:

a) Show the principal transfer in the budget summary as a transfer out of
budget accounts. This accounts for it in the sense that it will reduce your
available income to budget against the budgeted expenses.

b) Show the interest expense as a budgeted expense.

"Tyler" <Tyler[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:04791214-1083-4603-8CD2-668AEAA3BF91[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Sorry, I'm new at this so I learn in stages...Thanks for your continued help.

I ended up setting up liability accounts for the principal amount of the
loans and expense accounts for the interest I pay. This seems to work well
as I am able to transfer to the principal account and expense the interest
for tax estimates. DRP is ok...it gives me a good estimate which is what I
wanted. I set up recurring bills that I have averaged and then can adjust
the P&I amounts as I pay them.

Now, I have moved on to what appears to be a troublesome subject after
looking at other posts...the Budget. Since I set up simple liability
accounts, Money doesn't give me the option to include them in my budget. Is
there a way to do this or am I out of luck?? I have an excel file that I set
up a while back, but was just trying to get everything in one place.

If you have any other ideas they'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks again
for your help.

Tyler

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

I don't think there's a great answer here.

What I think I'd do:

1) Set them up as basic liability accounts.

2) Schedule payments limited in number for all of the cycles. (E.g., a first
start several years down the road and running 24 monthly payments.)

3) Record interest as an expense transaction in the liability account from
statements or an Excel worksheet. Use a category that is set to report
appropriately for taxes. I might even schedule these expenses at, say, an
average amount for the next year or something.

This will work cash flow and reporting. It may not work all that well with
BP (notorious for ignoring starting date of an item scheduled in the
future). If the loan is setup as a credit card or similar, there should be a
way to get it to work and play better than nothing at all with DRP.

Good luck!

"Tyler" <Tyler[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7B2E4549-52EE-4414-AD00-DD6C3CDDF1C4[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I am setting up my student loans in Money 2005 and if they were regular loans
I wouldn't have a problem, but...one of them is on a graduated repayment
schedule where I pay an amount for 2 years, then it increases for 2 more
years, then finally gets to the regular payment for the remainder.

Currently I have the amount I am paying amortized and money shows it will
take me over 100 years to pay off, which although kind of humerous, is not
useful for me trying to set up a cash flow for the next 10 years and debt
reduction planner.

Another loan I have I am paying interest only for the 1st couple years then
I have an actual payment for the remainder.

The interest is tax deductible for both loans, so I was hoping to be able to
track this. I am trying to get a 5 and 10 year plan together to be free of
these two loans but I am struggling since I can't seem to get the correct
numbers to be calculated in Money. Any help? Thanks.

Thanks for the Advanced tip last time...it makes all of the difference.