Separate and distinct accounts are easy to handle -- taxes can be more
problematic. Assuming you're in the US, do you plan to file separately or
jointly?

--
Michael Gordon


"Pieter" <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:eUaFeu$OHHA.404[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
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I forgot to say that, once received, transfers are simply cash movement. It
matters for budgeting only if it moves from a budget account to a
non-budget account, or vice versa.

"Pieter" <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:O8UwRw$OHHA.4172[at]TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

- quote -

That's easy. Create separate income categories for each recipient. I do
that now, and our finances are entirely commingled. For tax classification,
some categories can be assigned to separate tax-related sources, such as
'my w-2' vs 'my spouse w-2'.

"Pieter" <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:O8UwRw$OHHA.4172[at]TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

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I'd categorize it as Income where I deposit it. Once I transfer it to
another account, it's still income in the original account.

Money views every transaction of money coming into the "system" (all
accounts which are in the file) as Income and going out (that which leaves
accounts in the file) as Expense. Moving it around inside the accounts in
the file is just some derivative of Transfer. It makes the system of
accounts defined in the file neither richer nor poorer. It's like moving
money from one pocket to another. It's still "your" (the file's) money.
These transfers are not categorized.

If you are trying to accomplish something like depositing her paycheck in
her account, transferring the money to a joint account, and then paying a
bill with "her" money, Money will not make this easy to track. (Though there
are ways to "fake it.")

If you want to keep track of "His" spending and "Hers" spending out of joint
accounts, we need to discuss classification. See
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=185 for some basic information on
classification.

"Pieter" <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:O8UwRw$OHHA.4172[at]TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
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On 2007-01-19, Pieter <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote:
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My wife and I have seperate investment accounts today. We both
contribute to individual Roth IRAs and some joint taxable accounts.
From a budget perspective, I count all of our investment accounts as
being "not in budget", which means that nothing that happens to them
(increases or decreases) impacts the budget. So the seperation of
ownership does not impact the budget.

From a Tax Estimator (TE) perspective, I mark the accounts that are
tax advantaged as "Tax Deferred" or "Retirement account", and TE
will ignore what happens to them. For the taxable accounts, I can
see no advantage to having individual taxable accounts. TE bundles
them all together anyway. Which is correct, because that's how the
IRS sees us. They don't care that my wife's account had realized
capital gains in comparison to my account. They just care that
one our family's accounts had realized capital gains. It might be
tricky if we were "maried filing seperately" which we aren't.

From a Lifetime Planner (LP) perspective, we both consider that
our individual retirement accounts will be used to fund our joint
retirement. Even though the IRS considers them to be seperately
owned from a tax accounting perspective, we don't. So the fact
that LP assumes that all of that income will go into a single
pile doesn't impact us. The only reason that I could think of
for treating our retirement accounts as individually owned would
be if we had some sort of prenuptual agreement, which we don't.
But if that were the case, I don't think I'd be able to use LP as
a mechanism for assessing how I'm doing... at least I can't think
of a way that it would work.

Does that make sense?

On 2007-01-19, Pieter <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote:
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My wife and I are just in the planning stages of creating some
personal accounts that are distinct from our shared accounts.
What I plan to do is mark personal accounts as being "not in budget".
(You can do this from the account details page.) By doing this,
the portion that goes into the personal account will be ignored by
the budget. While the portion that goes into the shared account
is counted as income by the budget. Individual gifts (e.g. my
mom sends me some money for my birthday) will get deposited in
the personal account. Neither the income nor the spending in the
personal accounts will get tracked by the budget.

The budget will then be built based on the amount that goes
into the shared account. This will pay for all shared expenses
(e.g. electricity, water, mortgage, etc). If there's not enough
income in the shared accounts to cover all the shared expenses,
then I'll adjust the amount that goes into the personal accounts to
ensure that we've got enough to cover our shared budget. It means
we'll get less personal allowances, but that's to be expected if
our personal allowances are resulting in an unbalanced budget.

The rules on the personal accounts will be simple: if there's
money in there, you can do with it whatever you want. Otherwise,
it requires discussion before we spend anything on it.

After doing this, we'll probably move some of the things that are
currently in the shared budget out of the budget. For me it will
be golf. For her it'll be backrubs. When that happens, golf &
backrubs will get paid out of the personal accounts. She'll never
has to ask me if she has enough in the budget for another backrub.
She'll just look in the account and whatever is there she can use.

I expect a few gotchas with this, but I think they'll be easy to
solve. For example, I don't plan on carrying around an additional
debit card or credit card. Those will still be tied to shared
accounts. So when I pay for golf on the credit card, I'll have
to make a transfer from my personal account to a shared account.
This transfer will creat a line in the budget called "transfer from
non-budget accounts" which will count as income. This income will
offset the additional expense, and the budget will remain balanced.

I don't think it's going to be that hard and I hope that it will
relieve some of the spending stress there is in our marriage, by
giving us each a small pot to spend freely that won't impact our
shared expenses.

Customizing the reports seems reasonable, much easier than trying to
maintain different Money files.

How would you clasify (category) salary income that is deposited in a
personal account, then a portion transferred to our shared account?


Regards
Pieter

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:uvVhjA9OHHA.3668[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
- quote -

- quote -

still have our personal banking and investment accounts.

If anybody has a similer situation to me, I'd like to know how you manage
using Money?


Regards
Pieter

"Chris Cowles" <spam_magnet[at]remove-me-bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:%23240fe3OHHA.320[at]TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
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I think I'd say this a different way. Money is really geared toward data
files and all the accounts in a given data file. Yours, Mine and Ours
accounting works in Money (except for Tax Estimator, Lifetime Planner, and
Budget Planner) provided you are willing to customize reports for subsets of
accounts that reflect the Yours, Mine and Ours accounts. You could setup
three files. I think you would find that this was the Most Hard way to
accomplish any sane objective for living together as one unit.

When my wife and I got married, we had separate accounts for a while out of
inertia more than anything. Eventually this collapsed just because of the
doubling of hassle to manage it all and, well, the futility of trying to
keep anything "separate".

That having been said, if one of you is anal about money management and the
other is indifferent, trying to wedge both into Money and getting the
indifferent one to play along may prove more trouble than it's worth and
will just become a source of friction. Using Money to manage the indifferent
one's finances, or trying to convince them to, will only exacerbate this.

"Pieter" <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:%23hN$6Y3OHHA.3544[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
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The tax tools like tax estimator and withholding estimator do assume all
income and expenses in the entire file, but pretty much all other reporting
can be tailored to include whatever you want.

Since your finances are now combined, how is that a problem, anyway?

"Pieter" <msnews[at]nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:%23hN$6Y3OHHA.3544[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I have been using Money since 1999 and I am currently using the 2007
version.
I recently got married and I want to manage the combined finances of me and
my wife through Money.

It seems to me that Money is really geared towards a single individual, i.e.
tax reports etc. are for one user

What would your recommendations be to managing both personal and joint
accounts in Money?


Regards
Pieter