If you want to put the money in an account in Money from another account in
Money, "categorization" is kind of a non-sequitur.

"Steven Dennis" <nzdreamer55[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:_0IFi.9067$924.389[at]newssvr23.news.prodigy.net...
- quote -

Dick, you have been a great help. Thank you. I'll take a look at not
including the savings account into the budget then maybe make "payments" to it
in certain catagories like "New Car". If it works I'll let you know.

Thanks again,

Steve

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote:
- quote -

You are looking for something like Quicken's sub-account scheme. Nobody has
ever identified a good enough workaround here that I'd repeat it.

I agree that one of the BIG limitations of the Advanced Budget is irregular
budgeted expenses. It wants to assign everything to some monthly basis. Of
course this doesn't work so well for things like buying a car or christmas
gifts. You look like a genius underrunning month after month and then WHAMO!
It doesn't even work so well for things like property taxes, but at least
you can schedule those.

Yes, you could also view the problem differently than you are. The secret
each month is not to drive Income-Expense to $0. You could also, if you
haven't already done so, set your Savings account as not to be included in
the budget. This way the transfer to it will show up as a transfer out of
budget accounts. And if you are doing this and if your budget SAYS that you
will be able to afford to spend at a certain RATE for various things like
the xmas gifts and the new car, then you should be able to stay on track in
your budget accounts and you WILL have the free cash somewhere to spend on
those future things. But I agree that is a hard leap for a lot of people to
make in their heads. I also don't recall if you mentioned having played with
the Savings Goal feature. I've never messed with it much, but most posts
about it seem to be unsatisfied with it. The primary knock seems to be that
it just ticks them off one by one but doesn't "allocate" progress against
all of them at a given moment.

I guess the best answer I can offer is Excel. It's frequently quite a handy
add-in to Money.

Sorry. Wish there was a better answer I knew. I try to avoid diving into
most budget questions because the poster almost always leaves disappointed.
People have so many different ways of wanting to approach the problem and
Money can only attempt so many ways to solve it.

"Steve Dennis" <nzdreamer55[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:KUFFi.2366$Sd4.1317[at]nlpi061.nbdc.sbc.com...
- quote -

Thanks so much for the response.

So right now we have a lot of stuff catagorized and have a fairly good
advanced budget set up with money coming in from our pay checks and going out
to bills. There is always some fluxuation and it is hard to forcast really
far into the future. Is there anyway to tag the money that I put ino my
savings account on a weekly basis for certain things? Right now I have
transfer from the checking to my savings, however it only catagorizes this as
a transfer. If I could move it and then have it catagorize it as something
that would do the trick. Like if $150 each month is moved to my savings, then
I could say $50 per week goes towards a new car, $25 goes towards christmas
gifts, and $75 goes towards property taxes. I think that the answer is no,
but let me know if there is a work around to accomplish this. Maybe I just
need to do my budget differently?

Thanks again,
Steve

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote:
- quote -

I think most people who have tried to adapt Money to a cookie-jar-accounting
model they are used to using have found that tough to do. Money isn't really
designed to do it.

In general--and ignoring things like the balkanization of Money editions and
of the budgeting tools within the various editions--the way Money wants to
do this, and is best suited to doing it, is more or less as follows:

1) Schedule payments for your known expenses like your insurance, property
tax, credit car interest charges and so forth. Also schedule transfers out
of the budgeting scheme things like principal repayments for your mortgage
and your 401(k) contributions.

2) Estimate, in whatever budget tool, the non-scheduled expenses like
christmas presents for the kids and an occasional vacation.

3) Schedule income items like paychecks.

4) See how much is left over from the (Income - Expenses +/- the Transfers)
which is, by definition, savings. If nothing is left over, then your Income
cannot afford your Expenses, and you must return to step 1, 2, or 3 as
appropriate.

5) Track the actual income and expenses to that plan to confirm whether you
are staying on or above the income "budget" and at or below the expense
"budget." If so, you are creating the predicted savings or more. If not, you
are saving less or consuming any prior savings.

For people who make their peace with this approach, many find it works
better than cookie-jar accounting. For others, their method remains better.
There are some software tools out there, I've been told, better adapted to
the cookie-jar model.

"Steve Dennis" <nzdreamer55[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:udzFi.14777$3x.278[at]newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...
- quote -

I am currently using MS Msney 2007 on a XP system SP2. My wife and I need to
track money that we deposit into our savings account that will be spent for
different things. We put in $150 every week but this needs to be split to
different future bills (property tax, house insurance, christmas presents for
the family, etc.) as well as savings goals like a new car. I have tried using
the savings goal in money and have not gotten very far. Maybe I need to play
around with it some more.

I'm hoping that there is someone here who will be able to help me with. It is
hard to look at our savings account and see a lot of money, but then to try to
figure out how much is in each pot is the problem. I could open a bunch of
savings accouts at the bank, but I get a better interest rate with the money
in one account.

Thanks in advance,

Steve