View my savings as separate sub-funds?

May 29, 2008 8:26 PM

Personal Finance Filter: Is there an application that can help me track money in separate accounts AND what that money is earmarked for AND keep a log of the movements?

I have looked through Quicken help, and done a MeFi search on "personal finances separate funds". I also have tried using a spreadsheet for a while but it's cumbersome, especially the part about keeping a log of the funds movements. I apologize if the answer was obvious and I missed it.

To elaborate: what has worked well for our savings and budgeting efforts (until recently) is keeping a savings account and a spreadsheet to split up what parts of the account (sub-funds if you will) are earmarked for. We can then transfer between funds if we change our minds, move funds in or out of the savings account to/from the checking account, as we find extra cash or need to pay for a justified expense.

It started to break down when the account got too large to keep in a local savings account (there are worse problems I know). So we put some of the longer term funds in ING. We don't want to continue using two spreadsheets, because it's proving hard to keep funds movements between each of them and the checking account straight, etc.

Does anybody else do this? Is there an app or a feature of an app that supports this? All suggestions welcome, but we want to stay in the general spirit of our system because it has worked so well for us!

Thanks in advance!

posted by forthright to work & money (9 comments total)

I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but Mint is a great free personal finance website. Take a look!
posted by mynameismandab at 8:34 PM on May 29, 2008

I use Quicken 99 and it is no problem to have multiple accounts. I often make transfers between and it shows up easily.
posted by radioamy at 8:46 PM on May 29, 2008

When I was using GNUCash for personal finance, I would create sub-accounts below a particular account for budgeting purposes. These virtual accounts would look and feel like real bank accounts, but they'd ultimately just be virtual allocations of the money of one account.

So for example, below my checking account, I'd have accounts called Rent, Electricity, Telephone, Car Insurance, etc. Every paycheck would automatically be split up into the required subaccounts, via scheduled transactions. So, for example, over the course of six months, these transactions would build up enough money in the Car Insurance account to make the payment that is due every six months. Then as each payment came due, the exact amount needed would be sitting in that virtual account, ready to be spent.

I struggled with this question for a while, and the system I ended up using, while not perfect, seems to be the best approach. Hopefully Quicken supports this feature, I've never used it. You can get as precise as you want, although keeping 30 or 40 sub-accounts might get annoying. I typically kept about 10, and then had one for unexpected / unbudgeted expenses. Also, you might want to contact "our own" jdroth, he runs a good personal finance blog where your question might get some helpful responses.

Also, Google is your friend. Searching around, it seems like Quicken has a feature for putting money in virtual envelopes to set aside the money for a particular purpose. This might be the "correct" approach in Quicken.
posted by knave at 8:54 PM on May 29, 2008 [2 favorites]

posts tagged with accounting
open source software -
http://www.mjrz.net/
http://financialsoft.about.com/od/reviewsfinancesoftware/p/GnuCash_Profile.htm
Mac user? Accountz is alright I guess; Cashbox is free - http://www.fadingred.org/cashbox/
posted by yoHighness at 8:55 PM on May 29, 2008

Thanks everyone. I know there are a lot of apps out there, and on-line services. A lot of them concentrate on categorizing transactions and reconciliation with the bank, not so much on the virtual accounts that knave pointed me to and seems like what I had been trying to do with my spreadsheet.

I'll also look at the other suggestions, and yes I have both Win and Mac PCs. I also should have mentioned that the Quicken Help I looked in is Quicken 2006 (what I own). I'll investigate if upgrading to 2009 would give me what I want with the envelopes concept.

I hadn't considered doing a mefi search on accounting since I thought of this as more personal finance.

I hope I wasn't lazy. I appreciate all your time and suggestions!
posted by forthright at 9:02 PM on May 29, 2008

Take a look at Wesabe.
posted by manish at 11:02 PM on May 29, 2008

I was in the same position as you: keeping track of my sub-funds in a spreadsheet but unhappy about tracking the "movements" as you call it. Then I switched to GnuCash, using the same sub-fund/envelope system as knave, and I've been very happy with how it tracks my expenses and such.

GnuCash is available for Windows (download here) and Mac (though it's less straightforward than Windows). I don't know if you will be using it on both operating systems, but I was able to edit my files (originally created on Windows) with Ubuntu's GnuCash without a single problem.
posted by philomathoholic at 12:30 AM on May 30, 2008

I use Quicken Home & Business because I get it for free (aunt works for Intuit) but I occasionally get disillusioned and start looking around at alternatives. A couple of favorites are Budget and Moneydance.
posted by jon1270 at 8:45 AM on May 30, 2008

Unless I misunderstand your requirements, standard quicken should be able to accomplish what you want by setting up appropirate categories, budgets, customized reports, multiple bank accts, etc
posted by canoehead at 11:26 AM on May 30, 2008