Credit card payment
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Nate
Aug 12, 2019, 6:57:50 PM8/12/19
to Ledger
My credit card is a liability so I pay it like this:
2019/1/1 * Start
Liabilities:CC -500.00 USD
Liabilities:Mortgage -1000000 USD
Assets:Checking 700 USD
Equity:Start
2019/1/2 * Income
Income:Emplyer -1000 USD
Assets:Checking
2019/1/3 * Paying credit card
Liabilities:CC 300 USD
Assets:Checking
But then "ledger bal ^Expenses ^Income --invert" (https://devhints.io/ledger) doesn't answer the question "how much did I spend and earn this month?"
Is this the wrong way to pay the credit card or is the report wrong? I'm on ledger 3.1.1-20160111
John Wiegley
Aug 12, 2019, 7:34:42 PM8/12/19
to Nate, Ledger
>>>>> "N" == Nate <nate...@gmail.com> writes:
N> My credit card is a liability so I pay it like this:
N> 2019/1/1 * Start
N> Liabilities:CC -500.00 USD
N> Liabilities:Mortgage -1000000 USD
N> Assets:Checking 700 USD
N> Equity:Start
N> 2019/1/2 * Income
N> Income:Emplyer -1000 USD
N> Assets:Checking
N> 2019/1/3 * Paying credit card
N> Liabilities:CC 300 USD
N> Assets:Checking
N> But then "ledger bal ^Expenses ^Income --invert"
N> (https://devhints.io/ledger) doesn't answer the question "how much did I
N> spend and earn this month?"
You haven't yet recorded any expenses, which should flow from Liabilities:CC
to Expenses:Foo. That way, assets against liabilities is your net worth, and
income against expenses is your cash flow.
John
N> My credit card is a liability so I pay it like this:
N> 2019/1/1 * Start
N> Liabilities:CC -500.00 USD
N> Liabilities:Mortgage -1000000 USD
N> Assets:Checking 700 USD
N> Equity:Start
N> 2019/1/2 * Income
N> Income:Emplyer -1000 USD
N> Assets:Checking
N> 2019/1/3 * Paying credit card
N> Liabilities:CC 300 USD
N> Assets:Checking
N> But then "ledger bal ^Expenses ^Income --invert"
N> (https://devhints.io/ledger) doesn't answer the question "how much did I
N> spend and earn this month?"
You haven't yet recorded any expenses, which should flow from Liabilities:CC
to Expenses:Foo. That way, assets against liabilities is your net worth, and
income against expenses is your cash flow.
John
Martin Michlmayr
Aug 13, 2019, 4:51:38 AM8/13/19
to ledge...@googlegroups.com
* Nate <nate...@gmail.com> [2019-08-12 15:57]:
But you have to change your thinking. You didn't "spend" $300 in
January. You must have spent them in December (in fact, $500 -
because that's the balance of your credit card). That's when you used
your credit card and when you had Expenses:...
When you pay your credit card, obviously your bank balance goes down
by $300 -- but really this isn't spending money; it's just paying down
your credit card.
The concept here is cash flows. You can spend money without your cash
balance going down (by putting it on a credit card) and you can have a
cash flow without an expense (e.g. paying your credit card).
So you should ask yourself what question you want to answer: if you
want to know about income vs expenses, your query is correct. If you
want to know income vs cash flows, you'll need another query (although
I'm not sure what that query would look like).
--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/
> But then "ledger bal ^Expenses ^Income --invert"
> (https://devhints.io/ledger) doesn't answer the question "how much did I
> spend and earn this month?"
>
> Is this the wrong way to pay the credit card or is the report wrong?
It's the right way.
> (https://devhints.io/ledger) doesn't answer the question "how much did I
> spend and earn this month?"
>
> Is this the wrong way to pay the credit card or is the report wrong?
But you have to change your thinking. You didn't "spend" $300 in
January. You must have spent them in December (in fact, $500 -
because that's the balance of your credit card). That's when you used
your credit card and when you had Expenses:...
When you pay your credit card, obviously your bank balance goes down
by $300 -- but really this isn't spending money; it's just paying down
your credit card.
The concept here is cash flows. You can spend money without your cash
balance going down (by putting it on a credit card) and you can have a
cash flow without an expense (e.g. paying your credit card).
So you should ask yourself what question you want to answer: if you
want to know about income vs expenses, your query is correct. If you
want to know income vs cash flows, you'll need another query (although
I'm not sure what that query would look like).
--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/
Yuri Khan
Aug 13, 2019, 5:18:00 AM8/13/19
to ledge...@googlegroups.com
On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 3:51 PM Martin Michlmayr <t...@cyrius.com> wrote:
> So you should ask yourself what question you want to answer: if you
> want to know about income vs expenses, your query is correct. If you
> want to know income vs cash flows, you'll need another query (although
> I'm not sure what that query would look like).
This gives something plausible as a cash flow report through a single account:
> So you should ask yourself what question you want to answer: if you
> want to know about income vs expenses, your query is correct. If you
> want to know income vs cash flows, you'll need another query (although
> I'm not sure what that query would look like).
$ ledger bal --related-all --invert ^Assets:Checking
I have not checked if that gives sane results if invoked on multiple
accounts or a subtree; probably not.
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