Savings accounts named with purposes

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Jason Chu

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Feb 8, 2017, 12:47:44 PM2/8/17
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Right now I have an account called Assets:US:SomeBank:HouseMaintenance because I set aside money to pay for house things.

I've since moved that money to another account and I want to repurpose that account for saving for a car down payment.  Now comes my fundamental question, do I rename the account through my entire history to reflect the new purpose or do I create a "new" account that represents the new goal?

What do other people do?

Alan Post

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Feb 8, 2017, 1:04:08 PM2/8/17
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I name accounts from vendors after some identifier provided by
that vendor, say the last-4 of the account number.

I then maintain what I call 'float' accounts with credit (negative)
balances for claims against those assets (e.g.g, house maintenance.)

This is, essentially, the idea behind a contra account.

-A

Jacques Gagnon

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Feb 8, 2017, 1:04:31 PM2/8/17
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I your situation close old account and open a new one?
I dont like rewriting history in my journal personally.

What I do personally is I got one Saving account in real life and manage some "virtual" account under that parent in beancount. And my balance assertion are always towards the real parent account.

* Assets:Bank:Saving
2017-01-01 open Income:Interest:Saving  CAD  
2017-01-01 open Assets:Bank:Saving  CAD  
2017-01-01 open Assets:Bank:Saving:Payments  CAD  
2017-01-01 open Assets:Bank::Saving:Projects  CAD  

2017-02-01 balance Assets:Bank:Alterna:Saving  0.00 CAD

Payments is money I save for yearly payments, like house taxes, car resgistration, insurance, license, etc..

And projects is money I save for short/mid term expenses.
In your case you could add sub account for projects if you want more detail of what the money was for then close once your are done.

Jacques Gagnon
GTalk/E-Mail: darth...@gmail.com
WLM (MSN): clou...@msn.com

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Jacques Gagnon

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Feb 8, 2017, 1:07:32 PM2/8/17
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I got like 4 real life saving account (I'm chasing interest promo ;) ) at different bank so i apply this model for each of them.

Jacques Gagnon
GTalk/E-Mail: darth...@gmail.com
WLM (MSN): clou...@msn.com

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