Incoming gift money
In the past, I had considered gift money that came to us as checks (birthday money, etc.) to be assigned to a gift category. That way, I can track incoming/outgoing gifts in one category, and I could leave the To Be Budgeted category to simply be income.
Lately, I've been thinking I should simply track incoming money like holiday gift checks as To Be Budgeted, since I'm going to deposit those into our checking and then we will have access to it to allocate however we see fit.
Thoughts?
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We run it through as income. We can see in the reports the source of income.
I only funnel received money through spending categories if it's a refund or reimbursement... reducing the expense.
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nolesrule That's the direction I'm leaning. I thought I would be using the To Be Budgeted category as a pure income reference, but have never done that in the end. Instead, I filter on the sources when I want totals like that. And I agree that funneling received money through the various spending categories when it's a refund/reimbursement keeps the meaning of that category "pure". Thanks for the reply and validation.
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I normally treat gifts as generic income, but we sometimes receive gifts from my parents that are earmarked for a specific purpose (e.g. "for the grandkids' college savings!") In those cases, I will directly record the inflow as "College Savings". I think that makes the reports a little cleaner: It doesn't make it appear that I earned any extra "income", and when I eventually transfer (outflow) the money over to the 529 account the net "spending" in my College Savings category will be zero. I'm just the intermediary!
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bret I do agree with this. In addition to returns and reimbursements, if you are just an intermediary for the funds, then funneling them through a category so they net zero is also appropriate.
We do this with non-cash funds given by outside parties to our kids (usually as gifts) and held in "Bank of Mom and Dad"
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In these cases, the Payee settings are very helpful! You can categorize all income as Inflw: To Be Budgeted and then use the Payee section to indicate the type of income - whether it's Gift Money, Job A, Job B, etc. :)
