选题: Keeping (financial) score with Ledger –

sources/tech/20141127 Keeping (financial) score with Ledger .md

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+Keeping (financial) score with Ledger –
+======
+I’ve used [Ledger CLI][1] to keep track of my finances since 2005, when I moved to Canada. I like the plain-text approach, and its support for virtual envelopes means that I can reconcile both my bank account balances and my virtual allocations to different categories. Here’s how we use those virtual envelopes to manage our finances separately.
+
+Every month, I have an entry that moves things from my buffer of living expenses to various categories, including an allocation for household expenses. W- doesn’t ask for a lot, so I take care to be frugal with the difference between that and the cost of, say, living on my own. The way we handle it is that I cover a fixed amount, and this is credited by whatever I pay for groceries. Since our grocery total is usually less than the amount I budget for household expenses, any difference just stays on the tab. I used to write him cheques to even it out, but lately I just pay for the occasional additional large expense.
+
+Here’s a sample envelope allocation:
+```
+2014.10.01 * Budget
+ [Envelopes:Living]
+ [Envelopes:Household] $500
+ ;; More lines go here
+
+```
+
+Here’s one of the envelope rules set up. This one encourages me to classify expenses properly. All expenses are taken out of my “Play” envelope.
+```
+= /^Expenses/
+ (Envelopes:Play) -1.0
+
+```
+
+This one reimburses the “Play” envelope for household expenses, moving the amount from the “Household” envelope into the “Play” one.
+```
+= /^Expenses:House$/
+ (Envelopes:Play) 1.0
+ (Envelopes:Household) -1.0
+
+```
+
+I have a regular set of expenses that simulate the household expenses coming out of my budget. For example, here’s the one for October.
+```
+2014.10.1 * House
+ Expenses:House
+ Assets:Household $-500
+
+```
+
+And this is what a grocery transaction looks like:
+```
+2014.09.28 * No Frills
+ Assets:Household:Groceries $70.45
+ Liabilities:MBNA:September $-70.45
+
+```
+
+Then `ledger bal Assets:Household` will tell me if I owe him money (negative balance) or not. If I pay for something large (ex: plane tickets, plumbing), the regular household expense budget gradually reduces that balance.
+
+I picked up the trick of adding a month label to my credit card transactions from W-, who also uses Ledger to track his transactions. It lets me doublecheck the balance of a statement and see if the previous statement has been properly cleared.
+
+It’s a bit of a weird use of the assets category, but it works out for me mentally.
+
+Using Ledger to track it in this way lets me keep track of our grocery expenses and the difference between what I’ve actually paid and what I’ve budgeted for. If I end up spending more than I expected, I can move virtual money from more discretionary envelopes, so my budget always stays balanced.
+
+Ledger’s a powerful tool. Pretty geeky, but maybe more descriptions of workflow might help people who are figuring things out!
+
+More posts about: [finance][2] Tags: [ledger][3] | [See in index][4] // **[5 Comments »][5]**
+
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+via: http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/11/keeping-financial-score-ledger/
+
+作者：[Sacha Chua][a]
+选题：[lujun9972](https://github.com/lujun9972)
+译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID)
+校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
+
+本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
+
+[a]:http://sachachua.com
+[1]:http://www.ledger-cli.org/
+[2]:http://sachachua.com/blog/category/finance/
+[3]:http://sachachua.com/blog/tag/ledger/
+[4]:http://pages.sachachua.com/sharing/blog.html?url=http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/11/keeping-financial-score-ledger/
+[5]:http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/11/keeping-financial-score-ledger/#comments