ymoyl news from 2003

here's the news from 2003:

ch-ch-ch-changes...

new in september 2003
09/01/2003	back to normal in july, expenses were abnormally raised, and last month, they were abnormally lowered by the absence of a mortgage payment. this month should shift the lines back to their usual paths. the august treasury note was auctioned at 4.25%, so i'm using that as $i now. i didn't make a purchase because i'd like to stockpile some cash in my money market account, where it's fairly liquid. i had to take cash from my line of credit to cover the mortgage settlement, and paid $4.05 for the privilege. there's no reason i should be doing that. i'm going to start keeping $3,000-$4,000 in the money market account to cover any emergencies that arise. i'm also thinking of buying series i savings bonds, which are currently at 4.66%. they can't be cashed for six months and there's a three-month interest penalty if they're redeemed in the first five years, but even so, they beat any money market i can find. it seems a good, safe place to park cash i won't want for a year or two.
new in july 2003
07/16/2003	zoooom! the expense line went through the roof last month, but it's all right. i refinanced my mortgage, exchanging the remaining 13 years of my 7% loan for a 10-year one at 4.375%. i decided to pay the closing costs in cash instead of rolling them into the loan, so $3,434.95 went there. in the end, i'll save $22,103.41 over what i would have paid if i'd stayed with my original loan. the graph will even out over the next couple of months; my first payment on the new loan isn't due until september.
new in may 2003
05/06/2003	change in how i record mortgage payments gnucash gives me a very simple and accurate account of my expenses, and i'd like to be able to just plug the number it gives me into the graph each month. in order to be consistent with all the earlier months on the graph, i haven't been able to do so. before i started using gnucash, each mortgage payment was recorded as one lump sum expense. now, mortgage principal payments and escrow deposits are not recorded as expenses, so i've been adding them to the gnucash's expense total each month. today, i went back and readjusted the expense totals of all the months since i made the downpayment on the house. i reduced them by the total mortgage principal payments and escrow deposits in each month and increased them by any payments which came out of the escrow account. from now on, i can just stick gnucash's expense total into the file each month, and have less to think about. escrow deposits are now recorded as just increasing another asset, and payments which increase my equity in my home are considered investments, not expenses, just as i don't record purchases of treasury notes as expenses.
new in february 2003
02/01/2003	gnucash as of the first of the year, i started using gnucash instead of cbb. it's easier to use, and gives me a much more detailed and accurate account of my finances. for example, i have money which is in trust to me for a couple of groups i'm involved with. they aren't big enough to require their own bank accounts, so their money lives as virtual accounts in my checking account. previously, i just kept two deductions at far future dates in my cbb checking account record, representing the money belonging to them. as money was donated to them or i paid bills for them, i adjusted the deductions accordingly. this was tedious and error-prone. now, i have liability accounts set up, and it's all handled automatically. i also keep liability accounts for reimbursed expenses, and can tell at a glance what people owe me. when i sell something on ebay, i record the payment i receive as a split transaction, with part of the total recorded as sales income and the other reimbursing "liabilities: reimbursed expenses: shipping: ebay". it's wonderful. two items i'm recording in much greater detail are my paychecks and mortgage payments. before, i just recorded them as lump sums; now, i break them into their constituent parts. i record which parts of the mortgage payments go to interest, principal, and escrow. i balance my escrow account, and so track property tax payments, etc. instead of just recording my net pay, i now enter all the information available on my paychecks: net income, federal taxes, state taxes, social security taxes, medicare taxes, and health insurance. previously, the only time income taxes showed up in my accounting was when i paid them or received a refund once a year. now, i'm tracking them as part of my monthly expenses. for continuity, this has meant that i've had to adjust all the figures on my graph for the last five years. i got out my tax records and found out how much had been withheld from my pay each year. i divided this by 12, and increased both the income and expense figures for each month by this amount: withholdings 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 federal $56.58 $1,233.65 $7,389.70 $7,353.67 $7,273.88 state $52.63 $415.12 $2,214.22 $2,139.45 $1,950.73 social security $344.82 $698.17 $2,697.00 $2,723.40 $2,832.35 medicare $80.62 $163.30 $630.79 $636.92 $662.41 totals $534.65 $2,510.24 $12,931.71 $12,853.44 $12,719.37 per month $44.55 $209.19 $1,077.64 $1,071.12 $1,059.95 so the graph still has the same curve, but it's been raised so that i'm now tracking the gross income and paycheck withholdings each month.