For me, it depends.... on my primary card that I use for almost all my purchases and pay off every month, if I get an interest charge (because of a cash advance or a late payment), I assign the interest charge to a bucket. However, for loan accounts and credit cards I'm paying off over time (and that I generally do not use to make new purchases), I do not assign the interest to a bucket. These latter accounts aren't part of my "cash flow." In other words, I did not include the balances on these accounts in my starting cash flow and I do not use the equity or credit in them to execute my spending plan.
For a credit card that is part of your cash flow/spending plan (meaning you use it on a recurring basis to make purchases that you account for in your spending plan), I think you could run into problems if you do not assign the interest charge to a bucket. Over a period of time (a long period it the interest amount is small, or shorter if the interest amount is larger) if you didn't assign these transactions to a bucket, you would think that you had more money than you actually do. Suppose you go through the year and you accumulate $500 worth of interest charges on your credit card. If you don't assign these interest charges to buckets, you reduce the cash you have available by increasing the balance on your credit card without reducing the amount of money in your buckets. This will create a $500 difference between the cash you actually have on hand and the amount that your buckets are telling you that you have. Given a long enough period of time, or large enough interest charges, you could end up with a situation where your cash available doesn't "cover" the amount in your buckets. Grace to you, Blair On Jun 9, 2009, at 4:59 PM, Dave wrote: > > Hello! I am wondering what everyone does for their finance charges. Do > you put them in a bucket or not? Technically, you wouldn't have to b/c > you are paying the charge and the payment at the same time. But I > could see the other side too. > > What is the gist? > > Thanks! > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to no-thirst-software@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to no-thirst-software+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
