[moneydance] Budgeting from scratch

[Ben Woodard]

I've been trying to wrap my head around how to make use of the features of
MoneyDance to solve the problem that I have. Can someone who has more
experience with this process or more experience with budgeting in general
make sure that I understand this correctly. I'm trying to build up a budget
from scratch -- like no information. Here is the way that I think it should
work


   1. Update the list of categories until they reasonably reflect your life.
   It seems to me that if something has 0 budget, then it shouldn't have a
   category.
   2. Go into budget manager and fill in the fixed expenses based upon what
   you know.
   3. Enter in your salary and income into the budget manager
   4. Add reasonable budgets to all the categories that you haven't filled
   in based upon priorities. Iterate through this budget until expenses=income.
   This is just a first cut on your budget.
   5. When you have enough actual data to compare against the budget, like
   at least a months worth, create a copy of the budget and make adjustments
   based upon the new values. Iterate through this until you seem to get a
   budget plan that works and reflects your values.
   6. If during the course of the year, you want something new or their is a
   change in life or costs or you need to prioritize, copy the budget and
   fiddle with the values in the new "test budget" until you get income to
   equal expenses. This allows you to create what-if scenarios.

Does that sound right?


-ben