The Library Phantasmagoria

Money and Budgeting

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By Ariel

Obligatory statement: I am not certified financially. This is not financial advice.

I have a confession: I'm in serious debt. Not the kind of debt that mob bosses throw you in a lake for. Instead, I have more normal debt: student loans. Right now, these loans total more than my salary. That's pretty intimidating, I'm not gonna lie. All in all, its about $80k.

On the other hand, it isn't the worst either. When I was in high school, I imagined debts of $250k that I'd be paying in my 60s. Luckily, my parents made the smart and supportive choice of opening 529 plans when I was born (plus getting scholarships from my university). I also have a salary that lets me put $1250 per month toward the loans. It should all be done with well before the 10-year mark.

That said, I'm a real adult now with a real adult job and real adult responsibilities. Living at home sort of reduces those, but paying for life insurance and investing in an IRA doesn't fall under that. Those end up being sizable costs that need to be planned for.

The rest of this post includes some of what I'm doing, and some goals I've set for myself.

Tracking Money with KMyMoney

I'm surprised that KMM doesn't get mentioned as much as ledger-cli or GnuCash in the FOSS budgeting software races. Maybe it doesn't have as many features, or maybe it's just too new (though its more than a few years old at this point)? In any case, I've been using it for... maybe a month or so.

The skill curve is more of a cliff. Double-entry bookkeeping is a hell of a concept. I'm learning and using new features almost every time I open it. I don't want to imagine trying to teach someone else to use it - I'd probably burn out my brain.

I think I'd still recommend it though. It's difficult, yeah, but not impossible. I can import from bank and credit card accounts pretty easily with the OFX/QFX importer (though doing in manually is still annoying (and I target this at the banks!!)). The scheduled transactions make expecting the money in the accounts easier. I haven't really touched the budget yet - but I'm looking forward to using it in December.

Budgeting with KMyMoney

Trying to figure out how much to allocate to budgets seems hard. Especially if the current transaction history isn't 100% lined up category-wise. That said, some things are easier like totally life insurance premiums for the year or loan payments. I think the most useful categories will be dining out and recreation - two places I generally don't think as much about as I should.

Categories with KMyMoney

The default categories from the 0.8 account template work really well. The only additions I've made are adding sections under "Hobbies" for games, stationary, and hardware.

Goals

Some notes: - I don't have my budget properly calibrated, so exact numbers for an emergency fund are hard - Loans will be divided into more manageable chunks - Yes, my net worth is negative. This is due to student loans. - Yes, I want to become a millionaire.