I have a question for you budget experts. I pay my health insurance in one go at the beginning of the year, but I had to pay it before the end of 2019. The problem I have now is that I don’t know how to put it in my expenses. If I put it in last year’s expenses, I won’t see it the cost of the health insurance this year until next December.
Is there a better way to do it?
I’d just split it into 12 and add a piece to each month. It’s better overview of fixed costs.
Speaking in Beancount language, if you wanted to book expenses on the month they’re consumed, you can create an interim account (e.g. Assets:Interim), or even make create a specific account for the counterparty, to which you send the money (e.g. Assets:Assura).
Then, on the date of the payment, you book -1200 to Assets:Bank and +1200 to Assets:Assura. Then on the first day of each month you book -100 to Assets:Assura and +100 to Expenses:Insurance.
I would take a similar approach to depreciating high-value assets (car, flat, bike). You give away money, but get a physical object in the value of that money. And then each month it loses a bit of its value. Then when you sell it, you get money, but lose the object. If you were accurate in predicting the value, there should be no bump in your portfolio value.
The problem here is that my bank accounts for the end of the year shows -3k chf already since I’ve already paid it. If I then split it on the next 12 months, it will show them spent again.
That seems to be better. At the end of 2019 I will have the main bank entry with -3k and the healthinsurance account with +3k.
That’s doable on google sheet as well…
My main issue now is that I need to rethink my sheets to add an account type or at least generate the reports from more data sheets.