First, what is a delay debit card? Is is a payment card whose balance is automatically debited on some other account, the “main account”, at a specific interval, typically every month. If this card has its own statements, you don't want to enter the transactions paid with it directly on the main account as it will make reconciling problematic: these transactions won't appear in the main account statement (there will just be a global monthly payment for the card), and cherry-picking these transactions when reconciling the card statement is not fun at all. And I can attest for this: this is how I used to do it with my previous finance manager.

Using MoneyWell, the simplest way to proceed is to create a new account (of type Credit Card) in which transactions paid with the card will be entered. Relevant expense buckets are also assigned when entering these transaction. At any moment, the due balance that will be paid at the end of the month is simply the current negative balance of this account. To reflect the automatic payment when it occurs, simply enter a transfer from the main account to the card account without giving it any bucket. This way, both the main account and the card account exactly reflect the statements.

The part I found tricky when setting this up was when dealing with the initial balances and buckets. I did not want to wait until my card payment occurred to start using MoneyWell, and I did not want to enter past transactions: I only wanted to get started immediately with the current balance. The simplest solution I've found (and it may be so simple it does not warrant a post) is just to do what I've just said: start with the current balance.

To be more precise, when creating your main account, enter its current balance, even if there are pending transactions on the card. Assign this balance to one of your income buckets, as it is money you have ready to allocate for spending. At this point you may say: “But I've already spent some of it with my card!” And you would be right, we're going to take care of this next.

The second step is to create and set up an account for the card. The creation part is straightforward: click on the gear button at the bottom of the window and choose “New Account”. (You can also directly type ^⌘N.) A sheet will then appear, where you can enter the name of the card, change the account type to “Credit Card”, and enter a negative initial balance corresponding to the current amount you have already charged on the card. You then need to assign a bucket to the (negative) starting balance, by selecting the starting balance transaction it in the Credit Card account and changing the bucket in the right panel. Simply choose the same income bucket as before: this way, you make sure this is money already spent that you won't be able to allocate anymore. All your accounts are ready, you're all set to go!

This post is part of a series of tips on MoneyWell. The previous posts included an overview of why I chose MoneyWell and suggestions on how to track spendings in MoneyWell. For the list of all posts, explore the MoneyWell category.

It all started a little less than 2 years ago, in August 2006. I was going to Philadelphia for a work week, and I decided to do a little shopping there. Among this shopping were what would become the earphones of my dreams: a pair of Shure E2c-n.

I am not going to review them here, I'll just quickly highlight why they work so well for me. I use earphones quite a lot, about one hour each day, and often in noisy environments. For instance, I currently take the bus or the train to go to work, and then I have a 15 minutes walk when I get there. During these trips and in general, I listen almost exclusively to spoken word, typically podcasts, and most of it in foreign language (English or Italian, trying to learn it as concerns the latter). So I want a comfortable listening experience, and I want to avoid cranking the volume up to protect my hearing. Sound isolating earphones seemed the way to go. Shure is a well-known brand, and its product are know to be of very high quality. Their earphones are pricey: I paid $80 for this entry level model, and I got a pretty good deal, but they are definitely worth it. So yes, for me, Shure sound isolating earphones are the way to go.

Most customer support stories start with a problem, and mine does not default. Back in January 2008, when I was in San Francisco (California), I noticed that the wire of one earphone was starting to break, fairly close to the earphone itself. The break was occurring at the point where the wire is most stressed, at the top of the curve behind the ear. As I could start seeing the metallic wire inside, I quickly fixed it with a piece of tape and started to worry. A couple weeks later, in Etretat (Normandie) this time, the wire of the other earphone also started to break, at the same spot. I fixed it the same way and started to think hard as to what to do. As I was planning on visiting the USA in June this year, I thought I could buy a replacement pair. But first I would contact Shure to make sure they were aware of the problem and had fixed it in recent versions. I dutifully wrote this down in my OmniFocus GTD document, and forgot about it until mid-march, still using patched earphones.

It was in March that I realized I should start moving, not knowing how long it would take to get an answer from Shure. So I went to their website, and started to search if they talked about wires breaking. And lo and behold, they do! I did not learn whether the problem was addressed in recent versions, but that it is under warranty, the 2 years long warranty. Suddenly I was not shopping for new earphones, I was trying to find a way to apply a warranty.

Now I was far from out of the woods: I had bought the E2c in the USA, my receipt is stored with our stuff back in France, where I was not planned to return from Italy before September. So here I was, with potentially broken yet under warranty earphones, but without a receipt beyond an amazon.com confirmation email.

Nevertheless, I contacted Shure, asking them about the procedure. They answered fairly quickly, and forwarded my support request to Sisme, an Italian company that does their support here. Sisme emailed me the necessary documentation to fill, where I would state what the problem was, to mail them along with the earphones... and the (missing) receipt.

Here Christelle got a great idea. She suggested that I contact directly the company where I bought the earphones, Electronics Expo, to ask for a copy of the receipt. And it worked! I had to ask a friend in the USA to forward the fax to me (they could not fax abroad) but that was the only tiny wrinkle.

I then mailed everything to Sisme, who patiently answered my emails, telling me that yes they had received the package, then that yes it was under warranty and would be replaced. Two weeks after sending it, a package arrived, with a brand new pairs of Shure SE110. I've been using them for the last couple weeks, and I find they are even nicer than the E2c (for instance when running).

This is the happy end of my tale, that went much butter than I thought it could. I now realize that the steep price of the earphones did not only buy me good quality, but also good service. I thank Shure, Electronics Expo, and Sisme for their great help and support. Great job!

Oh, and about the problem with the wires? Two reasons lead me to believe the problem will not occur again. First, the wire is much more flexible, mainly because it is thinner, so it should stand better the curvature when the earphone is worn with the wire behind the ear. Second, another potential cause of the wear may have been the carrying box itself, which includes inside a cylinder with a gap to let the earphones sit in the middle. The location of the wire that broke seems to be fairly close to where the wire was going through this gap, and the problem may be related. The new carrying box is a simple soft pouch, that comfortably holds the earphones and the accessories. In any case, I'll let you know if I have to change them before 2 years go by!

On a été super rassuré en janvier, le gaz n'allait augmenter « que » de 4%, tandis que GDF, super lésé dans l'affaire, réclamait 6,1%. Qu'à cela ne tienne, on n'a qu'à proposer une nouvelle augmentation en avril ! Bingo, accordé ! 5,5%. Deux augmentations, c'est mieux qu'une. Et en quatre mois, les factures ont donc pris 9,72%.

Ivy nous raconte ses déboires avec GDF, en particulier comment bénéficier des aides qu'on lui a accordées, mais que GDF refuse de lui verser.

Mais sûrement que GDF n'est pas une entreprise de service public.

As three solutions seem to have emerged, all with their pros and cons, I'm going to detail them here. If you don't know what is MoneyWell, now may be a good time to skim the previous post I've written about it, or go watch some tutorial videos.

What are Savings?

In the following, I'll use the word "savings" for money that is put away for future unplanned expenses. The keyword here is "unplanned": if I'm putting away money to buy a new computer in 6 months, this is not savings. The reason planned expenses should be kept separate from savings and from each other is to make sure each one of them is accounted for.

I don't make any assumption about where savings are kept: they can (and often are) in a special savings account, they can be kept in a checking account, or they can be hidden in a fat envelope under the mattress!

What I mean by "tracking savings" is the capacity to tell at a glance how much is saved, and have a history of money saved or removed from savings.

Savings as Expenses to a Savings Account

The first approach to savings has a very big advantage: it's the one recommended by Kevin Hoctor, the author of MoneyWell! It's also very simple. It requires a savings account and a bucket for savings. It is also good to allocate some money to this bucket in the Spending Plan, to remember to save it away.

Let's assume you have allocated 200 € for your monthly savings. At the beginning of the month, when allocating your salary, you have 200 € available in the savings bucket. You then transfer this money to your savings account, assigning the transfer to the savings bucket. This result in "spending" the 200 € for savings, bringing back the bucket to 0 (there is no more money planned to save away).

If you have some money left in a bucket you want to save, the process is very similar. First you flow the money from the bucket to the savings buckets (the simplest way to do so is drag the bucket onto the savings bucket, then specify the amount to flow), and you then have more money to "spend" on savings, which you can transfer away as before.

If at some point you need to spend some saved money, for instance if your car breaks down unexpectedly, you should do the following. First, create a money flow from the savings bucket to the car bucket. This will result in more money available from you car, but with overspent money in savings. Then transfer the same amount from savings to your main account you will use to pay the expenses for the car, assigning the transfer to the savings bucket. This will bring it back to 0.

Figuring out how much money is currently saved in the weak aspect of this method. If the savings account is only used for saved money, then looking at its balance will tell you. However, if you have several savings account or keep money in them that is not saved, then it's trickier. I have found the following works (I'm using MoneyWell 1.3.1):

• select all your accounts (to make sure you capture every transaction involving savings);
• select the savings bucket;
• then select every transaction.

The status bar in the bottom of the window will tell you how much you "spent" on savings, thus how much you saved. However it will only track transactions that are in MoneyWell, so I don't know right now how to include the money saved away when one starts using MoneyWell.

Note that the graph displayed shows how much you saved each month and does not show the accumulation of saved money.

Pros Simple to use, recommended by the author of MoneyWell, works well with a single savings account holding only saved money.

Cons No gratifying graph showing money accumulating (to be honest, no approach has it...). When saved money is mixed with money assigned to other uses, it may be difficult to know how much was saved away. I don't know how to integrate the initial balance of savings accounts in this approach.

Savings as Money Flows

The second approach tries to follow very closely the inspiration of MoneyWell: the envelope system. The idea here is that saved money is sitting in a big fat envelope, hidden under the mattress, and each month we add a little more to the savings envelope, just as we put money in the rent envelope or in the groceries envelope.

With this approach, envelopes are of course buckets, and one accumulates savings in the savings bucket. The way it works is as follows.

As in the previous approach, one has a savings bucket and probably some allocation to it in the Spending Plan. When income arrives, it is allocated, and some of it ends up in the savings bucket. The main difference with before is that it now stays there. If we transfer the money to a savings account, we do so without assigning any bucket to the transfer: we don't care where this money is, we have completely decoupled savings from any account.

If we have some extra money in a bucket, be it the income bucket or the dining out bucket, which we don't want to spend, we can save it easily by doing a money flow. Independently, we can optimize where the money is, transferring extra money sitting in a checking account into a savings account that generates interests. This money may be saved, or it may be accumulated for a future planned transaction. The point here is that where the money is and what it will be used for are considered two different things.

When saved money needs to be spent, flow it from the savings bucket to the appropriate one. As before, you may do an actual (unassigned) transfer, but it may not be necessary.

To know how much money is saved, just look at the bucket. And to see the history of saving money, select the savings bucket and look at the money flows.

As concerns initial balances of saving accounts, one assigns them to an income bucket, and flows the amount corresponding to actual savings to the savings buckets. The rest may remain in the income bucket for future flows and allocations.

There is one big drawback to this approach, however, is that currently money flows are not included in the graphs (only transactions are). Thus there is no graphical view of how much was saved each month.

Pros One glance view of how much is saved. Complete decoupling of saved money from where it actually is. Easy to set up.

Cons No graphs.

Combining the approaches: Savings as Transactions

The final approach tries to address the absence of graphs. It is a hack in a sense, but it may be a solution to those who want to see some graphical display of what money was put away.

The main idea here is that only transactions are graphed, but that the previous approach only uses money flow. Thus one should create a transaction for each savings money flow.

To do so, the simplest I found was to create a new bucket called "To Save". One allocates income to this bucket, and when there is some money in it, she transfers it to another account, assigning the outgoing part of the transfer to the To Save bucket, and the incoming part to the savings buckets. This actually results in a transaction that increases what is available in savings. (A side effect of this approach is that it entices the user to move the saved money out of the checking account, where it's not generating interests.)

The main drawback of this approach is that one has to have a transfer for every money flow, even if no money is actually moved. As MoneyWell allows transfers within the same account, this can actually be done, polluting a little one's account with extra transactions.

Setting up the initial balances is very simple if everything in the account is actually savings: assign the initial balance to the savings account. Otherwise you may split the initial balance into as many buckets you need, assigning them directly. (Hint: using split transactions for this is actually very useful...)

Pros One glance view of how much is saved. Complete decoupling of saved money from where it actually is. Some graphs.

Cons More complex to set up. Extra bucket. Some extra transactions.

One should not that in both latter approaches, the savings bucket is a bit special in the sense it should never go in the negative.

To conclude, I should say I'm actually using the second approach for my savings, as it fits really well the envelope perspective, and the first approach for investments (my PEA, for French readers), as I do not track them inside MoneyWell.

What would make the second approach much nicer would be an addition to the graphs, displaying how much money is available in the selected bucket at the beginning of each month, for instance using a thin red line. Thus one could see the accumulation of available savings. An even better addition would be some special "accumulation" buckets, with different graphs than usual buckets, and some constraints that they cannot be overspent. Well, this should fill up my Christmas Wish List for future versions of MoneyWell

But in between I just watched Jill Bolte Taylor's talk. And this just floored me. It's ... well, it's just something you have to watch. The whole thing.

If you like computer archeology, you'll love this video from the early 90s of Steve Jobs demonstrating NextStep. What I find amazing is how much of OS X is already there, and it is also somehow sad that so little has changed. Where are virtual reality, visual programming by example, voice driven interfaces, jet packs, and flying cars! Is it the year 2000 yet?

Seriously, it seems that the only recent real improvement in the interface of computers is the iPhone. Multi-touch screen and position sensor are a great way forward. But it still feels like a very small step, after all this time.

I used to use Cha-Ching. I had been using it for a year when I realized it was not satisfying my needs. It was also then that I realized I was locking my data in it, as the only export solution it provides is through a very limited Comma Separated Values file containing only the transactions date, amount, and title. As there is much more data in Cha-Ching, mostly tags and notes, this was clearly not satisfactory.

When thinking about what I would expect from a good finance manager, I realized that there are actually three temporalities for finance management:

• looking at the past: archiving previous transactions, for instance for record purposes;
• looking at the present: reconciling current transactions with the bank, and making sure the balances does not go in the red;
• looking at the future: planning ahead, both from month to month as well as planning big purchases.

I don't care much about the past: my bank provides me with PDFs of my statements that I can archive away, and that are text searchable. The only use of the past I find really interesting is in planning for the future, by showing me how I used to spend money. Knowing about the present state of my accounts is useful, and was the main reason I used a finance manager. But what I actually really want is to plan ahead, to know how much money is left after the rent, utilities, and groceries are paid. So that I can go on boardgame or book buying spree knowing it won't kill my finances for several months.

But I guess that Bret Victor, in this wonderful article I've mentioned previously, says it much better than I do:

Consider personal finance software. Entering and classifying my expenses is, again, tedious and unnecessary manipulation--my credit card already tracks these details. I use the software to understand my financial situation and my spending habits. How much of my paycheck goes to rent? How much to Burrito Shack? If I give up extra guacamole on my daily burrito, will I be able to buy a new laptop? What is my pattern of Christmas spending, and will I have to cut back if I don't take any jobs for a month? If I buy a hybrid car, how much will I save on gas? I want to ask and answer questions, compare my options, and let it guide my spending decisions.

This is why I've started using MoneyWell. This article is not a review of MoneyWell, it has no screenshot, nor it is a tutorial. There is already a lot of information on MoneyWell's site, including several nicely done tutorial screencasts. What I want to highlight here is where MoneyWell shines and works well with me.

The first thing you should do when you start using it is sit away from the computer, and think. So you can also do this at home, even if don't own a Mac! Just take a sheet of paper, and start listing all the different categories where you spend money. There are many of them, such as rent, utilities, health, music, groceries, transportation... I found useful then to get back to my computer and look at some bank statements, to see if I was not forgetting anything.

Then, inside MoneyWell, I created corresponding Buckets. Each bucket corresponds to a spending category, and each time you spend money you associate the transaction to the bucket, but we'll come back to this later. (It's all right if your list of buckets is not perfect, one can always add or remove buckets at any point.) I also created an income bucket, Salaries, for the money coming in.

I then moved to the second step: the Spending Plan. The idea there is that you enter how much money comes in each month, and how much you want to allocate for every bucket. This is where having previous data is very useful, to estimate how much one spends on groceries or utilities every month, for instance. But even a first rough estimation would be useful, to be refined in later months (MoneyWell can actually tell you what you spent on average, looking at the previous months). The goal here is to have a balanced plan, where you don't plan to spend more than you earn.

Then the last step happens when the money comes in, for instance when your salary is paid. You enter this incoming transaction, allocate it to an income bucket, and then you hit the Allocate Income button. This takes the money from the income buckets and distribute it in the expense buckets according to the spending plan. If there is too much money, the leftover is left in the income buckets for future allocations. If there is not enough, then some spending buckets do not get their full allocation. (You can specify some priority there, saying for instance you should first allocate money for rent, then only later for games...)

So you now have money to spend. Every expense is then assigned to a bucket, and you can always follow how much remains in a bucket for this month. If you did not spend the full allocation at the end of the month, then it is carried over to the next month, and if you spent too much, you'll have less to spend next month. And you can easily manually allocate money, moving it from one bucket to another, which is very useful since spending plans are never perfect plans.

So this was a very quick overview of what I find to be the most interesting feature of MoneyWell. What I really like about this approach is that MoneyWell isn't just a simple way to balance your accounts, which of course it can do, but that it also provides this alternate view of how you spend your money. It empowers you by letting first you plan then follow what you want to do with your hard-earned cash. And I find this invaluable.

Oh, and one final great thing: MoneyWell's support. Kevin Hoctor is amazingly responsive on MoneyWell's Google Group, or through private email. Nothing better than having the author of the software answer your questions in less than 24 hours!

Update (2008.05.10) There is now a video of a KeyNote presentation explaining the envelope-based concepts behind MoneyWell. I highly recommend watching it.

As I wanted to see what other things Bret Victor might have written, I decided to visit his web site. And there ... waouh. I was floored. I just love his design. Because it's fresh, because it's fluid. Because it's dynamic and it pulls you in. And because I lost too much time diving into it.

And going back to the initial article, to check a couple things, I noticed this quote in the About the author Section:

I currently work at Apple, creating things I can't talk about.

Nice. Very nice. Can't wait to see what they are.

On pourrait penser que cette situation aiderait gouvernement et législateur à prendre en compte les subtilités associées à ces cas, comme par exemple quand le conjoint français décède.

Malheureusement, ce n'est clairement pas le cas. Maître Eolas le raconte très bien. En attendant, j'ai juste honte de mon pays.

Get your Evernote invitation. Time's running out.: "

(Via Evernote Blog.)

For a while, we would listen to music on the iMac, and when Hermine is sleeping, the music would play on the laptop through iTunes sharing. But there was one main drawback to this approach: if we're moving a lot, there is no way to listen to the same music synchronized on both computers.

A couple weeks ago, I decided to try to remedy to this. I quickly discovered Airfoil and Airfoil speakers: Airfoil runs on the iMac, sending its music to the local speaker or to the laptop, and sometimes, like right now, only to the laptop. To control iTunes remotely, I'm using iTRC which is ugly but works great (I tried TuneConnect but it kept crashing or not refreshing). What prompted this post was an enthusiastic comment by Christelle, earlier today, when we were listening to synchronized music loudly on both computers. Moving from room to room and having the music follow you is just great! And both Airfoil and Airfoil speakers have a Windows version. Two thumbs up!

One final note: I could not make Airfoil connect to Airfoil speakers initially, and even though I had not yet bought the product, the support at Rogue Amoeba was amazing: they answered very rapidly (on a Sunday) and we finally found out what was wrong (one computer had IPv6 turned off).

Cela m'a fait un petit choc au début, mais sans plus. Puis à force de lire articles ou webcomics, de voir de nombreux sites ou blogs que je fréquente reprendre la nouvelle, décrivant l'influence qu'il avait eue sur leurs auteurs et sur le monde du jeu ... je me suis rendu compte que moi aussi je devais beaucoup à Monsieur Gygax. Et que même ne l'ayant jamais rencontré, son départ me laissait comme un vide.

Je devais avoir 12 ou 13 ans quand j'ai entendu parler de jeux de rôle pour la première fois. C'était dans un article de Jeux & Stratégie que j'avais lu chez mon parrain. On y parlait de Donjons & Dragons, d'Œil Noir, de figurines et de plans de labyrinthes. Cela m'avait tout de suite fasciné.

Quelques mois plus tard, avec un ami, nous avions trouvé les fonds pour nous acheter la boîte de départ de Donjons & Dragons. La fameuse boîte rouge qui avait tout pour se lancer, même les dés. Je me vois encore en lire et relire les règles et les exemples. Mais je crois bien que, même après avoir créé plusieurs personnages et aventures, nous n'y ayons jamais joué. Il faut dire que c'est bien moins drôle à seulement deux joueurs.

Ce que nous avons fait, par contre, c'est participer à un jeu de rôles grandeur nature. C'était vraiment une expérience très sympathique, malheureusement jamais renouvelée.

J'ai donc commencé à participer à un club où je pouvais rencontrer bien plus de joueurs. Je me suis acheté mon premier Manuel des Joueurs, pour AD&D 1ère édition cette fois (ma première expérience d'achat par correspondance), et j'ai donc vraiment commencé ma carrière de rôliste. J'ai même participé à quelques congrès, dont un où j'ai croisé Croc!

Avec le temps, et au fil de rencontre de nouveaux joueurs, j'ai essayé de nombreux jeux, que ce soit en tant que joueur ou maître. JRTM, Warhammer, Paranoïa, Rêve de Dragon, Vampire, Loup-garou, In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, l'Appel de Cthulhu, Shaan ... j'en oublie sûrement. J'ai aussi créé mes propres mondes, mes propres règles. De joueur et participant à des conventions je suis devenu organisateur, en particulier des Premières Rencontres Rôlistes de l'X, organisées par le binet Faërix. (Pour la petite histoire, j'ai l'insigne honneur d'avoir proposé "Faërix", après plusieurs Guiness il est vrai, lorsqu'on nous avait demandé de changer le nom de notre binet, en 1996. Parce qu'il paraît que Nécrobinet n'était pas un nom ... convenable .)

Et bien sûr, j'ai commencé à avoir de moins en moins de temps. Et quelques aspects de Donjons & Dragons me manquaient terriblement : l'évolution de son personnage dans le carcan des règles, l'étude des nombreuses extensions décrivant telle ou telle nouvelle capacité, et l'aspect jeu, aussi irréaliste qu'il puisse être avec ses niveaux d'expériences et ses donjons aux écosystèmes fantaisistes. Les autres joueurs que je côtoyais étaient plus intéressés par le thème du monde, ou par des aspects rôlistes. Je rêvais de campagnes épiques ou le jeu ne perdait pas sa place au côté de l'histoire.

Et j'ai donc arrêté les jeux de rôle.

Mais pas de jouer, oh non. Aimant les règles et mécaniques de jeu, je me suis tourné vers les jeux de plateau, une passion que je peux plus facilement assouvir, et à laquelle je fais participer mon entourage. J'ai aussi beaucoup donné de temps aux jeux vidéo d'aventure, que ce soit Riven ou NeverWinter Nights, mais pour eux aussi le temps se fait rare.

Néanmoins, je me retrouve dans les nombreuses rétrospectives qui apparaissent suite à la disparition de Monsieur Gygax. Et je retrouve aussi cette envie de jouer, de créer un monde, de faire évoluer un personnage. Mais pour cela, il faut du temps et d'autres joueurs qui ont du temps. Et ce qui était difficile il y a 5 ans me semble quasiment impossible aujourd'hui.

Impossible ... mais peut-être qu'en le voulant vraiment ...

Peut-être est-il temps de dépoussiérer mes vieux grimoires ?

Le temps étant redevenu maussade, voici quelques photos pour nous réchauffer.