> Really? A realized gain is not income? Yesterday I had 10 MSFT (that I've bought a year ago at $170) in my Vanguard IRA account and $2500 in my Fidelity 401k. Today I've sold my 10 MSFT for $2500 in Vanguard and bought another 10 MSFT in Fidelity. I now have $2500 and 10 MSFT, exactly as yesterday, but somehow I've made $800 of income?
> If you just need a text file with the current value of your investments. Make a Google sheet, publish it, and then use wget to download the results. I have that too :) The value of gnucash/beancount for me is in the timeseries data and in having all assets/income/expenses (not just investments) in a single place. On Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 4:07:16 AM UTC-7 Boyd Kelly wrote: > > *When I sell old investments at a gain and immediately buy something else > with the resulting money, it doesn't create any meaningful income for me* > > Really? A realized gain is not income? > > I have used Gnucash in the past, and it always wanted a purchase price for > shares. And then it had some realized and unrealized gain reports. > > If you just need a text file with the current value of your investments. > Make a Google sheet, publish it, and then use wget to download the results. > > On Thu, 22 Apr 2021 at 03:43, Max Katsev <mka...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hello everyone, >> >> I'm trying to switch from gnucash to beancount and having some trouble >> with the concept of tracking investments at cost. I feel that I've RTFM'd >> enough to understand the mechanics of cost vs price, but I'm not sure about >> the benefits of using cost in the first place. >> >> Simply put: I have no plans to use beancount to calculate my taxes, why >> should I track cost at all? What are the disadvantages of just using price >> and not cost for everything (including investments)? As I understand it, >> this would be equivalent to how gnucash does it, which seems to work just >> fine for me so far. What am I missing? >> >> In addition to extra bookkeeping complexity, tracking investments at cost >> turns capital gains into income, which (while correct from the taxation >> point of view) feels wrong to me. When I sell old investments at a gain and >> immediately buy something else with the resulting money, it doesn't create >> any meaningful income for me (especially if it's in a tax-advantaged >> account), my net worth is still exactly the same as yesterday - why do I >> want it to show up as income in my reports? >> >> Thanks, >> Max >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Beancount" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to beancount+...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/bf68f106-2913-41b1-8176-20ee0613755en%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/bf68f106-2913-41b1-8176-20ee0613755en%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > > > -- > Boyd Kelly > www: http://www.coastsystems.net > Tel: +1 604 837-0765 <(604)%20837-0765> > > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/2384fae3-4d6b-4c4d-a382-25281fbc6bf4n%40googlegroups.com.
