Tracking Your Finances
What is your system for tracking your finances?
Excel spread sheet?
Just your head and your check book register?
Something more advanced like Quicken?
It doesn’t matter how you do it, but it is important that you do it. You can’t get any where if you don’t start with knowing your financial situation.
All of those options I just listed? I’ve done all of them. Right now we are digging Quicken. Our credit union which we mostly interact with online - is set up so that all of our account information can be downloaded to our Quicken software on our computer.
There are all these tools and graphs and charts and everything is there in black, red and some green for us to see. It is so easy to use even my technologically challenged husband can do it.
We started off with just a check book register and a stack of receipts. We evolved to using our online banking to pay bills.
I got sick of writing in those tiny little lines (who the hell thought that up anyway?) so I started using Excel and let me tell I was having fun with that. Then I met Quicken and my life was changed.
I know it is kind of scary looking at your checking account sometimes but you’ll feel more in control and less afraid if you know exactly what is going on so you can be pro-active and smart with your money.
Being in control of your money feels so good. Trust me it even feels better than a $200 pair of boots. Maybe not better than a professional massage but really close.
