My favorite online finance tools are Mint and Google Calendar.
Mint-- I know there's the whole security issue, but I just love the way it captures all my investments and expenditures in 1 place. It really is such a pleasure to NOT have to load everything into 1 program and fiddle with it. Also, it's great for analyzing your expenses and tracking your budget.
Google Calendar-- I have a separate calendar set up for all the bills that have to be paid, and email reminders for all of the bills. That takes a bit of time, but then you're golden-- no more unpaid bills! This is especially useful for bills that aren't on autopay.
I'm a bit ashamed to admit that my favorite finance tools are my overpriced graphing calculator (had to buy it for calculus long ago) and a pen and paper. I've used google docs spread sheet, but since I had a child no longer find time for that.
Love the idea for the cooking club Tisha, if anything it's a reason to add some socializing with friends.
I've contemplated the potluck style version of this... where members of the "club" each make enough of one meal to share with the other members of the club. It's cheaper to make one meal in bulk than it is to make 7 different meals; plus it saves you from having to cook every night of the week.
For people who don't have anyone interested in doing this as a "club" - you can still always make your own meals in bulk and freeze them for later. I've been studying about this on wisebread too - I really liked the tips from Myscha about bulk buying and assembly cooking.
I still use pencil and paper and a check register, mostly because I have a vague notion how to use excel. However, if I got free software, I know I could learn quickly!
I do my banking and payments online but the old school nerd in me still uses pen and paper as well to keep track of account balances, bill due dates, etc.
I also use an excel spreadsheet, but I use OpenOffice instead. I keep track of the different categories in which I spend and make sure I don't go over my monthly budget.
My wife and I built a simple Excel spreadsheet from scratch about 12 years ago. We've modified it occasionally here and there, but it is basically the same as it was when we started.
It has helped keep us in line financially for the last 12 years, and hopefully for the foreseeable future...
My personal favorites? JustThrive.com and Open Office Calc.
I used to use Mint.com, but as good as it was for providing personal budgeting tools, I needed something that showed me what I was saving for. Now I can divvy up my savings account according to what goals I have (like next month's rent, driving to a friend's for Thanksgiving, etc). I'm a very visual person, so while seeing the total amount in my savings account does make my heart all warm and fuzzy, I get curious as to what percentage is going towards what goal, and how much left I have to save. Thrive does exactly what I want it to do.
Open Office Calc I use to put in what I'm spending each month so I know what to save for each new paycheck. Having each cell calculate instantly the totals and averages of each "outcome" (rather than income) helps me plan for what I need to save (or mostly, not spend as much on!) for next month.
I have found that using my online banking has helped tremendously. Although I have planned to set up a monthly budget and bill paying program, I find that simply keeping my dayplanner up to date with bill due dates and a set plan for our bill payments/ paydays each month helps keep me better on track.
Blessings,
Kath
I have helped to draft many written warnings for employees whose performance was so poor that without improvement they would have to be let go. Ours are water tight & document every incident of malfeisance - I have to say that I believe that MOST employers are very sloppy and will NOT go to all the trouble to document bad performance and so on- on which their denials of unemployment benefits would have to be based. Get your personnel file - & you will probably see how weakly their position can be defended & then try to document your rebuttal (i.e. good performance reviews, etc.) In this market, you probably should keep a FILE of all these documents against the day when you need to prove that you were NOT fired for CAUSE, so that granting you unemployment will go without saying. In any case, go to appeals - the poor performance rate of the companies trying to support denials shows how weak the case of the companies usually IS. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING (esp. in the case of sabotage!)Sorry to say we live in legalistic times. For some guidance in these issues - take a look at www.nolopress.com which has legal explanations in understandable language....
I use Google documents religiously - particularly a spreadsheet that I update with expenditures. Google docs is perfect because I can easily input expenditures whether I'm on my home machine, work machine, friend's machine...anywhere, pretty much. I modeled my current budget ledger on Vertex42's Expense Tracking spreadsheet. Check it out here, if you're curious.. I'm really enjoying it!
My daughter recieved a visa card from netspend in the mail. I was shocked to see this card, because my daughter is in the military. When I spoke to her about the card, she said she didn't apply for a card. I am reporting the company to the Better Business Bureau.
I love quicken. It's easy to use and I can see where my money is going. I also use a simple excel spreadsheet for budgeting, although we've been trying to live under budget and it needs to be redone.
Many people have said Excel, but the PivotTable functionality is the best way I have found for analyzing my spending history. I categorize my expenditures using Mint, then I do most of the analysis using PivotTables. They allow me to easy manipulate presentation of the data, and the drag and drop data labels allow me to see trends more quickly than in Mint. Once I have the data how I want it, I can easily generate a graph or chart.
If you don't know how to use PivotTables, I highly recommend that you learn.
I mostly just use my head to keep track of the basic spending stuff. However, to help keep track of all the bigger expenses I use the Google Documents Spreadsheet.
My favorite online finance tools are Mint and Google Calendar.
Mint-- I know there's the whole security issue, but I just love the way it captures all my investments and expenditures in 1 place. It really is such a pleasure to NOT have to load everything into 1 program and fiddle with it. Also, it's great for analyzing your expenses and tracking your budget.
Google Calendar-- I have a separate calendar set up for all the bills that have to be paid, and email reminders for all of the bills. That takes a bit of time, but then you're golden-- no more unpaid bills! This is especially useful for bills that aren't on autopay.
I'm a bit ashamed to admit that my favorite finance tools are my overpriced graphing calculator (had to buy it for calculus long ago) and a pen and paper. I've used google docs spread sheet, but since I had a child no longer find time for that.
Love the idea for the cooking club Tisha, if anything it's a reason to add some socializing with friends.
I've contemplated the potluck style version of this... where members of the "club" each make enough of one meal to share with the other members of the club. It's cheaper to make one meal in bulk than it is to make 7 different meals; plus it saves you from having to cook every night of the week.
For people who don't have anyone interested in doing this as a "club" - you can still always make your own meals in bulk and freeze them for later. I've been studying about this on wisebread too - I really liked the tips from Myscha about bulk buying and assembly cooking.
I still use pencil and paper and a check register, mostly because I have a vague notion how to use excel. However, if I got free software, I know I could learn quickly!
I do my banking and payments online but the old school nerd in me still uses pen and paper as well to keep track of account balances, bill due dates, etc.
Why wouldn't want to buy an extended warranty? I'd say fior most electrical items it's simply a must.
I've just started using Excel. Chase's online system is enough for me.
One of the "f" words should be females =P
I also use an excel spreadsheet, but I use OpenOffice instead. I keep track of the different categories in which I spend and make sure I don't go over my monthly budget.
My wife and I built a simple Excel spreadsheet from scratch about 12 years ago. We've modified it occasionally here and there, but it is basically the same as it was when we started.
It has helped keep us in line financially for the last 12 years, and hopefully for the foreseeable future...
My personal favorites? JustThrive.com and Open Office Calc.
I used to use Mint.com, but as good as it was for providing personal budgeting tools, I needed something that showed me what I was saving for. Now I can divvy up my savings account according to what goals I have (like next month's rent, driving to a friend's for Thanksgiving, etc). I'm a very visual person, so while seeing the total amount in my savings account does make my heart all warm and fuzzy, I get curious as to what percentage is going towards what goal, and how much left I have to save. Thrive does exactly what I want it to do.
Open Office Calc I use to put in what I'm spending each month so I know what to save for each new paycheck. Having each cell calculate instantly the totals and averages of each "outcome" (rather than income) helps me plan for what I need to save (or mostly, not spend as much on!) for next month.
I have found that using my online banking has helped tremendously. Although I have planned to set up a monthly budget and bill paying program, I find that simply keeping my dayplanner up to date with bill due dates and a set plan for our bill payments/ paydays each month helps keep me better on track.
Blessings,
Kath
I have helped to draft many written warnings for employees whose performance was so poor that without improvement they would have to be let go. Ours are water tight & document every incident of malfeisance - I have to say that I believe that MOST employers are very sloppy and will NOT go to all the trouble to document bad performance and so on- on which their denials of unemployment benefits would have to be based. Get your personnel file - & you will probably see how weakly their position can be defended & then try to document your rebuttal (i.e. good performance reviews, etc.) In this market, you probably should keep a FILE of all these documents against the day when you need to prove that you were NOT fired for CAUSE, so that granting you unemployment will go without saying. In any case, go to appeals - the poor performance rate of the companies trying to support denials shows how weak the case of the companies usually IS. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING (esp. in the case of sabotage!)Sorry to say we live in legalistic times. For some guidance in these issues - take a look at www.nolopress.com which has legal explanations in understandable language....
I use Google documents religiously - particularly a spreadsheet that I update with expenditures. Google docs is perfect because I can easily input expenditures whether I'm on my home machine, work machine, friend's machine...anywhere, pretty much. I modeled my current budget ledger on Vertex42's Expense Tracking spreadsheet. Check it out here, if you're curious.. I'm really enjoying it!
My daughter recieved a visa card from netspend in the mail. I was shocked to see this card, because my daughter is in the military. When I spoke to her about the card, she said she didn't apply for a card. I am reporting the company to the Better Business Bureau.
I love quicken. It's easy to use and I can see where my money is going. I also use a simple excel spreadsheet for budgeting, although we've been trying to live under budget and it needs to be redone.
Many people have said Excel, but the PivotTable functionality is the best way I have found for analyzing my spending history. I categorize my expenditures using Mint, then I do most of the analysis using PivotTables. They allow me to easy manipulate presentation of the data, and the drag and drop data labels allow me to see trends more quickly than in Mint. Once I have the data how I want it, I can easily generate a graph or chart.
If you don't know how to use PivotTables, I highly recommend that you learn.
I still like to stick to pencil and paper/check register. I have not quite gotten the same feel from any product
I use mint.com, my bank's website, my credit cards' websites, and OpenOffice. All completely free to use!
It's fully customizable and all my financial sites download information into it with no problems.
Mint.com and good old MS Excel. I love how mint aggregates info from all my accounts and displays it visually.
I used to use Microsoft Money, but ever since discovering Mint.com, I haven't looked back.
My favorite tools are a moleskine notebook (to record all notes and storage for receipts on the go!), a pen, and MS Excel for all records.
I mostly just use my head to keep track of the basic spending stuff. However, to help keep track of all the bigger expenses I use the Google Documents Spreadsheet.
Really, excel is such a versatile tool, it's perfect for everything.