I've been in your shoes; if you'd like to read about it, just check out the "Road to Armageddon" series on my site.
My most sincere advice to you is to slow down and take this one day at a time. Make it your goal ~each day~ just to get through the day without buying anything frivolous. Instead of eating out, take something out of the fridge to work for lunch. Instead of buying something, go home and enjoy something you already have but are neglecting.
Just do it one day at a time. Forget about the budget, just go one day at a time for a couple of months. Once you get used to that, then you'll find it much easier to plan and stick to a monthly budget and you'll be shocked at the amount of money you actually have.
I've been there - consumerism is an addiction, a very insidious one that is very, very hard to break. I wish you only the best of luck.
I am in the same situation as you are in terms of time, but I have found the solution and it's free.
If you are willing to trust Yodlee with all your bank passwords -- they offer consolidation services to many of the big banks --, then use it for budgeting.
After you set up all your accounts, it will download all your information for you to view in one place and send you email alerts when your spending is out of whack. You can also get all sorts of charts and net worth calculations, besides just budgeting.
To get started with an account, follow the directions at this blog post:
http://golbguru.blogspot.com/
200...oneycenter.html
For more info, see:
http://golbguru.blogspot.com/200...-to-
yodlee.html
It may help you to think of that playskool farm as an investment. Seriously. You're investing in your child's well-being, helping him to become a balanced person. That's way more important that a retirement fund, imo.
I’m in the same boat in terms of Quicken. I tried using it, I really tried, and it just never took with me. I’m tech savvy and can used most any software, but Quicken felt like it was working against me more often than not. I had a nice little spreadsheet that worked great for me and I was quite happy, no pie charts, but I could always pull out the data I wanted to make the comparisons I needed.
Now, enter the partner and joint finances and my little spreadsheet wasn’t going to cut it. We needed something more and I knew Quicken was not it. So, I decided to try YNAB and am mostly happy with it. It seems almost too simplistic in some ways but perfectly suited to our needs in others. So, we’ll give it a try for a year and then decide if we want to continue using it. I’m not sure I’d suggest it, but I do find it useful for tracking spending.
I am a failed Microsoft Money and Quicken user. As others have mentioned the programs seem to work against you more than with you.
I used the paper, pen, calculator method for years very successfully. But not I am an Excel head. It helps that over the years I have become a better Excel user.
I know what you mean. Quicken is supposed to make it so much easier but I absolutely hated filling out (or clicking past) all the extraneous categories that did not relate to me. I prefer pencil & paper and it definitely makes a difference with me keeping to my budget.
God bless paper and pencil...
I'm playing with my first real budget too... I'm hopiong to have all the kinks out by January.
good luck
Hey, there's nothing at all wrong with pencil and paper! Maybe you could blog your budget and kill two birds with one stone? I use Quicken but only as a checkbook -- I've never really configured it either and it's not on my list.
I use excel and pencil and paper. I tried microsoft money but couldn't stand the categories. I also tried the basic version of YNAB, but stopped doing that because it was a pain to sit down and enter in every single expense. For some reason its easier for me to jot everything on paper, keep a running total and then enter that total into my excel at the end of the month. I think its from watching my mom balance the checkbook that way growing up.
Dont worry about what method you're using, just make sure you're happy with whatever method you choose.
I use Excel for all my accounting, but for end of month accounts I also fill things out with pen and paper in a ledger - this helps me remember anything I forgot and there is a hardcopy record to.
OK, why don't you try out www.moneywent.com "I don't know where all my money went."
It's free and very easy to use... soon they will have simple reports. You can manage your own categories and as many accounts as you'd like.
It's just about seeing where your "moneywent (.com)"
Let me know what you think about it.
Commenting by HaloScan
