How do you get your spending inline with your income?
If you are like most people, you get an account manager like
Quicken and keep track of all of your accounts. If you do
it right, you enter every purchase, every payment and every
transfer. Then you realize that you are spending just as much
as before. Just knowing where you spent your money yesterday
doesn't help you limit your spending today.
The problem is that you are using the wrong tool for the job. You need a budget planner. You need something that allows you to set limits in certain categories and that will track those expenses in real time. If you had a tool like that, you could tell at a glance how much money you can still spend on nice lunches before you need to start brown-bagging it. You could tell if you can afford to go see that new movie or if you should stay home and watch one of those DVD's that you bought but have never gotten around to watching.
The tool you need is Quik Budget.
Quik Budget is a very user-friendly tool that allows you to set up a different
virtual wallet for each category you want to track. You
decide how much money you want to put into each wallet and
how often. Quik Budget starts with the most common wallets
that people want. You can use those or create your own.
If you want to limit yourself to spending $50 a month on
Lord of the Rings action figures, you can set up a wallet
for that. If you are on a tight budget and need to watch
every penny, you will probably want basic wallets like dining,
groceries, gas, etc.
Now add in an account manager for a complete financial solution.
Quik Budget is set up to work with most of the popular
account managers on the Palm. Account managers are very
good at telling you how much money you have in an account.
They are great for keeping track of recurring payments like
your mortgage and car payments. Most will also export their
data to Quicken or Money on your desktop. Quik Budget is
great at helping you stay inline with your spending goals
for your expendable funds. The two working together is a
very powerful tool. When you enter a transaction in Quik
Budget, the same transaction will also be created in the
account manager.
