Wake Up Call

Tracking our personal expenses in QuickBooks has definately been a wake up call. It's great to know how much you've spent so far each month and where you are spending. It makes it a lot easier to create a budget and to see where you are overspending.

I think everyone should use some type of software or tracking program for their expenses. Some banks offer online tracking of expense types. There is also mint.com, which is a free online service that connects to your online bank accounts and allows you to easily track your spending.

So take charge of your finances. You know you need to.

Personal Finances in a Tough Economy

With the rapidly dwindling economy and the scarcity of dollars, my husband and I recently decided to keep better track of our personal finances. We decided the best way to do that was using QuickBooks software.

Step 1: We set up a company for our personal accounts.
Step 2: We entered in our bank accounts including opening balances for our selected start date.
Step 3: We each enter our own bank & cash transactions on a weekly basis.

Now we can see exactly how much we are spending and where we are spending it. This will make it much easier to target those areas we are over spending and begin budgeting our money.

Once we have a couple months of data in we will be able to develop a budget.

The best part is you can use all the fun reports, graphs and pie charts that QuickBooks offers to see where you stand at any point in time.