How do you manage your money; Quicken, Microsoft Money, not at all? One of the things I started doing when I graduated from college was being more conscious of my finances. I didn’t make a lot starting out, and living in a major city like Chicago was not the easiest to do without cash. It became important to stay on top of my expenses and not exceed my income. Plus whatever system I used had to be cheap (i.e free). What I chose was a simple excel budget spreadsheet that I created. Call it lazy, call it not fixing something unless it’s broken, call it whatever you want, but I still use it today and with a few minor tweaks here and there over the years, it’s grown into a pretty useful tool.
I was orginally going to include my own spreadsheet for people to download but considering I didn’t have any help documentation and it was relatively customized towards my needs, I didn’t think my version would be that useful to everyone else. However, a quick check on the Internet led me to PearBudget which is essentially offering the same solution on Excel but with help. Give it a shot and if you do try it out, let me know what you think. Plus it looks like they are starting to develop an online application which will do the same thing. That’s pretty useful considering that you can access the file from anywhere.
Check out PearBudget’s Website
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