Start Smart With Your Finances

When we talk about savings usually our first thought is in regards to saving money, of course my blog is all about saving in lots of areas, not just financially, today however, I do want to talk about getting a handle on finances.

Everyone's circumstances are different so I won't presume to know your situation, what you spend or what you have to spare; so don't expect a lecture on cutting out the daily lattes to save $20 per week, because I know a lot of you wouldn't dream of buying lattes and others of you want to keep that luxury as a well-deserved reward.

Mastering your finances begins with examination. You need to look at how much money you have coming in, examine what you are spending it on and create a budget from there. Easy, right? For some it is easy and even fun, but for others it is an overwhelming task and that can lead to financial errors which can be costly in more ways than one.

For several years now I have used Quicken on my home computer to manage our personal finances. It is easy to set up, you can input your income and all your monthly recurring bills, create a budget and keep track of your spending by category. Record your transactions in the check register and the program does all the calculation for you. If you use a debit card, be sure to keep track of those transactions. Most banks/credit unions offer online banking nowadays, I recommend logging in regularly to check on your account in case you forgot to record a transaction, also you will likely notice immediately if someone has used your account fraudulently.

I believe the most recent version of Quicken is Quicken Deluxe 2009 and costs less than $20.

There are free alternatives to Quicken and you can search online for those, I just did and I found the following article on www.makeuseof.com where you'll find a comparison of 5 free alternatives, here's the link. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-free-financial-software-alternative-to-quicken/

If you are comfortable with managing your finances online, Quicken now offers an online version of their product free, take a look http://quicken.intuit.com/

Regardless of the choice you make, what's important is to get started. This is just the beginning, check back for more tips, I'll be sharing some specific suggestions for you in the coming weeks.

By the way, you can now subscribe to my blog by e-mail (just figured out how to do that yesterday!) or subscribe by feed like before.