nazarenetruth.com

Like how do you break everything down and write a budget and stick to it?

I use the envelope system. Label a few envelopes with categories out of your budget; rent, food, entertainment, savings, gas, etc. Fill the envelopes with however much cash you want to spend each month (or week). When you need to make a purchase, take cash out of the appropriate envelope. This system is an almost foolproof way to limit your spending and stay under your budget. PS: Shred your credit cards. They only get in the way by making budgeting more complicated.

Calculating Monthly Pay and Over Under in this free series of personal finance video from our professional Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Expert: Tom Noah
Bio: Tom Noah has been a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for over 27 years.

Filmmaker: Drew Noah

Duration : 0:1:14

(more…)

Technorati Tags: accounting, balancing, book, budget, check, finances, financing, personal

Personal finance is the application of the principles of financial economics to an individual’s (or a family’s) financial decisions. It asks, "How much money will you need at various points in the future?" and "How do you go about getting that money?". It deals with questions like: * What is my annual income?* How can I increase my income?* What are my annual expenses?* How can I reduce my expenses?* How do I best budget my available income each year?* How much money can I save each year?

I have a windows vista operating system on an HP Pavillion 6000 series entertainment notebook. I’m looking to find some free budgeting software if possible. I have a home budget for dummies disc that I wanted to load but it doesn’t list Vista as a compatible operating system. It only lists the standards (win 98, 00, Me and XP) If you know of any websites I would appreciate it. thanks
also i did try the software on my system and i’m getting an error which will not allow it to run. i’ve also tried running it through compatability mode and it still doesn’t work.

Chances are the CD you have will work fine in Vista – give it a try!

Otherwise, AceMoney Lite works fine in Vista:
http://www.mechcad.net/products/acemoney/index_lite.shtml

Calculating expenses in this free series of personal finance video from our professional Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Expert: Tom Noah
Bio: Tom Noah has been a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for over 27 years.
Filmmaker: Drew Noah

Duration : 0:0:53

(more…)

Technorati Tags: accounting, balancing, book, budget, check, finances, financing, personal

The best online web app is one that won’t go away and lose everything that you saved. Web app goes away mainly for two reasons:
1. The company behind it goes out of business.
2. The company decides not to provide the web app anymore because it wants to focus its business on other things.

Of course, no one can predict which web site will go away in the future. Therefore, I chose to use the Quicken software instead of using a web site. Instead of backing up my personal expenses and budgeting data to quicken.com, I burn my Quicken data files to a mini-DVD and store it in a safe deposit box in Bank of America.

Quicken does a good job on personal expenses and budgeting especially if you run it on Windows. It automatically downloads all transactions from many financial institutions saving you many hours of data entry time.

The best online web app is one that won’t go away and lose everything that you saved. Web app goes away mainly for two reasons:
1. The company behind it goes out of business.
2. The company decides not to provide the web app anymore because it wants to focus its business on other things.

Of course, no one can predict which web site will go away in the future. Therefore, I chose to use the Quicken software instead of using a web site. Instead of backing up my personal expenses and budgeting data to quicken.com, I burn my Quicken data files to a mini-DVD and store it in a safe deposit box in Bank of America.

Quicken does a good job on personal expenses and budgeting especially if you run it on Windows. It automatically downloads all transactions from many financial institutions saving you many hours of data entry time.

http://www.georgesbudget.com

Georges Budget for Excel v2.0 – Overview.

Excel based personal budgeting spreadsheet software.

This software will help you manage your financial accounts by providing registers where you can track your account transactions and balances as in a checkbook, a worksheet where you can create a budget and add your own categories, and reports and charts to summarize your information.

www.georgesbudget.com

Duration : 0:9:59

(more…)

Technorati Tags: account, balance, bank, budget, budgeting, Charts, Checkbook, create, debt, Excel, finance, financial, Georges, GeorgesBudget, get, how, make, management, microsoft, money, monthly, of, out, personal, Quickbooks, QUICKEN, reconcile, Register, Reporting, Reports, software, Spreadsheet, template, to

Hi all – I am looking for software to manage my budget and I have a few requirements that the software will need to be able to handle.

1) I bank with Bank of America so ideally the software would be able to download my indivitual account transactions from BofA (not just the balance). If BofA offers this kind of budgeting tool that would be even better.
2) I get paid every other week so I budget bi-weekly as opposed to monthly.
3) I want to be able to track my budgeted items versus actual transactions to see where I am over/under. For example, I’d like to have a budget line item for "Groceries" and then when I shop for groceries at Wal-Mart for example, I can link the purchase at Wal-Mart to the "Groceries" budget.
4) My main goal is to always be able to see how much money I have left over each period as transactions come in.

I’m thinking Quicken would fit the bill but wanted to get your thoughts before I went out and bought it. Also, are there any web-based tools that would work?

Thanks!!!

Hi, Christy –

Most, if not all, of the normal commercially available money software, including Quicken, does NOT help you budget your money. It tracks it for you which is different than allocating and then telling you when you are spending too much.

At http://www.household-budget-made-easy.com/budgeting-tools.html is a list of different ways to budget your money, both free (http://www.household-budget-made-easy.com/free-budgeting-software.html) and paid (http://www.household-budget-made-easy.com/home-budgeting-software.html).

I personally use one created by http://www.crown.org and have done so for 20 years. It is not made anymore as they upgraded it to their new Money Map software. Since I have not used it, I cannot vouch for it but I imagine it is a much better version than I have now.

You could also simply do it on paper with a page for each category. Whenever you spend money, simply deduct it from the appropriate page. Similar in concept to keeping a check register.

I trust this helps,

David

How does one create a family budget and try to save money for a family & get your family to jump on the budgeting and savings bus? It feels like we never get a head. We are a family of spenders and everyone likes to eat different things at dinner so we just go out to eat instead of sitting the dinner table together and eating the same meal. One week I dropped $175.00 for 2 nights eating out on a family of four. Anyone with real suggestions and help please???

In order to get ahead you have to save/invest FIRST–right out of your paycheck if possible–then you don’t have to feel guilty spending your whole paycheck on food or whatever you want. Set a goal, make saving automatic, and spend worry-free.

You get your family to jump on board by not giving them another option. Kids of all ages are old enough to understand and accept limits that are given to them. Spending is easy to control if you have pre-set limits and stick to them. Make it a family policy that you go out to eat twice a week, for instance. That will only work if you plan ahead to eat at home the rest of the time though. Make it fun for the kids to help you set the menu for the week on Sat/Sun before you grocery shop for the week. And trust me, they’ll eat whatever you cook and adapt quickly to eating in. Of course they all "like" different things when they’re going out to eat and picking from a 4 page menu all the time!

One other savings tip: don’t go to the mall for fun/entertainment. Shopping is not a hobby.