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Get a financial package
ubidenmark
Posts: 9 Forumite
Want to be in control of your finances ? Get a money manager.
Bank statements are hopeless at giving you any kind of meaningful information about your account, except what it looked like at midnight on the statement date.
Unpresented cheques ? It has no idea. Imminent direct debits or standing orders ? You could have been paying them for years and the statement will be oblivious to them until they are paid. Budgeting ? Better off with a fag packet.
About 12 or 13 years ago an American neighbour of mine gave me his old copy of a software product called Quicken. I still have the 5 1/4" disks ! Back then Quicken wasn't even available in the UK. I had to transpose the dollars to pounds and improvise a way of coping with VAT. But the ability so see at a glance the past, present and projected position in each current, credit and deposit accounts was a watershed in personal financial management for me. Over a couple of months I went from an overdrawn, lackadaisical, defeated banking victim to a money zealot giving the banks a hard time, wiping out overdraft, generating savings and sleeping nights.
I could plan a year ahead, decide on appropriate dates for capital spending, tick myself off for being too generous with the wine list and generally be in complete control of my finances for the first time.
I still use Quicken, and my wife was converted long ago, but there are several alternative products out there, including Microsoft Money and many shareware packages. My guess is that with a little application they will all do pretty much a useful job of enabling you to manage your money.
And I wouldn't bother with the latest versions of the proprietary products either. In Quicken's case, they introduced a licensing system about 18 months ago which I don't believe has worked well and which has a bad habit of locking you out of your own data at the most inconvenient times. The so called activation server has never worked for me and the activation telephone service works office hours - which can really screw you up at Christmas and New Year.
Instead, pick up an earlier version, say Quicken or Money from around 2001, from a computer fair for about a fiver and you never have to involve Intuit (the owners) again.
Please take my advice and get yourself a money management package of some sort. It will change night into day. ;D
Bank statements are hopeless at giving you any kind of meaningful information about your account, except what it looked like at midnight on the statement date.
Unpresented cheques ? It has no idea. Imminent direct debits or standing orders ? You could have been paying them for years and the statement will be oblivious to them until they are paid. Budgeting ? Better off with a fag packet.
About 12 or 13 years ago an American neighbour of mine gave me his old copy of a software product called Quicken. I still have the 5 1/4" disks ! Back then Quicken wasn't even available in the UK. I had to transpose the dollars to pounds and improvise a way of coping with VAT. But the ability so see at a glance the past, present and projected position in each current, credit and deposit accounts was a watershed in personal financial management for me. Over a couple of months I went from an overdrawn, lackadaisical, defeated banking victim to a money zealot giving the banks a hard time, wiping out overdraft, generating savings and sleeping nights.
I could plan a year ahead, decide on appropriate dates for capital spending, tick myself off for being too generous with the wine list and generally be in complete control of my finances for the first time.
I still use Quicken, and my wife was converted long ago, but there are several alternative products out there, including Microsoft Money and many shareware packages. My guess is that with a little application they will all do pretty much a useful job of enabling you to manage your money.
And I wouldn't bother with the latest versions of the proprietary products either. In Quicken's case, they introduced a licensing system about 18 months ago which I don't believe has worked well and which has a bad habit of locking you out of your own data at the most inconvenient times. The so called activation server has never worked for me and the activation telephone service works office hours - which can really screw you up at Christmas and New Year.
Instead, pick up an earlier version, say Quicken or Money from around 2001, from a computer fair for about a fiver and you never have to involve Intuit (the owners) again.
Please take my advice and get yourself a money management package of some sort. It will change night into day. ;D
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