Robb + Jessie Married & in the Badger State
Refreshing
I have been tinkering around with budgets for over a year now. When Robb was setting out to get an engagement ring and pay off his car in November 2006, he met with an awesome guy named Sterling from the Mars Hill Church Financial Coaching Ministry who provided Robb with a Excel Spreadsheet to help him track his expenses and income. Robb passed along the document to me. My once huge fear of budgeting and money dissipated and I began to find pleasure in organizing my spending and earnings so that I could eventually start a Roth IRA and pay off my student loans.
The principle of the Excel budgeting spreadsheet assisted Robb and me during our wedding planning ensure that we had enough money allotted for the big day and all of its expenses. As part the Mac OS X iWork ‘08 collection, a program called Numbers was introduced. We can just say, love at first sight. As Steve Jobs put it, “A Spreadsheet for the rest of us.” Not to mention, there is a brilliant budgeting worksheet so you can plug and chug your finances (yes, a good phrase picked up by junior high and high school math teachers).
Up until this week, Numbers has been my standby budgeting system. It’s easy to use, functional, and pretty. Not that I haven’t tried out other programs, including Quicken, but they have always been very time consuming or they don’t recognize my bank. Thus spending more time importing files from the bank into the program, organizing categories of all of my spending, etc. I didn’t like it.
Then Robb told me about Mint.com. It’s free, easy to use, incredibly secure, works with almost every banking system or broker in the marketplace. In an hour I set up Robb’s and my accounts (including my Roth IRA) and plugged in some figures that resulted in our typical budget. Not to mention, I found the graphics very pleasing on my eyes.
Well anyway. The point of the post was not advertise the program, but rather encourage you who struggle with your finances (yes, you who avoid checking your bank statements or cheer when you get a $20 bill out of the ATM) to take them into your own hands and be responsible for your earning and spending. I used to be one of those people. So go on. I dare you.
Oh, and did I mention, you can set up Mint.com to send you e-mail notices when you are low on funds or when you have a credit card statement due? No really! It’s like you have a banker working just for you.
If Mint doesn’t strike your fancy, try Buxfer or Wesabe.
Update 7/4: I actually tried both of the aforementioned systems, and found them displeasing. They required much more maintenance and work. Plus, they told me my accounts were negative because they don’t look at total account balance. Reminds me vaguely of Quicken.