Lately my wife has been turning the computers off at night and whenever they aren't in use for a few hours. I had started doing that last year on my New Year's budget kick, but I got out of the habit as I worried about the BIG things, like balancing the budget and minimizing CC interest paid, keeping college bills paid, etc. So this is a great sign, I just have to build slowly on it.
And on the budget front, I know what I want to do now. I was working with the numbers exported from Quickenonline to a spreadsheet, and I want to graph them, to sort of emulate that new type of income/expense graph that they just added to Quckenonline. I'm trying to visualize how I can be overspending by about 10-20% per month on checking alone. Unfortunately, Quickenonline only goes back to May 8 for me - I'm not sure why that is - fixed number of transactions, software change, etc.? But it's a good amount of data to work with nonetheless.
I'll keep you posted! It's fun to at least have the hope of getting in control.
Yay! I'm getting the spouse on board slowly, and I'm working hard on a budget
January 27th, 2009 at 11:02 am
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Very happy for you though! I use YNAB for budgeting and Quicken for the reports.
February 13th, 2009 at 07:40 pm 1234554025
Carolina Bound: I agree, it is fun when it isn't depressing! It used to be great fun when I was single and solidly in the black!
Analise: Yup, Excel is more easily customizable. I still miss the old Quicken for Windows 3.1, it was SO gosh darn user-friendly! The modern standalone computer version probably is also, but I am thoroughly in no-spend mode now. Plus practice in Excel is always good and pays dividends since I use it quite a bit at work.
Koppur: STARTING to get on-board! We've got a looooong row to hoe, but just the impression that she cares even a little is an immense help.
homebody : She has seen me stressing for years but she never really believed me - she looked at our nice 401k and thought we were rich! Now that that has crashed, I think she sees it ain't that much money and it is needed for old age AND untouchable for now, so I think she is STARTING to realize that things are serious. It's a journey of a thousand miles.