One of my resolution this year is to track my income and expenses religiously. I don’t do a detailed tracking for a long time. I would often stop whenever there is a big movement or distraction in my cash flow like a loan, someone borrowing money, a big purchase, or I just dont have money to track.
So last year, I dont know my financial picture. I dont know if I overspent or if I have people to run after my money. What was important to me then was that I was not broke and I still have enough on the bank. But this year, I have to make a change. I am back to my savings mode and make sure I reach my target savings for this year.
There are several tools to do this. I have my own excel sheet template that shows my income and expenses. It is complete with the formulas and formatting to make it easy for me to read. I also placed a budget planner and a simple way to alert me if I have exceeded my budget for the month. I have placed simple graphs also to show the trends.
Then I remebered a software that can track my expenses. I once used Microsoft Money and it was a good tool for personal finance. It has everything you need to track your cash flow. It makes good reports and graphs. I liked that software. And there is a more popular software, Quicken. I have read good reviews about it and comparisons showed that it surpassed MS Money on several features. I think its worth trying.
But a word of advise for those who want to buy or try a software. Don’t be tempted to go for the premiere or professional edition. A basic or home edition will work just fine. And I guess for most people, the basic edition will be enough.
So this year, I will continue using my handy excel file and I might try a software to track where exactly my money is going. I just might be surprised with the results.
