Thursday, May 28, 2009

What Do You Use To Manage Your Family's Finances?!

...is it a software program, spreadsheet in excel that you created or downloaded, on pen and paper, check register, etc?

I personally like a system that is simple, easy to follow...yet detailed for my family's purposes. I like something that isn't all over the place, hard for me to follow or my husband to follow, & included too much information.

Part of the success of creating and maintaining a budget is to have a system that is good & works for you and your personal situation.

How do you manage your family's finances each week, bi-week, month, and/or annually?

3 comments:

Jenny said...

I use an excel spreadsheet that I made. I broke down all of the bills by monthly payments. Say, if one is due yearly, I calculated what it is per month and I deduct all of those from the monthly income. That way, when it's time to pay it, the money should be in the account.

We do not keep track of our expenses, I just have a budget that I put in our accounts and it needs to stay within that until the next paycheck.

So far so good. We are paying down some old credit card debt and we hope to have it gone in Feb!

vane said...

we do it at home weekly
with the envelope system
We have only 2 credit cards but you don't gonna believe this...I cut them in half.Yeah they are available only for an emergency..If that happens we call the company and request a new card on the mail.

Katrina said...

I do ours weekly, usually on Friday night. I used to use an excel spreadsheet and Money software but found it was too time consuming for me. So, a few months ago I went back to using a 4-column pad (kinda like what accountants use) and write it down each month as bills come in and stick the bills in the notepad. Everything is easily ready to go with me if there is ever an emergency. It is the same pad I used at 18 when I first started living on my own...who would have known that I'd go back to it...it really is simple to use.