organize my finances

I have been tracking my personal expenses since the first of February using a simple OpenOffice sheet. Works fine so far. I have broken it down into a number of categories, adding some notes here and there. I am really looking forward to have a few months of this data available. My goal is to find out where i can save some bucks which i would like to put into some long term investments.

The first of February i actually started to work on this goal. I didn’t go for the MoneyPlex software. Instead i started a OpenOffice calc sheet to track my expenses (it seemed silly to me to spent money to safe money). I locking forward to see the result at the end of the month.

I spent some hours yesterday looking for software to help me manage my finances. I’m a linux user so quicken is out of the game. I know that StartMoney works very well with Wine (the company producing it even advertises it) but i would prefer a native solution. I had a look at KMyMoney which isn’t bad but still not what i would like to have. I also checked out GnoFin and GnuCash but these where disappointing to me. I guess i will pay the 30€ and get a license for Moneyplex. They have native linux support and other people on the net seem to be happy with it.

I don’t have financial problems (most of the time…), it’s just that i don’t do any planning or budgeting at all. This leads to situations where i don’t know if i should buy something. Also if i buy it i often have a bad gut feeling (warrantable or not) which spoils the fun.

My goal is to have a budget so i know if i can afford something or not. After i have an idea about my financial situation i would like to do some longterm investments (if i can afford them vbeg). I general i would like to take control of this aspect of my life.