Maintain my Personal Finance Database

Updated all my April data in my You Need A Budget software. Some financial goals are being accomplished and some goals I have to still find the best way to complete them. Magic is not in the equation…

I finally sat down and redid the YNAB database once again since I wasn’t really doing the regular updating that I needed to. I am using the more simple method this time and will follow the YNAB 4 step program to manage my money.

I should start seeing the results in 60 days.

I entered 6 months of data into my YNAB program. I realize it works quite a bit differently than Quicken and it is a bit underdeveloped as I had to create the Mortgage Interest and Credit Interest catagories myself, they were not already there. But in spending about 4 hours working on it, I started to feel comfortable with what I was doing.

As I said before, I am very happy to get away from Quicken and their Monopoly on personal finance software. I am sure once I am caught up, YNAB will be a very helpful to me to pay down my debts.

With one month to go until Tax Day, I really do want to synchronize my statements and YNAB files. I have really been dragging my feet on this one and I can’t afford to anymore with so many financial changes going on this year.

Now it is just a problem of finding the time to make this happen!

Because I am not using Quicken anymore to update my accounts, This will be my primary goal for getting my financial planning goals in order. With my hard drive upgrade on my laptop, I want to make sure that I get my accounts set up using one of Ubuntu’s financial software choices. I will test drive the YNAB software to see if that works well for me. I hope to finish that this month ahead of income tax time.

After seeing my financial picture go into a hole this year, I’m slowly planning my way out of it and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Want to get there sooner, but it means more work on my part. I put together a budget through the end of the year and I’m sticking to it. Also did some planning for 2011 already which is good too.

I haven’t been maintaining my records like I should be and I need to be more proactive in getting it done. My bank’s bill payment option has let me keep up to date, but I haven’t been able to manage my money better.

Keeping my Quicken up to date should allow me to save more money. And this specific goal will be to plan a budget that will allow me to save more by reducing in areas where I have been overspending.