organise my finances

I’ve signed up for the Pocketsmith Beta, which is a nice web 2.0ish personal finance application developed in my home town. Hopefully my wife and I will benefit from using it to help us plan our financial goals.

Ok, I’ve collected together all my statements now and put them into folders in order. I’ve also paid off almost all the amount I had on my credit card, I know my approximate balance in my account, and have plans to cut my spending to allow me to save a little better than I have been. So to all intents and purposes I have achieved the goal I’d set on this one.

I’ve collected all but a couple of my statements together now, which previously ended up left all over the place having been opened then ignored. I’ve sent on a cheque to my ex-housemate for the money I owed him for the NTL bill, and plan to pay off most of my credit card by the end of the week. Once I have done so, and I am more aware of how my finances are doing, then I’ll be able to mark this one done

I have been thinking recently abount an application I want to write. It would log onto my bank account, download my statement, and update my spending records. If I pay for everything by card, then the shop I made the purchase from is listed for each transaction. If I then map each shop to a type of spending (ie.. Safeways is food, Caltech is Petrol…etc.) then I can get an automatic view of where my money is going. I recon that would be really useful to me.

Now… I just have to get the freetime to write it.

So.. I am making an attempt to do this. My first step is to open a new account and weekly move money into it. I can then see if I am spending more than my weekly allotted amount.