Financial Planning

If you want to control your finances, you can’t let them control you. You gain control by making wise day-to-day choices, following the path towards long-term goals and by building a foundation of necessities, such as insurance and emergency savings.

In order to do any of these things — make choices, realize goals or save — you have to budget. I know it doesn’t sound fun. But it is the one way to achieve financial success.

Start by thinking about it this way — by sticking with your plan, you will gain more than you ever expected. Budgeting will allow you to realize your goals. You will have more money to spend in the long run.

No matter how much or how little you make, budgeting is essential. If you already think you know where your money goes without writing it down, try writing it down for one month. You will be surprised at what those pennies are adding up to be.

Budgeting lets you know where your money goes. You are managing it. You are able to start saving for a home, for college and for retirement. You can even find room for that trip to Hawaii.

Someone said once, and I really like the idea, that you can’t just make more money to have more money. You have to spend less than you make.

I will admit that software programs make it nice to track a budget. I used one for years to track our spending through our checking accounts. Not only can you easily balance your checking, you can print out reports that divide your spending into categories. You can easily print out the totals of your tax deductions. Many programs even allow you to scan your tax receipts in for safe keeping.

We no longer use the program, due to my husband wanting to help with the financial management. He is uncomfortable with computers. So we keep log books instead. The key to tracking your expenses isn’t necessarily to write down everything you spend when you spend it. It is to ask for and keep all of your receipts for things. If you don’t get a receipt, you’ll have to write it down.

So either way, take the time to add up all of those spending categories. For example, a daily cup of coffee can cost you $547 a year. If you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, you are spending approximately $3000 a year. If you eat your lunch out every day, you could spend around $2,600 a year. Three drinks after work once a week can add up to $1092.

Cut all those things out and you could save over $7000 a year. That’s a lot of money. Did you know that coffee, cigarettes, lunch and drinks were costing you that much money?

By budgeting and tracking your spending, you are able to see the areas you can cut back on. You may find that you don’t have to sacrifice very much to achieve your goals. After all, what is more important, putting $7000 a year into your retirement savings or keeping up with your current spending habits?

In this article I would like to conduct a personal finance software review of the Quicken product offerings designed for personal use. There are several personal finance software products on the market that do wonderful jobs of helping families manage their finances, but I am most familiar with Quicken as I have been a user of its products for over eight years. I have been completely satisfied with the features Quicken provides and would like to review and compare the benefits that its product offerings deliver.

Quicken Starter Edition

Formerly known as Quicken Basic, the Quicken Starter Edition is an excellent solution for individuals who will be using personal finance software for the first time. The three main features the Quicken Starter Edition delivers are: (1) balancing of your checkbook electronically, (2) tracking how you spend your money by being able to categorize purchases, and (3) monitoring and updating all your investment and banking accounts in one place. It basically provides a “one-stop shop” for all of your personal finance concerns.

Quicken Deluxe

Although the Quicken Starter Edition is a fantastic product, I believe the average family considering a personal finance software product should start with Quicken Deluxe. The reason is that, in addition to offering all of the features of the Quicken Starter Edition, Quicken Deluxe provides the capability to download banking and investment account transactions automatically. This makes reconciling your checking account, as well as your other accounts, extremely simple. In addition, Quicken Deluxe allows you to create savings goals and track their progress, store statements and records electronically, and plan for a new home, a baby, or retirement. For most families, this is the best place to start.

Quicken Premier

For those families who manage their own investments and require additional tools to monitor and measure their progress, Quicken Premier is the perfect solution. Quicken Premier offers all of the wonderful features from Quicken Deluxe plus several others, including: (1) generating various investment performance reports, (2) analyzing and optimizing your portfolio with special tools, (3) generating Schedule A, B, and D tax reports, and (4) setting investment alerts to notify you when certain conditions are in place. A truly remarkable tool for the do-it-yourself investor!

Quicken Home & Business

The three software solutions above are all excellent choices, but if you own your own business, none of these will be sufficient for the additional monitoring and record keeping required of you. Enter Quicken Home and Business. Though not as powerful a solution as Intuit’s QuickBooks products, it is the perfect choice if you have a small business with no payroll requirements, or especially for a part time business. In addition to providing all of the wonderful features of Quicken Premier, Quicken Home and Business allows: (1) tracking and categorizing of both business and personal expenses, (2) creating customized estimates and invoices, (3) generating profit and loss reports, (4) tracking vehicle mileage and other Schedule C items, and (5) monitoring upcoming bills and unpaid invoices. If you are considering a small part-time business, this solution is perfect to get you started.

In conclusion, Quicken offers a wonderful lineup of products that are designed to meet the varying needs that different families require. This personal finance software review has aimed to provide you with a basic overview of each product to help you decide which solution would be most appropriate for your family. Hopefully this discussion convinces you of the incredible value personal finance software delivers to its users. I can only speak from personal experience.

Personal Finance Tips for You includes twenty-four topics covering an array of areas. The author states in the introduction “it is important to know as much as you can about managing your personal finances in these economic times.” Some of the areas covered are credit card traps, keeping on track to pay your bills, handling your checkbook, the price of gas, identity theft, catching up on retirement planning, what to do if you receive a lay off notice from your job, checking your credit report and talking about finances if you are planning to get married. These are just a few of the topics. There are many more.

The first topic covered is Don’t Get Caught Up in The Credit Card Trap, Stop Yourself Before That Happens. This is a very important chapter for everyone to read because it is so easy for this to happen in tough economic times. The author offers several excellent tips to help anyone who has this problem. It is clearly explained why it is so important for you to pay down the credit card debt.

Another important topic covered is How Do I Keep On Track to Pay My Bills on Time. The author gives the reader some tips on creating a budget and keeping track of your income and expenditures.

How do you survive the high cost of gas? We all know, not long ago the price of gas kept soaring. The author gives us many tips on how to save money by doing some simple things like consolidating trips just to name one of the pointers. There are many tips mentioned that I never thought of myself.

How do you establish your credit if you are young and just starting out on a job? Nocita Carter tells you exactly how to go about doing this.

Do you think you can save any money by just saving your change? This is one of the tips made by the author. I can personally vouch for this one because each day when I purchase an item, I take the change and add it to an old coffee can. After a few months, it gets quite full. I am always surprised by the amount of money I saved from my loose change.

I could go on and on with each chapter because there are so many good points in this book but I think you get the message and would get more out of Personal Finance Tips for You if you purchase it and read it yourself.

There are several aspects of this book that I really liked. It is written in language that is very easy to understand. It is not like some of the other books on finance that require you to have a dictionary by your side as you read. The book is very organized. Each chapter starts with an introduction to explain the topic. Once that is done, the author lists several tips to help the reader accomplish these tasks. Nocita Carter has written this book in a manner that makes the reader feel like they have a personal finance expert right there beside them. Personal Finance Tips For You is recommended for any age. It will be a valuable tool for younger people who are starting their first job. On the other hand, one is never too old to find something they did not know in this book. After reading this book, I learned quite a few tips to help me with my finances. You will find this an excellent resource guide to keep by your side at all times.

Evaluating your financial resources will determine how prepared you are for the future.

When building a personal budget, you have to cater to your own needs and situation. You can’t look at a general budget and decide it will work for you. Do you have an extra long commute to work? $100 per month on gas probably won’t work for you. Do you have a family of eight? $300 per month for food might feed half of you, but not the whole family.

If you are trying to design a good budget you need to follow some basic personal budgeting strategies. First, make sure you are recording all the money you make and that you are making the most that you can. Don’t just include your salary and think that tips, side jobs, overtime, or interest don’t matter. It is all money that you are spending.

Also, don’t give up on opportunities to make money, especially if you need it. Are you a teacher? Don’t pass up tutor opportunities. As a certified teacher, you can make a nice wad of cash in 30 to 60 minutes. As a business professional, do you get asked for advice a lot? If you are spending hours a week advising people, you should charge for it. You spent a lot of time, money, and effort to learn what you know, why should others get it for free?

Next, you should really examine all of your expenses. Write down every expense for 2 to 4 weeks. Don’t miss anything, no matter how small the expense. Analyze where you are spending your money. Anything that you could easily live without cut out, and anything that has a cheaper alternative, swap. Some people are very lenient where they cut back on expenses. Even if you aren’t in debt, you could save a lot of money to put away for retirement. You’d be surprised how much you can save.

Design a plan you can stick with. Don’t be so outrageous with your budget cutting out expenses that severely impede how you live. For example, if you think you can save $200 a month by not driving anywhere, but you have a 30 minute commute to work, well, you can figure it out. It’s not going to work. On the other hand, if you have tens of thousands of dollars in debt or more, you may seriously need to consider a downgrade on everything. If your rent or mortgage is too expensive, downgrade. You need to do whatever you can to secure your financial future.

Finally, stick with it. This is the most important part of keeping a budget. You have to stick with it! If something seems impossible to do, than modify it, but this doesn’t mean giving up entirely on the whole budget. Nobody said keeping to a budget would be easy. You just need to do it!