STEF Total = 6.15
November Budget Meeting
Reconciling Quicken with bank statements: Done.
Reconciling last month’s budget: I didn’t make a budget the month before. I got $385.00 in bank charges. But small good news along with all the bad, I got a raise at my paying job.
Starting a new format, in which the same Number Crunching post is updated for the entire month on a weekly basis. I’m crossing my fingers that this will keep me doing them and keep my eyes on my finances. Where they have not been; no big surprise. Meet stupid scared straight, otherwise known as me. My other name should probably be she who cannot be trusted with own money. Good news: I shouldn’t lose my house. Bad news: I have no idea when I’m going to have a handle on Quicken.
The fun started on November 3rd with me trying to see if Intuit had fixed the little issue of Quicken Online not importable or exportable with Quicken desktop versions. Short answer: they haven’t but there are work-arounds. Why was I interested? I have a horrible habit of letting the paperwork to enter into Quicken pile up, and then I procrastinate because I feel guilty about the damn pile, and fairly soon everything is out of whack. With an online system, my thinking was I could enter receipts at work—right after I had spent the money—then update the home system with that data since it’s the program that makes all the nifty reports.
Halfway better solution: my credit union now talks to Quicken. I set up the download the bank records on Quicken 2007 I have at home. That way I don’t have to enter, just correct. Three hours later, I have no frakkin idea WHY the download took that long, I thought I was matching up the amounts with the data I already had in Quicken, but my final total was WAY off. As in Quicken is telling me I have over a thousand dollars in my checking account off.
I couldn’t figure out where it went wonky, so I pulled out my old bank statements and went back to the beginning of these Quicken records to double check the reconciliations. As of today, November 6th, I’m still doing that. I’ve found a few errors and researched how to archive away the years I don’t need ready access to, but the final total is still wonky. I’ve made it into 2008 and I really suspect the issue is in 2009, but because everything is still attached, I can’t jump ahead.
The second biggest aggravation? Seeing just how good my income is, and having no money because I have been stupid with it. *Sigh*
Goals for next week:
Pay Citifinancial.Pay house note.Reconcile Quicken with bank accountsSomehow combine the online and paper versions of the car loan account in Quicken into one register.This is done, but I don’t think it is downloading like it should.- Archive the years I don’t need in Quicken.
Get reports done for months I missed writing up Number Crunching entries.Find the details I was keeping track of in the Number Crunching entries.
Read Free!
The BookWorm
2 comments:
I really think you should give YNAB a try. It's made an amazing difference to our budgeting, and it's a great system that really helps to keep you on track with minimal effort.
It's not just the software, it comes with budgeting assistance which makes all the difference.
It also doesn't look back; you start the day you install it and work forward. What happened previously is ignored.
I probably will get something better for budgeting because Quicken's built-in budgeting reports suck.
But I can't knock how easy it talks to my tax program when it comes to figuring that stuff out in April. And my biggest issue (because my screwing something in the program and then having to go back and fix it comes in second) is inputting data and that would be the same no matter what I use.
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