Money and Budgeting
Apr 17th, 2009 by Ben
Why is it that school never teaches you a ton of things you really need to know?
Just one example, just one, is dealing with money. Everyone has to do it, but unless you elected to do commerce in year 9 (I took German and Latin, and I’m proud of it), you probably never got told how to budget or look after your money. (And if you got me as your year 9 commerce teacher in either 2002 or 2003, you probably still don’t know anything about budgeting.)
But we all need to know how to do it, particularly Christians, who want to be good stewards of the wealth God has given us.
To rectify the problem, the Internet swoops to the rescue.
First, try How To Understand (and Create) A Personal Financial Statement Each Month In 5 Minutes or 31 Days To Fix Your Finances: A Wrapup.
Once you’ve got some knowledge under your belt, try trimming costs: 18 Means for Living Below Your Means.
If you’re looking for good budgeting system that doesn’t require you draw up your own spreadsheet, try Wesabe. The beauty of a system like this is that it’s almost completely automatic, and if drawing up and maintaining a budget is too much like hard work, you won’t do it.
Alternatively, check out Lifehacker’s Battle of the Web-Based Personal Finance Apps. Sadly, Mint doesn’t yet support non-US banks.
To kick off with Wesabe, Lifehacker has Organize Your Money with Wesabe.
Great post; we at http://www.justthrive.com always regret missing out on the LifeHacker poll (we literally launched the day before they posted it, so we didn’t quite make it in), as I think it has an interesting discussion that cropped up around it. But unlike Mint, we do have some tentative support for non-US countries: some of the recommendations don’t apply as we don’t have a feed of non-US accounts to recommend, and things still display with $ signs, even if the unit is different. But the same basic advice still applies and there are non-US banks in the system, so give it a try – it might just be the thing for you.
One of my friend likes using ANZ Money Manager. You don’t have to be an ANZ customer to join, and they automatically import information from all your accounts for you. You can then enter other info that doesn’t show up on your account statements (e.g. stuff you paid for in cash) and categorise it so you can see exactly how much you spend on food, entertainment, (in my case) yarn … etc.
Thanks for the links!