Keep track of your money

January 11th, 2006 9 Comments

Lately I’ve been paying much closer attention to my finances, partially because now I have a significant amount of money coming in on a semi-regular basis and I need to look at taxes. I also decided that I needed to get in the habit of keeping track of my credit cards and bank accounts more carefully.

I think a lot of college students tend to be pretty lax about how well they keep track of their money – that’s why so many accept loans and use credit cards without ever thinking about how they’ll pay everything off.

If you’re like me and do 99% of your banking online, keeping track of finances is really easy. I recently setup Microsoft Money with all of my credit card and bank accounts and started posting when I spent money, where I spent it, and how much I spent. This way I can compare my records against the bank records and catch any mistakes much more quickly.

I’m actually really bad at this kind of thing, so it’s going to be a bit of a chore trying to talk myself into updating Money on a regular basis, but hopefully I can keep it up. I always save my receipts, I just never do anything with them. Now I’m hoping I can take all the receipts and update everything 3-4 times a week.

Anyone have any advice on keeping track of all the money coming in and going out? I’m enjoying Microsoft Money, but if there’s something better I’d gladly switch.

Keep track of your money

Bradleyscott | January 11, 2006

Well, I must admit, I am in the later stages of my twenties and I still found myself with the habits of a college student (something I picked up in college and never relenquished). I am on week 2 of my Microsoft Money binge and I too have found it a very intuitive program to use.

I used to use the roughly remember method. I would roughly remember how much I had in all my accounts without truly knowing. Well that caught up with me three weeks ago (which wasn’t the first time, but definitely the motherload). I wound up owing the bank $600 right before Christmas. I forgot about one purchase I had made and because of that found myself in the red and hitting 14 bank fee transactions equaling around $500 on top of the -$180 I had mis-spent.

Painful lesson that I was fortunate enough to be able to pay off immediately, but that cost me some personal sacrifices and was a complete waste of money. Ever since then I decided it was best to get things in order and start cleaning up my finances (including credit score which is still recovering from college 5 years out).

So I am with you and so far I am enjoying Money 2006 Small Business Edition.

kazana | January 11, 2006

I prefer Quicken to manage my accounts, but I have to admit, that I’ve never tried Money 2006.
What I like a lot about Quicken is, that you can also keep track of your stocks if you are into trading stocks.
Just check the features on quicken.com to see if it has more to offer to you than Money 2006.

Javier | January 11, 2006

I use SQL Ledger for both my personal and professional stuff.

At first it seems really huge, but with time you find very interesting things that can be made with a couple of clicks (such as invoices).

Devin Reams | Track Your Money With Money | devinreams.com | January 11, 2006

[...] Ben, at CollegeStartup has written on the importance of keeping track of one’s money. Frankly, I agree with him. Many students aren’t sure how much money they have at any given moment. But that’s alright because those same students typically never have more than $200 in the checking account anyway! Seriously, though. That’s a problem. I’ve been using Microsoft Money for a few years now and couldn’t be more pleased. I actually was a beta tester for Money 2005 and I still use today becuase a) I got it for free and b) I’m most familiar with it. [...]

Tom | January 11, 2006

Never used MS Money but I did modify this Cash Flow Excel sheet to sort my Uni money out. Works a treat, just need to remember to fill it out …

Casey | January 12, 2006

I also use Money to track all of my transaction and have found it great. Their reporting functions allow you to see trends in your money which is a great function for curving your spending habits.

Devin Reams | Track Your Money With Money | devinreams.com | January 14, 2006

[...] Ben, at CollegeStartup has written on the importance of keeping track of one�s money. Frankly, I agree with him. Many students aren�t sure how much money they have at any given moment. But that�s alright because those same students typically never have more than $200 in the checking account anyway! Seriously, though. That�s a problem. I�ve been using Microsoft Money for a few years now and couldn�t be more pleased. I actually was a beta tester for Money 2005 and I still use today becuase a) I got it for free and b) I�m most familiar with it. [...]

Tim Linden | January 16, 2006

I recently made a spreadsheet for tracking spending and budgets. However the hardest part is getting into the routine of entering the information in. I’m so used to Paypal recording more than enough information about every transaction, the thought of typing in how much I spent at walmart is boring.

HART (1-800-HART) | January 17, 2006

Ben ..

Enjoy College while you can and stop creating more work for you in keeping track of your finances.

My advice to you is based on three principles:

(A) You need a simple way to keep track of information for income tax purposes, that you will learn to do for the rest of your life. You might not always have a computer around to post your information into.

(B)Keep It Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S.) really does work. The longer it takes you to keep track of information to find out how your finances really are, the information becomes useless because it will be outdated. You need to know now.

(C)I just like making lists.

Here’s what to do:

(1) Print monthly recaps of all online activities, adsense, banking, investment transactions, etc EVERY month. At the end of the year (NOW) print a summary from January 1-December 31 if you can, plus balances of all loan balances, investment accounts with market values, etc.

(2) Don’t use your debit card for everything. It creates more paperwork. Take out cash withdrawals, and ask for a receipt for everything.

(3) Buy ziploc bags.

(4) See my tips what to do with the receipts in THIS POST

(5) Buy a decent desk-top calculator with a tape machine (don’t use those solar powered pocket or keychain calculators) and a good stapler.

(6) The rest is easy .. you can recap the information into your MSMONEY (which I’ve been a fan and user since 1995 when the install was on 2 floppy disks) or even EXCEL since you are an MS user (I assume you know how to do that) … Either way, you will have most of what you need to know come tax time, in any case.

(7) Party on Garth.