I've been using Quicken, specifically Quicken 2006 Premier, since last October. For those of you familiar with the various grades of Quicken, I opted to splurge for Premier over Deluxe to help track investments. For those of you unfamiliar with Quicken, that's probably a failing on your part. After spending a couple hours entering all my accounts and figuring out how to download transaction records into Quicken, I was more or less up and running. But my lackluster obsessive-compulsiveness nagged at me.
Since the beginning of the year, I've also kept track of all cash purchases. While not a huge portion of my expenses, like taxes or rent, cash purchases do represent a significant portion of my expenditures that are non-essential. For the most part, that means I can see how much I spend eating out. I can tell you how much I've spent at Wendy's, in vending machines, and how many times I've spent the $1.75 to wash and dry my clothes at my building's laundry room.
Compulsive? Probably. But it's also a fascinating look into how someone, specifically me, spends and invests his money.
3 comments:
Yes, fascinating. So please post a summary -- in enough detail so we can snear at something.
Should be great fun, for someone.
Keep personal finance personal.
If you don't have to pay cash, don't. Use credit card, especially the ones that give you rebate or award. Try to use just one card, because many CC companies (banks) would award or rebate base on the scale of charges. Certain store credit card would have a 10% rebate on their merchandise, in that case, it's a pretty good deal.
At least, use the bank's money interest free for 20-40 days! Pay it on-line to save postage and check writing. The pitfall of using credit card is that you have to remember to pay it on time, and pay in full. The late fee is high way robbery. The interest rate is enormous. Banks make tons of money from these 2.
Don't use the Debit card to pay for anything unless it's an emergency. All banks love to have their customers use the debit card because they are hoping you would overdraw the account and then they zap you with a large fee due to insufficient fund (another high way robbery). They also want you to leave a large chunk of money in the acct. paying very little or no interest to you so you have the conveniences of using the debit card. Don't be a sucker!
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