Without a personal finance program it’s hard to manage your money. Most people have several bank accounts, credit cards, loans, retirements account and investment accounts. Without a financial program it’s impossible to keep track of all of these accounts.
I personally use Quicken Premier 2011. It’s really worth the money. I only buy it every 3 years because it allows me for 3 years to use its online features.
There are a few very useful features I use all the time. I download transactions from my banks and credit card companies every couple of days. This way it’s very easy to monitor how I spend my money. I also know exactly what is charged on my credit cards. I match the downloaded transactions with my saved receipts. If I find anything suspicious I call my bank or credit card company.
Another feature I often use is to manage my bills. It’s very easy to schedule bills. I also schedule my paychecks too. If the paychecks vary week to week it’s possible to enter an average paycheck. I know exactly how much money I have in my accounts today tomorrow, next week, next month or even a few months from now. Now surprises.
As I mentioned I download the transactions every couple of days so when it’s time to reconcile my account at the end of the billing cycle all the transactions are there. Many times it only takes less than a minute to reconcile a bank or credit card account. It’s so easy that it’s actually fun.
I have been using Quicken for over 10 years and I couldn’t live without it. I save a backup of the Quicken file on an external hard drive once a week. Once my hard drive crashed and restoring everything from the backup files was very simple. I never thought about using an online financial software. I like to keep my personal information personal.
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