You are on the right track. Riches don’t lie in money, but in a peaceful life lived within your means. Remember that Alexander the Great couldn’t watch BSG and Louis XIV didn’t know what a cold Coke is. We are far wealthier than almost anyone who has ever lived.

“if geeks build it, morons will buy.” - Fieldset of Dreams

I shopped around a LOT for financial planning software, especially after we switched to the Mac (which Money doesn’t support). Quicken’s UI was surprisingly bad, especially for the Mac, so I didn’t have high hopes for it’s reporting. I’ve also looked at things like iBank and Gnucash as well as online tools like mint.com. I did settle on using wesabe.com for our ledger because of it’s simplicity and export capability and would highly recommend it.

My single-most important feature for this software was reporting, and every package I used lacked sophistication (including Wesabe). The coversheet for our spreadsheet combines balance histories, category analysis, forecasts and goals across accounts on a single sheet of paper — nobody else is taking their reporting to this level. I only have to glance at the fridge to see where our finances will be for the year, and often do while I’m getting ready to turn in for the night. Sarah and I can have ad hoc conversations about our finances just by standing in the kitchen — a big difference from huddling around the computer to start up a piece of software or printing a packet of reports.

Last year was really make-or-break for us to see if we could get along on a single income. We needed to know well in advance whether we were going to run aground with our expenses — I didn’t want to be in a position where we were reacting to a trend that started three months earlier. Otherwise, the zero-out technique might have worked for us.

We also eliminated about $1,000 from our expenses last year by slashing our home phone, cell phone and car insurance bills. We sold some of our unused stuff (like a fondue pot that went unused for five years) on eBay and our yard sale, earning another $600. The budget spreadsheet helped track that income and plan on what to do with it.

The whole exercise was to come up with a way to show where our finances will be for the whole year and spot trends. Dipping into credit cards too often was a major concern, and I knew if the trend continued for too long before I caught it, we’d be in dire straits.

My next goal is to work out our finances 3 to 5 years down the road. Part of that is figuring out when to buy a house. Peering that far out is a little trickier.

That is the most insane spreadsheet i’ve seen for doing this type of stuff. I do like the layout of the family budget snapshot, its pretty nice.

Just out of curiosity, why aren’t you using something like quickbooks or quicken or something? These are applications that were written so you don’t have to write your own. You’d ultimately save a lot of time and get the same basic information. You mentioned why you got off Microsoft Money, but i never heard anything good about MS money but have heard tons of praise for things like quicken.

Of course this is coming from a guy that doesn’t track his money /at all/. After the end of the month if my bank account is still above my ‘buffer’ amount the extra goes to my savings ‘zeroing out’ my account back to my buffer amount. If it dipped in, it comes out of savings. Easy enough, takes 3 minutes a month to do all my financial stuff. :-P.

And I envy your low “gas per 2 weeks” bill.

But all that smart stuff made my head hurt. I’m sure it’s better to do it your way, but my way hurts my head less.

If we have the money in the account, use the money in the account. If not, use the credit card. Don’t spend any money you don’t have to.

Of course, variables like living with 3 females never do good for my strategy (one female is a cat, but litter is money and so is peed on couches, fancy feast [the cat gets a fancy feast and I’m eating hot pockets], etc.)…

The benefit is that you can see the balance change over time, which is what I needed for those long bar charts to the right.

I don’t know the first thing about all this stuff. I use Numbers. I have a simple budget. “You can spend X on food. Your bills cost Y. You can save Z in December if you cancel Netflix.” Amortization? Sounds like a Warcraft damage modifier.

*cowers in corner, suddenly very afraid of economics*

;)