Personal Finance Software - Mac Edition, Part 1

Look for evaluations of the various Personal Finance software available on the Mac over this weekend. Depending on how much I have to say about each, I may or may not give each application its own post. I'm guessing I'll lump all the ones I have little to talk about together, and the ones for which I have more to say will have a separate post.

So far, I've been very disappointed with every personal finance application I've ever encountered. Whether it be from lack of reporting/analytical options, unintuitive setup, poor split transaction support, or just general "suckiness"; every single application has failed to be up to snuff on all platforms.

Currently, I'm double-entering my transactions into both Buxfer and a home-grown Excel spreadsheet. I've found a slew of applications online, and while the reigning champion is still Quicken in terms of use and familiarity it's reporting options always sorely disappoint. In April I began using Buxfer, and have been pleasantly surprised for the most part with it. The reporting is significantly more robust, and with proper tagging is ridiculously useful... BUT (and it's a big but), there was a hiccup sometime last week that wiped out all of my future transactions (I make placeholder entries for future bills, planned expenditures, etc); expense transactions in one account were all calculating as income transactions (with the reverse also being true) causing several balance inequities. The issue was resolved, but it's unsettling... and I was already leery of relying on third-party hardware to keep my data. So, off to look for software!

More to come..

UPDATE 12/2/2008:

This is on hold because of the current job situation. I'll definitely re-visit this at a later date. I've begun coding my own personal finance software. I have the database structure complete, but I don't have any experience building interfaces so the next part will be a challenge. When it's

Incorrect Change

Count Your Change!

For lunch today, I joined my fellow co-workers on an outing to McDonald's. Yes, I know, this is not the most fiscally responsible (or healthy) lunch but that fact is not the purpose of this post.

I ordered three dollar-menu items, bringing my total to 3.18. I paid with a 5 dollar bill, which should net me 1.82 in change. This particular McDonald's utilizes the automatic change dispenser. Until today, I've typically trusted these things to correctly dispense change but now I'm not so sure. I received only 57 cents! I did notice the change was incorrect, but my on-the-spot math wasn't "on" (and I was really hungry and just wanted to get out of there), so I thought I was shorted a nickle and said as much. A roll of the eyes from the cashier and a nickle later I was walking away when I realized my mistake. I didn't go back for the remaining 20 cents, as that was my calculation error -- but I've made a mental note to ALWAYS count my change. It's only 25 cents, but if they're shorting even 10 people a day, that's $2.50 per day that McD's is essentially stealing from those customers! My personal guess is that more than that is incorrectly dispensed, and I would further guess that these machines are more likely to give out too little change before they'd give out too much.

Just a heads up, count your change. Last month I was missing around 3 dollars, that I can only surmise was from "missing" change, as I track every monetary transaction.

Sputtering to a Start

 So over a month has passed, and I'm still not "blogging". What to put out there is a challenging personal question for me. I am proud to say that I haven't made an impulse spend since my birthday; that's a win. If my projections are correct and I stay true to my intentions, the end of July was my financial "rock-bottom". I had very small gains in September and aim to continue that trend from negative to positive. Something I now feel very strongly about is living debt-free, and while I know the road ahead is long and will be fraught with temptation and set-backs, I am now more determined than ever to get out of debt.

I've decided that debt is too heavy of a psychological burden for me to bear, and I shouldn't have to carry it. The phrase "carrying debt" is literal, I didn't understand that until just recently.

I hope to write more frequently than, well, monthly. My goal is to post (at least) once weekly through October. Now begins the work.