Budget vs Quicken

For years I solely used Quicken or the likes. It's pretty convenient, it downloads all your transactions from your bank, credit cards even investment accounts and let's you know balances and where the money went. I did this for years, every week updating and tracking all our transactions. It's kind of crazy to go back and see what you thought was so important that you just had to buy on that credit card for an amazing deal.

Truth be told most of that stuff is shoe boxed away, or because of my wife -sold, donated or recycled. Even now I look at some of the archaic devices, be it an external hard drive that's sitting on my desk unused or the earbuds that are a tangled mess in my drawer. Just had to have them...

Quicken, and a lot of these other "personal finance" software are like a really good rearview mirror. The give us 20/20 vision of what has happened. They key here is, they give us the past. Yes I know you may use Quicken like I did to "budget" your upcoming bill reminders. Really though, that's not a budget, it's bill planning.

This may be easier to believe by understanding what a budget really is. For my wife & I, it involves us discussing before the month starts where our money is going. We are spending this much on clothing, groceries, gas, mortgage, eating out, entertainment, savings, investing, etc. We actually agree before the month starts how much we will spend on groceries. That way when she's out shopping, she can feel free to spend as she sees fit, as long as we stay within that amount for the month. If something comes up, and we are going to go over budget, we just have a conversation and decide where the money will come from to cover the additional cost and what we will go without.

This detail, planning where our money is going before the month starts has really helped our relationship. We don't feel guilty because we are buying some new clothes. We know that money was set aside for that purpose.

I think money guilt really caused a lot of the issues we experienced. It also kept us from really being closer as a couple.

It's amazing how budgeting before it's spent really changes how you use money. You feel a sense of control and not a victim. I still use Quicken, it helps us manage the past and pay our bills from one place.

Part of my personal growth adventure caused me to start treating money more responsibly. We made lots of small changes that we would think of, then finally I ran across a book by Dave Ramsey that kicked us into high gear. I hated the feeling I'd get when I came home from a really nice vacation to a huge credit card bill. For years we never paid off the balance monthly. I knew this was costing use fortune. Even before I knew about Dave Ramsey we had gotten control of our credit cards and didn't have monthly balance being carried. We still had quite a bit of stress and weren't communicating like we could. We weren't budgeting, we were still victims.

Knowledge, that little detail of another way to do things has brought us a lot of financial peace (to borrow a phrase from Dave). It's great to know ahead of time where our money is going. Our budget is our windshield, and Quicken is now that little rearview mirror. We use a free tool called EveryDollar that allows us to plan our money. We just log every expense as it happens, and logging as you know from another post is very powerful.