Keep an Accurate Budget for Free!

Use a Free Computer Program to Keep an Accurate Budget

Last year Daniel & I used an excel sheet to keep track of our budget.  It worked great- we were able to keep track of where we spent our money & how much we spent.  It was not, however, always right on.  Every month our excell budget total savings was a little different than the amount in our banking acounts, but we did not want to BUY a program to help us save money...

Our accountant reccomended that we try using a free version of Quickbooks (you can download it from the Quickbooks website).  This would help us keep a more accurate record- and help him prepare taxes next year.  :D  Since he knows the tax rules best, if he can see exactly where our money was spent, he can more accurately call out itemized deductions.  We decided to give it a try- I was afraid that the free version would not allow us to do very much.  I am happy to report that it has worked great!

QuickBooks allows us to easily ballance our budget with our bank accounts.  We have created customized ballance sheets to see where we spent our money & how we did on our grocery budget. 

If you are working on developing a budgeting method, I would recommend finding a free program.  Quickbooks is the only program that I have used, but I am sure there are other free options available.  Our excel sheet worked, but we have found that using a specialized program has saved us a lot of time and given us more options.

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