Financial Reflections

I recently wrote that I’m trying four fairly obvious, but time tested ways to save money this week. I started that experiment on Monday and I wanted to give you some updates on the results. It turns out that I’ve found multiple benefits to saving money:

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Mint.com is a an online software budgeting package that is a huge success so far. I first heard about it through a “Twitter” sent from a friend who simply said “mint.com is pretty slick” He’s a graphic designer so I was expecting an Adobe Photoshop tutorial rather than a personal finance tool.
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The New York Times just ran an interesting article comparing business budgeting to home budgeting. Apparently, many an entrepreneur out there doesn’t budget as well in their personal lives as they do with their business.

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I posted previously about Google Spreadsheets, which look like Google’s first strike at Microsoft’s Office empire.  The spreadsheets seem to be designed for the everyday user as a low-cost alternative to the expensive MS Office suite.  Well, I’m all about saving money, so I decided to give it a spin.

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I’ve been doing my budget, checkbook and other financial planning in Microsoft Excel for some time now.  It’s handy enough, does my calculations quickly and allows me to move between files and sheets quickly.  Products like Excel have also made Bill Gates the richest man on the planet.  But now Google has what just might shut down part of Microsoft’s gold mine.

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Personal Finance involves a lot of number crunching.  Not to mention that there are forms to be filled out, phone calls to be made and dates to remember.  We calculate, negotiate, and consolidate.  When you think about it, there’s a lot to do in the course of a year.  No wonder people get burned out on it and leave behind the perceived drudgery of the things that make us rich.

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As some of you already know, I’ve set some ambitious financial goals for 2006.  But I’ll be honest, I’m not getting where I want to go quite as fast as I want.   I keep pretty good track of where I’m at financially, but I knew something was missing.  Something was keeping me from moving forward quite as fast as I could.  But what?

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