<$Monday, June 30, 2008$>
I Need a Better Budget
| It took me forever to figure out a way to track my personal budget electronically that my ADD-enhanced brain could handle. After trying out other people’s spreadsheets and budgeting programs, I finally found one that was simple enough to work for me. It’s just a simple, basic spreadsheet that I keep in Google Docs, and thus far, for the most part, it works. But it works for now because my finances are really pretty simple. Normally I tend to live by the rule, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Just starting the process of buying a house, however, is beginning to give me a pretty good idea of how complicated my finances are about to become. So I’m thinking it might be time to consider upgrading to something a little more hard working in the budget software department. A popular one that I’ve seen a lot of people touting, but that I hadn’t yet tried, is You Need A Budget. I recently got a chance to try out a full trial version of YNAB Pro, and I’m pretty impressed. It has four categories: Register, Budget, Scheduler, and Reports. The Register section is for tracking your spending, and works just like a check register. I don’t know how good I’d be at using this feature, since I’ve never been able to get into the habit of using my actual check register. The big, ADD-friendly advantage this has, though, is that it automatically plugs the numbers into the “Spent” column of your budget and calculates your remaining balance for that category. That part’s pretty nifty, and saves enough extra steps that I might be able to get myself to do it. The Budget section is, of course, where you budget your funds. It’s pre-filled with every category you could possibly need, but just in case it missed one, it lets you add your own custom categories. It also lets you delete lines you don’t need so you can streamline your budget. For each month there are three columns – Budgeted, Spent, and Balance. Enter your budget in the first column, natch, and if you use the register properly, it does the rest for you. The only drawback of this section, from my standpoint, is that you can’t break it down into a bi-monthly budget. This has always been my biggest hang-up in trying to use budget software, as I get paid twice a month and have difficulty translating that into a one-month worksheet. The Scheduler could really come in handy for someone with ADD, or simply a tendency to forget stuff. You can schedule your payments, and when the time comes it will subtract them from your budget for you. If your bill payments are all automated, this could be really useful in keeping you from forgetting to account for a payment. Finally, the Report section is also just what the name suggests. It lets you view your spending by category pie chart or by column, and you can track your balances at a glance by a handy bar chart. To simplify things even further, you can import any existing Excel worksheets into the program, instead of having to start over from scratch (although it didn’t let me import a Google Doc spreadsheet that I had downloaded in Excel format). You can also import bank transactions directly from your bank’s web site. Overall, I think this budget software is all it’s cracked up to be. It’s streamlined, intuitive, and very ADD-friendly. I probably won’t be investing in a licensed copy unless/until they add a bi-monthly budget option, but if it already had one, I’d at the very least be willing to shell out the $20 for the basic version. In a nutshell, re: YNAB Pro: I approve. |
<$Thursday, June 26, 2008$>
I think I just drooled on myself a little.
| Nicole at Baking Bites shows how to make your own home-made Drumstick (tm) style ice cream cones. Only better! Labels: recipes |
Spill coffee on your wooden table.
| We're always on the lookout for non-toxic, natural alternatives to all the chemicals in our lives. This is especially important to my cancer survivor husband. I've been a little worried about this, wondering how, after we move, are we going to handle all of the paint jobs, furniture touch-ups, etc. that seem to go along with home ownership? So I'm pretty happy to have stumbled upon this Ask Metafilter article on non-toxic wood treatments. I'm especially intrigued--and a little squicked--by all of the info on shellac, where it came from and all of its uses: Pharmaceutical - shellac is used to coat enteric pills so that they do not dissolve in the stomach, but in the lower intestine, which alleviates upset stomachs. Its also used as a coating on pills to "time release" medication. Fascinating, huh? But then, there's this: If you use shellac, you have the added advantage of being able to tell your friends you painted it with an excretion of the female Coccus Lacca beetle, harvested from the bark of the trees where she deposits it to provide a sticky hold on the trunk, necessary during mating with the non-stick capable male. Bleah. But as someone else over there pointed out, honey is a bug excretion, too, and a mighty tasty one at that. At any rate, now I'm having visions of inexpensive unfinished bookcases naturally died with coffee and sealed with beetle juice dancing in my head, and no pesky carcinogens to ruin my fun. Labels: green, healthy living |
I can has hows now plz?
| New real estate agent seems pretty great so far--no trouble at all getting an appointment with her on her end, she's really flexible, which is just what we need. We just had to figure out some transportation for Husband, and now we're good to go a-hunting tomorrow afternoon. I'll have to come back to work afterwards to make up the hours I'll miss, but it's worth it if it can speed this process up. We're so tired of being houseless! We're especially eager to hurry up and move since we put in an application to adopt a puppy. We didn't think we were ready yet--it's been 8 weeks since we lost Fizzgigg, but it still feels like it just happened--but we saw a report on the local news about a bunch of Bichon Frises getting rescued from a puppy mill and brought to a local rescue shelter, and it just felt like the right thing to do. The shelter told us that they only place puppy mill survivors in homes that already have an established adult dog, though. I'm not sure why, but I think it has something to do with them being freaking terrified of people because of all of the abuse and neglect and whatnot, and the other dog makes them feel more secure. So anyway, we're not eligible for one of the rescues, but they offered to process our application anyway and put us on the waiting list for a puppy, and we agreed. I still get sad thinking about another dog in Fizz's place, but at the same time, the prospect of a puppy is helping me feel a little better. I haven't had an actual puppy to raise in... oh, ever. The only family dog I can remember getting as an actual puppy was when I was six. So it's exciting, the idea of raising a dog from scratch and knowing its entire life story. Scary, considering what a little holy terror Niblet was when she was a kitten (and still is, sometimes, seven years later), and remembering that baby animals can be as irritating at times as they are cute (or maybe that just goes for kittehs). Even so, I'm looking forward to it. Even more, I'm looking forward to being able to give it its very own yard to play in. So that's the news of us for today. Hopefully, by Monday I'll be able to give you a positive update on the house hunt. Labels: house-hunt, personal, pets |
<$Monday, June 23, 2008$>
What I've Been Up To Lately
| As I mentioned last month (o.O), we've officially started our house hunt. But we didn't get very far out of the gate before we got tripped up and had to take a step back to compose ourselves. Unfortunately, the real estate agent we were going with--who is a great guy and and a very knowledgeable agent--is just too busy right now to accommodate our weird schedule. After the second time he's had to cancel an appointment on us--we had cleared Friday afternoon to go look at houses, but he got tied up in closing rigmarole with other clients and couldn't take us--we're stepping back to take a deep breath and decide whether we want to stick with this agent or try out my sister's favorite realtor. So that bit sucks. We did get to go out one afternoon a few weeks ago, and found a house we both really liked, but we were dithering on the location, and while we were doing that somebody else snatched it up. So much for that. Apart from that, I've begun revamping my web site (a redesign for this blog is next on my list), which entails re-self-teaching myself CSS and various other web languages. I also revamped my Etsy shop and added some new items, and have still more stuff to add once I get a sunny afternoon free to take pictures. And I've been writing. I think I'm only 20,000 words or so from the end of my novel. That looks like a lot, until you hold it up next to the 70,000 words (or somewhere thereabouts) that I've already written. Finally, I took a much needed vacation, in which I didn't go anywhere, slept as much as I pleased, got lots of "me" time, and discovered a thrift shop where the clothes are expensive but the price tags are so very not. We're talking brand names that I gave up thinking I'd ever wear a long time ago, and nothing over $5.99. No, I'm not telling you where it is. I don't want you snurching all the good stuff out from under me. But today, I feel stylish and cute and like I belong in a cotton commercial. It's the fabric of our lives! Labels: house-hunt, meta, personal, shopping |
Let the hiatus be ended. I come bearing links.
Hidey-ho, boys and girls! Since I've been absent for so long, I'll waste no time giving you the goods.
That's all I've got. Unless you also want excuses as to where the hay I've been for the last month. I don't really have any of those, either. I just felt a little burned out on blogging--especially on blogging-for-hire--so I put this blog on the back burner while I decided whether or not I wanted to continue it. And the decision I reached is that, indeed, I do. So although, like with my other blog, posting will remain a little sporadic while I try to finish the rough draft of my novel, I will be posting here again. And I will try my very hardest not to let it descend into all rants about our nightmare house non-hunt (which is a whole 'nother post), although as things currently stand, that certainly is tempting. It's good to be back! Labels: bargains, coupons, food problem, link roundup, meta, personal |