<$Monday, June 30, 2008$>
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 $20 for the basic version. In a nutshell, re: YNAB Pro: I approve. |
<$Friday, January 25, 2008$>
The simplicity of the Post-it
 There's more money in my checking account than is reflected on my debit tracking Post-it. Hmmm.I need to go over my receipts and bill payments again before I get too excited. I know that part of that amount is my husband's spending stipend which I haven't yet moved over to his bank. There's a lot more than that in there, though... there must be something outstanding that I'm just not remembering right now. This is why I've reverted to my Post-it system. I tried to get all fancy and high-tech by tracking my spending in a spreadsheet, but that just got me into trouble. It's an ADD thing, I guess--the more trouble something is to access, the less likely I am to use it. I could only conveniently access the spreadsheet from my work computer, which means any spending I did wouldn't get subtracted from my available funds until I came to work, added up my receipts, and then signed in to Google docs to enter the amount into my spreadsheet. Sure, the spreadsheet did the math for me, which is always nice, but it felt cumbersome, like a big chore, and also something I had to work to remember to do. My Post-it system, on the other hand, is always with me. It's as simple to use as picking up a pen and doing a little elementary subtraction. If I want to know how much money we still have, I just have to look at the Post-it pad in my wallet. If there are any receipts stuffed behind it, I know I still need to subtract those. It's pretty much the same as keeping a checkbook register, except without all the extra spaces and categories that make me feel like I fail at finances and at life. And it works; with the spreadsheet system, I had an overdraft a few weeks ago. As long as I've used my trusty Post-it system, that hasn't happened once. Sometimes low-tech is the best way to go. It may not be for everybody, but for me, the simplest method is usually the best. The more accessible and in plain view something is, the more likely I am to remember to use it, and the fewer steps needed, the less likely I am to put it off until later. It may seem inelegant, but the Post-it method is the most ADD-friendly system for tracking my spending that I've yet to find. Labels: ADD, money management, spending |
<$Friday, June 22, 2007$>
ADD, money management, and the importance of the bill calendar
| Back in April, I wrote what was supposed to be the first of three articles about managing finances when you have ADD. Life got in the way of writing the rest of the series, but as it happens, that's okay because over at Adult ADD and Money, guest author Kim Collins managed to boil down all the points I wanted to make into five succinct paragraphs. This is all the stuff that I've done, and still do, to conquer late fees and overdraft charges and stay on top of my finances. For me, the key thing has been keeping a bill payment calendar. Like the article suggests, this is simple enough with the myriad of free calendars available on the web that you can either print off to keep in a notebook or update and view online. Personally, I use a desk calendar that my company provides for free every year. In it I not only write down all of the due dates and payment amounts for all of my bills each month, I also record them in To Do list form in the margins. Every payday, I open up that calendar and go down the list, paying every bill that's due between then and the next payday and checking them off as I go. That way, if I can't remember whether I already took care of a bill, I just check to see whether it's checked off the list. I also note down any other known expenses I need to plan for that month, like birthdays or other gifting occasions, yarn I need to buy to get started on a large project with a deadline (i.e. Christmas sweaters), large, irregular bills coming up the next month that I should start setting aside funds for now, etc. As long as I always go through my calendar and make sure every item is squared away, I can budget out the rest of my paycheck for savings and spending with confidence. It's a really excellent feeling to know I can budget my funds and spend them down to the penny without having to worry about unexpected penalty fees incurred because of my own forgetfulness. Labels: ADD, money management |
<$Thursday, April 12, 2007$>
3 Things You MUST Do To Get On Top of Your Finances - and HOW to do them
| The big three hindrances inherent in Attention Deficit Disorder are impulsiveness, distractedness, and disorganization. This combination can be hard on the social life, and can wreak havoc on the job front; but nowhere does it tend to do quite as much damage as in the area of finances. Adults with ADD tend to be impulsive shoppers. They find it difficult to pay their bills on time and keep track of their money. There are scads of books and web sites full of financial advice aimed at this population, but the advice usually tends to fall short in one respect: it tells the reader WHAT to do without telling them HOW to do it. As someone with ADD myself, I entered into adulthood with no workable money management skills, despite my parents' best efforts to teach me how to balance a checkbook and drill into me the importance of saving money and making timely payments. I knew that all of these things needed to be done, but I just couldn't do them. Eventually I realized that my parents' methods just didn't work for me. It wasn't because I lacked the discipline to do the things I knew were necessary to stay financially afloat--it was because I simply wasn't wired to do them the way that I had been taught. What I needed was a system, one tailored to my own unique needs and ways of processing and tracking information. I needed to throw out all of the old, established rules and methods and create my own. Since then, I've formed three habits that are essential to living in financial harmony: paying my bills on time, knowing how much money I have at all times, and keeping track of where my money is going. What's more, I found ways to do them that work consistently for me. In a three-part series I'll share my methods here, in the hopes that you'll either find something useful in helping to stabilize your own finances, or gain inspiration in developing methods that work for you. Part One: Paying On Time There is no faster or surer way to damage your credit than by paying your bills late. This holds true for ANY bill, not just credit cards and bank loans. Grace periods might save you from paying late fees if you miss the due date by a few days, but the fact of your lateness will still show up on your credit report and lower your score; and regardless of grace periods, paying late will cause your interest rate to go up and cause you to bleed money--and that's not even counting late fees you incur if you miss your grace period. Few things are more essential to gaining control of your finances than learning to pay your bills on time, every time. Think of this as your first step toward financial independence, remembering that first steps are HUGE. They might not seem that way to those who are already running marathons, but to one just learning to walk, the first step is everything. If you miss it, you fall on your cute little baby tushy. But if you keep trying, eventually you'll make it. Make that first step, and know that eventually, you'll be off and running, too. My own failure to pay my bills on time wreaked all kinds of havoc on my life, from getting my phone shut off to, eventually, having to give up an apartment that I loved because late fees, high interest rates and high minimum monthly payments--all due to late payments -- meant that I could no longer afford the rent. Before I could conquer the problem and start paying on time, I had to examine the reasons I couldn't seem to pay anything on time. Forgetfulness was certainly part of it, but that wasn't the only reason. Procrastination was also a key. I procrastinated because the way I had been taught to tackle my bills--my mother's way of keeping them in a box, dragging them out once or twice a month, and spending what felt like forever going through paper statements, writing checks, stuffing and addressing envelopes, etc.--felt like pure torture, so I put it off. It was easy, because the bills were stashed in a box, and for me, it's out of sight, out of mind. That helped me to forget all about them, and with the tortuous process involved in paying them, I didn't feel particularly motivated to remember. I found online bill pay to be a Godsend. It took everything I hated out of the process of paying bills. However, that still left the other half of the problem: forgetfulness. Online reminder services are a good way to conquer this (and are easy to come by; a quick Google search on "reminders" turned up several such free services)... for some. For me, they worked at first, but eventually I got to where my eye skimmed right over them while reading the contents of my inbox, and then they were quickly forgotten. I needed something more tangible, but still quick and easy. It also occurred to me that I tend to derive a lot of satisfaction and motivation from keeping To Do lists with items that I can check off as I accomplish them. I thought it might be a good idea to apply this to paying my bills, and my Bills To Pay calendar was born. It's really very simple: in a calendar that's large enough to write in legibly (I started out using Outlook printouts; similar printable calendars are available at no cost from both Google and Yahoo), I mark all of my due dates, and I also list all of my bills for the month, along with due dates and payment amounts, in a checklist on the side. I keep this near my computer, where each payday I take it out, go down the list, and make online payments for every bill that's due that pay period. The entire process takes me five minutes, and then I can feel free to forget all about it until the next payday. Having bill payments tied to an event--in this case, payday--helps me remember that it's time to pay them without needing to rely on any external reminders. This method won't work for everybody, and there is plenty of room to tailor it to suit needs and personalities other than mine; but since I started doing my bills this way, I haven't been late once. A word of warning: automatic payments might seem like an even better way to ensure timely bill payments--after all, it's automatic. Set it up once, and you don't ever have to think about it again, other than to make sure that the money is available. And therein lies the rub. Until you have such a strong handle on your finances that you can be a hundred percent certain that you'll have the money there on time, I would advise against signing up for automatic payments. Overdraft fees can be even worse than late fees. Which brings me to my second habit, which will make up Part Two: Knowing How Much You Have. Do you have a system that helps you stay on track financially? If so, I'd love to hear about it, as well as your thoughts, in the comments. Labels: ADD, hacks, money management, systems |