At first, when I attempted to track our family’s spending and budget I used Microsoft’s Money 2001. I bought a new computer and it came with. Back then, while setting up there was a voice over instructing you on what you were doing. I thought - ok - pretty nice. After setting up my accounts I began updating our spending manually. The thing kept nagging me about categorizing my spending and how much I spend per category. Now I view this as a complete waste, but at the time I let the software guide me.
My true goal was to know that we have enough money all times at our checking account (the goal was above 1000$). Every check written, every card swiped - I had to put it down quickly. I put in our recurring income and expenses - I clicked on the cash-flow feature and could see how much money I have now and predict pretty accurately how much money I would have in the near future.
When I upgraded to a newer computer recently I realized Microsoft had taken out the Cash-Flow feature from the OEM version (the one that comes with a new computer). To update to the latest version which does include better online updates to your accounts and the same old feature I always used, cash-flow, I bought the newest version for free with a rebate when I bought a Tax software at tax season.
Since we have revised the way we approach budgets (see my other posts, or “our secret” page), I no longer use Money for budgeting purposes - but I still find the cash-flow graph to be very useful. I like knowing how much money I have available to me now and in the next 3 months. Then I set it up with all of our recurring income and bills again and continued to track our available balances.
Cashflow is the only feature of Microsoft Money I actually use these days. I use the Cash-Flow graph for several tasks:
- Verify I will have enough funds in my checking account considering my bills in the next 3 months.
- Identify excess funds at our checking account and time contributions to money market account
- Verify our budget and auto-investment plan for the next year
- Since my income changes each month based on number of working days - cash-flow allow matching varying expenses and incoming funds
My biggest complaint about Microsoft Money is that it doesn’t support my varying expenses and salaries very well. While I can program very well my prediction on how much income or expense I will have - I cannot really update Microsoft Money into the future very well. There’s a limit on how many entries can be put into the future and there’s no ability to put in the energy expenses to be predicted based on seasonality. Microsoft allow some of their products to be excessively exposed to security issues by allowing plugins and scripts where you wouldn’t want nor expect. That’s not the case with Microsoft Money.
To assist with predicting my salary I wrote a quick program in C#. Nothing to brag about. A function to calculate the number of working days in each half month - and based on my prior income at similar situations - just report to console (dos mode/terminal) how much I should get on each date for a certain date range. I then manually update the “bill” for my salary at Money up to the point in time Money limits me to (which ends up as only 6 months into the future - weak).
To download the C# code, click here: workdaysToSalary.zip
If you need to compile and run it - Microsoft is offering c# express for free, for further details, click here.
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August 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 pm