Organize Your Personal Finances ...In No Time

Creating an Income and Expense Tracking Document

Okay, you've got all of your receipts. Now what do you do with them?

Even if you use software such as Quicken by Intuit or Microsoft Money (covered in more detail in Chapter 2, “Getting the Figures to Match”), you might find it helpful to keep a separate income and expense tracking document. You can run reports in your money management program that show you how you're doing with your financial goals, but the act of hand-writing or keying in the figures in a separate document can help you see the big picture more easily. I use QuickBooks (the business version of Quicken) to record all my transactions and balance all of my accounts electronically, but I also use another spreadsheet to list all of ...