The good news about free personal finance software is that you probably already have it. Almost all banks these days offer free online banking, and that’s all the average person needs to keep track of his or her personal finances.
"Try not to become a man of success
but rather to become a man of value.”
- Albert Einstein |
Think about it. You have Internet access to all your transactions, debits, and credits. You can see when a particular check cleared. Many banks even show you a scanned image of the actual check, a paperless version of the old days, when banks would send your canceled checks back to you each month. You can usually download your bank statements into an Excel spreadsheet or onto other finance software, too. What more do you need? Now, if you have multiple accounts at different banks, then some free personal finance software might be useful for coordinating them all. But most software isn’t free, and popular items like Microsoft Money or Quicken are usually fairly expensive and have “upgrades” every couple of years that require more money. Isn’t the whole point to spend LESS money, not more? If you do have several accounts in different places, a better solution might be to consolidate them. Use one bank instead of several, and if there’s no good reason to keep the accounts separate, combine them. When it comes to finances, a simplified life is always better than a complicated one. Ideally, you could have one checking account and one savings account, period, with no credit cards to hassle with and no other accounts to keep tabs on. Use your bank’s free personal finance software to monitor your spending habits and start down the road of a simpler and happier life. What if you decide you do want some extra assistance in monitoring your finances? Is there any free personal finance software that can be at all useful to you? Honestly, probably not. Most of it isn’t free, and the free personal finance software is usually very basic -- probably nothing more than you could do yourself using a simple Excel spreadsheet or something similar. You online banking option provides a great resource at no cost, so use it. The point is, don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. Don’t pay for things you can do yourself for free. Don’t assume that “more expensive” means “better.” Fancier finance software isn’t going to help you spend less and save more. That’s a mindset you have to adopt on your own, and implement it using your own tenacity and self-discipline.
"Creditors have better memories than debtors;
and creditors are a superstitious sect,
great observers of set days and times."
- Benjamin Franklin |
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Debt is NOT your friend. It's not a wonderful "tool" for building wealth. That's a myth.
