Thank heavens for small victories

Source

I balanced my accounts last night!

One of my "new year's resolutions", (in that I don't really have new year's resolutions but sometimes I just make resolutions) is to be better about my finances, specifically, about keeping track of them.  I was using a Google Docs spreadsheet (I don't need fancy money software programs!)...which slowly deteriorated into me not calculating the expenses.  At all.  For the period of October through December*.  Hmm.

So this year, bright cheery and chipper, I decided to hell with my spreadsheet, I was buying Quicken.  And let me tell you, to someone who has been manually entering receipts into a spreadsheet, Quicken was like being introduced to cocaine (I presume.)  All of a sudden, my transactions sort themselves manually by date, I magically know the amount on Brandon's credit card...wow!  Its like, a whole new financial world out there.

And yesterday, I actually got the accounts to reconcile (I am still entering my transactions by hand.)  I may have shouted with glee loud enough for the whole apartment complex to compliment me on my success.  But there is nothing like that feeling of the numbers all adding up :)

*There was something bizarrely liberating about not checking my holiday spending until it was too late.  And then, it was too late.


**  Did I really say I don't make new year's resolutions?  I clearly do - I have a post entitles "Superlatives and Resolutions"! Perhaps what I meant was, I don't keep new year's resolutions.