Budget Freak

For the past 6 months, I had been using Money Manager Ex to keep track of my finances. It had worked out pretty well for keeping track of my day to day expenses, but the more I used it, the more it was lacking. Not to say that it’s a bad program, but I wanted to keep track of more than the program would allow. I had tried using a demo version of Microsoft Money, but ultimately, I didn’t want to have to pay for the software.

Enter GnuCash. A free, open-source financial program, that has just become available for windows (before it was Linux only). GnuCash offers a much more robust program, forcing you to use double-entry accounting (ie. for each transaction, you need a balancing credit and debit), can track investments and fixed assets, and has much better method of splitting transactions. The reporting functionality is also much better, and is customizable.

One of the biggest differences, is I’ll be able to track taxes and pre-tax deductions. Before, when I got a paycheck, I would only input my Net Income, or after tax and deduction money. For example, if I had a $1,000 gross paycheck, I might only enter $600 income, thus losing my tax, health insurance, and 401k deductions. Now, I can record my gross income, as well as all the taxes and deductions. I can now also track my car loan better. I can now not only keep track of payments, but also expense the interest I’m being charged. If nothing else, I’ll be able to actually see how much money the loan is costing me.

I’ve spent a few hours over the last week migrating the past 6 months worth of transactions over, and I’m now completely switched. As a result, all my monthly expense totals for the past 6 months have changed. One of these days I’ll go back and make a note of the changes, but for now, just know that June’s expense report will look a little different. Anywho, I’ll keep you updated on how the software is working, but my so far, it’s working great.

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