Keeping track of [personal finances]

Richy

So, anyone who read the thread about my fiancee knows that I suck at keeping track of my personal finances. The basic problem is that I have a good salary and I'm not a big spender, so my income is always larger than my spending and I've never had a need to keep track of what goes in and out.

Clearly, this is not a smart way to go through life. In fact, it's a recipe for disaster.

To make matters worse, I have some professional budgets to manage as part of my job. Now these budgets are the opposite situation: very little income, and lots of things that need to be purchased. I've accidentally gone over budget, with no major consequences thankfully (only a personal check to the office to cover the difference).

So, I need a way to keep track of finances. My current method is to fill in Excel spreadsheets, which is rather limited because:
1. With multiple budgets to manage, multiple categories of items in each, and multiple items in each category, the size of the spreadsheets quickly becomes unwieldy.
2. Updating an Excel spreadsheet can be tedious.
3. Formula errors can happen and screw up everything.

So, I'd like to know of good ways to keep track of finances, both monthly personal finances and per-budget professional finances. Having the same solution for both would be awesome, but I'd also be ok with separate solutions for each problem. Either way, it should allow me (1) to both make budget predictions ("I should spend $X for this category of items") and to easily insert values of individual items purchased every day, (2) to compare the predicted value to the actual value for each category, (3) to keep a grand total of income, spending, and balance, (4) in the case of my personal finances, to keep a month-by-month history.

Ideas?

JohnnyCache

I use a method where I add up all the expenses, and compare it to the income. Alternate methods include taking the income and subtracting the expenses.

If that doesn't work and you need some wifty software to do it:

http://www.mint.com/

also if you've got so much income to wave around i hope you're fully funding an IRA or something.

I'm a little curious as to what sort of circumstance you were in where you took a ouse project into the red and wrote a personal check to cover it. That would be a little eyebrow-worthy where I work.

Kyougu

Yeah, Mint is going to do everything you're looking for.

Usagi

Except I don't think Mint works in Canada, so you're hosed until they expand

They aren't free, but both Quicken and Microsoft Money are good programs that keep track of stuff for you

Cyd Cyclone

If I remember correctly, you're Canadian, so Mint.com won't work.

Try gnucash. It's ugly, but it works fairly well, lets you import your bank statements in most major formats, and it's free.

EDIT: Usagi, Microsoft Money has been discontinued.

Usagi

Well crud, thanks for catching that Cyd

khain

Quicken is pretty simplistic if it can link to your bank accounts since it then one click updates and once you have your budgets and categories set up you don't need to do anything else, however I'm unsure how their support is for banks in Canada.