My 3 Favorite Money Management Tools
Happy Wednesday! First Wednesday of April - can you believe it? We have officially entered the second quarter of the year. Woah. Today’s post is inspired by my spring cleaning of my finances this past weekend and getting to learn more about the money management tools I already use. I enjoy tools that are intuitive and help me make my life more simple.
MINT
Mint has been around for quite a few years ago. I remember when I first got introduced to Mint and thinking,
“What, you want me to connect ALL my accounts from student loans, credit cards and bank accounts to one location?”
It freaked me out a bit at first from a security standpoint but also thinking about how much time it was going to consume to import an learn a new system. (INSERT pole vaulting over mouse turds here aka I was making up something bigger in my mind than what reality was.)
Once I got over those two fears and took time to link all my accounts, set budgets, it made it so easy to login to my Mint account and get my financial snapshot in one click. They also have a super easy to use app as well. Plus, every month they update your credit score which is pretty neat too. Or at least I think so!
This past weekend I set new budgets as some goals were accomplished and new goals were set. Mike (my fiance) and I both did this. We also talked about what are plans are for when we get married and how we want to manage budgets. Would love to hear what’s worked well for you guys reading this post too!
I use Mint for my personal finances only.
GOOGLEDOCS
Good ole GoogleDocs. Before I fully committed to Mint I built my budget via a Google Doc. I wrote out all my monthly fixed expenses and put the date in which they were deducted from my account. I think put a budget on the variable expenses - think grocery and clothes shopping, gifts, travel or anything that changes month-to-month.
I manually monitored this every month by hand and comparing to my bank accounts about every other day. The goal is to not make it so complicated you overwhelm yourself. Baby steps!
I have used GoogleDocs for both personal and business in the beginning.
FRESHBOOKS
I’ve used a handful of bookkeeping systems for my business in the past; Xero, Quickbooks, 17 hats, you name it. I believe the key to finding one that works for you is doing your research. Different types of industries may be better for one bookkeeping system over the other. Freshbooks is perfect for my consulting practice and She Did It Her Way. Invoices are a breeze to create, easy and simple interface and a lot of it I can do it all from my app. Plans start as low as $15 if you’re just starting out. Having a bookkeeping system makes tax season painless.
Plus, their customer service is AMAZING.