On second thought, don't
Aug. 15th, 2007 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteI'm sure if the singer of that famous "The best things in life are free/But you can keep them for the birds and bees/Give me money..." song knew about how difficult it is to manage your money, he might have changed the lyrics a bit, or not written the song at all.
The past two days I've been trying to do something "good" and "smart" by staying on top of my finances-- I balance my checkbook using Quicken 2007 for Mac, which has a bazillion features that I never take advantage of, but all I really NEED it for is keeping track of my purchases. I used to be really good about it-- collecting my receipts from a week and entering the purchases in the widget I have installed on my Dashboard. But I slacked off, and a lot of receipts entered the trash but not into my checkbook. Yeah, REAAAAL smart.
Anyway, after lots of downloading and constant window-switching, I've managed to get my accounts MOSTLY balanced, but there's still some measly issues, and I wish I could switch off the part of me that REALLY wants to be anal about my money. There's a -$8.00 difference in my Checking account, and a -$3.00 difference in my Savings, the latter of which I think is a Service Charge or a Refund of a Service Charge-- that's the only recurring $3 I can think of off the top of my head, and I don't normally touch my Savings account for anything besides large transfers. But I keep checking the statements, downloading all the files, and NOTHING matches up. It bothers me so much, but just randomly deleting things I think don't belong caused me all this strife in the first place.
I'm not really sure what to do-- just put an Adjustment in both accounts and be done with it (I mean seriously, $11... who cares, right?) or actually sit down and go through everything ONE BY ONE even if it means more window-switching. I'll just have to make sure nothing else is open so I don't get distracted, right? *shrug* I don't know if it's worth it or not, but if I "slack off," who's to say I won't end up doing that in the future with LARGER amounts of money that matter? Ugh.
What bothers me most is how I download the files DIRECTLY from my bank, but they still appear out of order (from how they are on my statement online from the exact same bank) when I get them into Quicken. I don't know how my bank compiles the files for Quicken, but you'd think if there's specific time/date data, it would reflect the same in both places. But what might be in 1 2 3 order at my bank might be 2 3 1 order or something even weirder in Quicken, and I can't move them if they're all from the same day. It's not like I can add a timestamp to any of the transactions. I doubt that would fix my problem anyway, though...
ARGH! I need a financial expert, stat!
The past two days I've been trying to do something "good" and "smart" by staying on top of my finances-- I balance my checkbook using Quicken 2007 for Mac, which has a bazillion features that I never take advantage of, but all I really NEED it for is keeping track of my purchases. I used to be really good about it-- collecting my receipts from a week and entering the purchases in the widget I have installed on my Dashboard. But I slacked off, and a lot of receipts entered the trash but not into my checkbook. Yeah, REAAAAL smart.
Anyway, after lots of downloading and constant window-switching, I've managed to get my accounts MOSTLY balanced, but there's still some measly issues, and I wish I could switch off the part of me that REALLY wants to be anal about my money. There's a -$8.00 difference in my Checking account, and a -$3.00 difference in my Savings, the latter of which I think is a Service Charge or a Refund of a Service Charge-- that's the only recurring $3 I can think of off the top of my head, and I don't normally touch my Savings account for anything besides large transfers. But I keep checking the statements, downloading all the files, and NOTHING matches up. It bothers me so much, but just randomly deleting things I think don't belong caused me all this strife in the first place.
I'm not really sure what to do-- just put an Adjustment in both accounts and be done with it (I mean seriously, $11... who cares, right?) or actually sit down and go through everything ONE BY ONE even if it means more window-switching. I'll just have to make sure nothing else is open so I don't get distracted, right? *shrug* I don't know if it's worth it or not, but if I "slack off," who's to say I won't end up doing that in the future with LARGER amounts of money that matter? Ugh.
What bothers me most is how I download the files DIRECTLY from my bank, but they still appear out of order (from how they are on my statement online from the exact same bank) when I get them into Quicken. I don't know how my bank compiles the files for Quicken, but you'd think if there's specific time/date data, it would reflect the same in both places. But what might be in 1 2 3 order at my bank might be 2 3 1 order or something even weirder in Quicken, and I can't move them if they're all from the same day. It's not like I can add a timestamp to any of the transactions. I doubt that would fix my problem anyway, though...
ARGH! I need a financial expert, stat!
