[CS-FSLUG] Confessions of a Dumb Spreadsheet User

[Tim Young]

Of course, any time someone talks about how you can put 10 years 
worth of data into any one thing, my thoughts immediately switch over 
to thoughts about "backups"  :)

My wife and I use a database package that we created, that does about 
the same sort of thing.  The end result is that we can better see how 
we have spent our finances instead of giving us strict guidelines on 
how to spend the finances.  When we were first married, we had some 
long discussions about the concept of a "budget."  I was thinking 
that a budget was supposed to guide your spending habits (put 
limitations on spending), while my wife thought it was something that 
let you observe how things are spent and give you a baseline to 
compare things to.  We have the world's most flexible "budget".  As 
missionaries, we do not have a consistent income (the amount changes 
fairly regularly), and we spend about 8-months of the year driving 
from one mission to the next, so our gas expense changes 
dramatically.  So our "budgeting" program allows us to change the 
budget after the fact.  We look to see where our funds were spend, we 
look to see how much came in, and then we change the budget 
accordingly, though the sum of all budget items never exceeds the 
amount that came in that month.  If we go over budget in a category 
one month, we keep a negative amount in that category until we "pay 
it back off" the next month or two.  Originally, I thought this was 
the most insane form of "budgeting", as it threw out the concept of 
being a guideline to follow.  But it does do what it needs to do, in 
that we can see, month-by-month, how we have spent our money and make 
sure we are not over-spending for our income.

All that to say, it is fun to learn new technologies, but it is 
better yet to hear that you have a good budgeting system that works 
for you.  I think we all need to be wise stewards of our finances, 
regardless of the wacky ways, technologies, or methods we use.  And 
it seems like you may even be having some fun while doing it.  :)

     - Tim Young

On 4/11/2011 7:11 PM, Don Parris wrote:
> Now you all can come along and tell me how you do it back in
> Cleveland.  Or Machu Picchu or whereever.