Money Management on Your Computer

We all have our ways of managing our money– even the very simplistic ways like taping your bills on the fridge. Obviously managing our money requires some organization. I read this article today on a bunch of applications you can use to remember to pay your bills, but let me tell you about some of my favorite free ways to keep my finances straight.

iCal is an excellent resource for bills, if you already regularly use iCal. You can schedule reminders on your computer, iPhone or iPod(if you use your iPod, don’t forget to sync it often), but these reminders are a bit annoying. Useful, but annoying. I can’t deal with looking at all my bills in iCal, but I use it for one-time bills. For my upcoming wedding, I have a specific Wedding calendar in iCal and I have to-dos for each of the vendors we still need to pay.

Secondly, sign up for online banking. And set up your utility accounts and other bills online. Most business offer a free online account management. Many will even email you a reminder when your bill is almost due. I also keep a little menu in my bookmarks bar of “Bills”. I can easily access the right website and check on my bill.

Quicken Online is another amazing resource. Their services are totally free and you can even download an app for your iPhone. You can easily find all of your bank accounts and credit cards and add them. You can see what the balances are on each of them. And Quicken will also average out other bills and their due dates to estimate when they will be due and how much and you can go in an enter the actual information.

Lastly, if you have something which you need to pay soon but can’t grab your checkbook right now, you can put a Stickie on your Desktop to remind you of it later. This gets a bit messy long term but will work nicely for a quick reminder.

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