Posts Tagged ‘checkbook’

I am lousy at math, thus defying the misconception that you have to be good at math to be good with computers. Therefore, managing my personal finances have always been a challenge to me. Living on a limited budget has given me an appreciation for simplistic and frugal lifestyles, which means I have been learning how to be more accountable for the little money I have. Over the past year I have been using an online checkbook utility called ClearCheckBook.com for keeping an eye on my expenses. This is a simple checkbook format which allows you to manage your finances anywhere you have an internet connection. You can export and import from common formats such as Quicken. This has been a valuable tool during times, when I didn’t always have a home computer, and I would jump from many systems.

Now that I have a reliable home computer I have tested out a few home financial applications availible for Linux. The first one I tried is HomeBank. It has a nice simple interface and is very simple for bassic home accounts. I would have perfered this application, If I wasn’t encountering regular crashes on my Debian XFCE Lenny system. So I looked at GNUcash, which I remember playing with back in my early induction into the Linux community. GNUcash is much more complex then HomeBank and would be an excellent alternative to proprietary paid financial managers. The default formatting you have to choose from is quite elaborate and complex, and since I have little to no understanding of this kind of Software I decided to start with a blank page, and categorize my accounts to make sense to me.  With that said, it took me some tinkering, to figure out how to get expenses, bank accounts, account payable (for bills), and money I own. Once I sat down and configured it to my specifications and learned how to read and input transactions. I was happy with it, and I will see how I like it in the next few months.