$$Moola managment?$$

[DanTekGeek]

heyhey,
Now that I get a steady income, I need to be able to keep track of my expenses. I dont need anything complicated. I just need something to say:
Ok, dan got paid x amount.
X amount + existing amount = y.
y - expense a = z
z - expense b = w.

just something as simple as that.
you guys know of anything?

 

[Viro]

If you've got Excel installed, that is a very good package. The wizards help too.

 

[adambyte]

AppleWorks has an easy spreadsheet component, but I don't think it has wizards that would do that. More of a do-it-yourselfer solution.

 

[Mephisto]

Any spreadsheet can do what you are asking for, I would suggest a real finance program though. Quicken and iCash are the two obvious ones that come to mind.

 

[Viro]

I'm genuinely curious, what to pure finance applications do that spreadsheets don't. I guess I just want to know why bother with pure finance applications, when you already have a spreadsheet.

 

[Mephisto]

I used to think the same thing, and the answer is very little. Or at least very little that most people would care about.

What a finance program does give you over a spreadsheet is ease of data analysis. Most anything that can be done in a finance program can be done in a spreadsheet, but quite often not as easily. I don't have to wangle something everytime I want to do data analysis on my portfolio. It also makes it easier to track recurring expenses and income and do projections outwards. Basically you can tell where your money is coming from and where it is going with a minimum of effort.

As your finances get more complicated it gets more important though, real estate, stock portfolios, professional expenses, etc...

EDIT: When you really get down to it what the original author wanted could be done in about 150 lines of Cocoa. Expense/Income dropdown, description field, amount. Serialize the stuff to an XML file with a date for each entry. Then create a table and possibly a tree view and you are done. Since you are not really doing any data analysis on it that should do.