suggestions on keeping track?

[whitestripe]

This is the first week of our mortgage (weeee!) and I really want to start off on the right foot with keeping track of EVERYTHING financial, and methods of keeping track. Any suggestions are welcome, personal experiences, things that work, things that don't work, ways you've recorded things etc.
I am thinking of having a filing cabinet with all our paper documents for starters, which I am sure most people do. Then keeping track of our expenses in monthly tallied spreadsheets, and finally keeping track of our loan contributions in a spreadsheet separately as well.
I guess I'm just wondering what everyone else does?

[noppenbd]

We use Quicken. Tracks everything. I can compare the balance on our loan with what the mortgage company says, and make sure that any extra principal payments are applied correctly.

[kork13]

I'm pretty handy with excel, so I mostly use a somewhat elaborate series of spreadsheets. Enables me to keep track of my expenses, "budget", investing plans, savings, bills, balances, and so on.... It's probably over-complicated (and manually intensive--I can't automatically download stuff into it), but it has a few capabilities that programs like Quicken do not, so I'm happy with it.

On that note, however, I've also used quicken, and for simple expense, balance, and loan tracking, it does a good job.

[Caoineag]

With kork13, I know how to use excel and its extremely handy.

[whitestripe]

i use excel already with my personal expenses.
i am intrigued kork13, what are your elaborate spreadsheets? how are they detailed? i love peoples organisational routines.
i was also wondering how people organise them, and how many they have. for instance, do you JUST have a monthly spreadsheet? or do you keep tallies on everything monthly and yearly? do you keep running tallies on things?

[Ima saver]

You won't like my answer. I write every bill down on a piece of paper according to the date it is due. Then I cross it off the list when I pay it and when everything is crossed off, I make up a new list. It has worked for me for 44 years.

[WrenC]

Quicken is good, but you have to pay for it. I use Mint.com--it's not quite as functional as budgeting software like Quicken, but it's free and it'll definitely let you keep track of all your expenses, accounts, and budgets.
(I'm in no way affiliated with Mint.com)

[Angio333]

I love using an envelope system for all non-untility or loan payments.

[whitestripe]

thanks for all the suggestions: unfortunately i cant use mint because i live in australia and it wont let me. and we will be using our credit cards for most purchases so the envelope system wont really work for us.

[swanson719]

the envelope system is based on the premise of not having credit cards. Unless they actively save you money, why keep them? Anyway - excel is great. I use it as well, but we more do a paper budget and pay all the bills when they are due via the old fashioned check in the mail. We don't do online payments because some people have double dipped in the same month then refused to refund, claiming they would credit it towards the next month, then charged the next month. I ended up over-drafting on it, and stopped all auto-pays after that. You don't need to keep everything either. Just the mortgage statements, pay-offs, and tax stuff. We don't keep any utility info at all for more than a month. The next months bill has the last months payment on it, so when we get the new one, we throw out the old one.

[whitestripe]

swanson: they will be saving us money and making us cash at the same time.

[noppenbd]

the envelope system is based on the premise of not having credit cards. Unless they actively save you money, why keep them? Anyway - excel is great. I use it as well, but we more do a paper budget and pay all the bills when they are due via the old fashioned check in the mail. We don't do online payments because some people have double dipped in the same month then refused to refund, claiming they would credit it towards the next month, then charged the next month. I ended up over-drafting on it, and stopped all auto-pays after that. You don't need to keep everything either. Just the mortgage statements, pay-offs, and tax stuff. We don't keep any utility info at all for more than a month. The next months bill has the last months payment on it, so when we get the new one, we throw out the old one.

I do my online bill pay from my bank's site, rather than letting the biller set it up on their end. It gives me more control and all my bills are paid from one place. No chance of double-dipping either. Plus if something doesn't get there (which has never happened with us) your bank would be liable and has an incentive to help track it down. If you had set it up with your CC company to auto-draft, they would not really have an incentive to credit it in a timely fashion.