Thursday, September 11, 2008

Hooray for Google Docs!

Dan and I have tried a variety of ways to stay on the same page with our budget. 

It included everything from a low-tech pencil-scribbled pad filled with all our receipts to Dan's Excel spreadsheet which he kept on his system. The spreadsheet was a cool idea, but I couldn't access it. At best we updated it monthly. Very involved.

But now... ta dah!!! We use our Google Docs spreadsheet online to put in our receipts. It takes me a minute a day to enter and I automatically see how much of our grocery budget or clothing budget, etc. we have spent for the month. And because the updates are so immediate, I have a good idea when we go shopping how much I have to spend for the rest of the month. Believe me, I need it. 

Plus, I'm a sight-learner so the pie charts and bar charts on the website help me to see how we're doing. 

Thanks, Dan, for getting us set up on this great system. 


3 comments:

Sittintall said...

That's a really cool idea. We tried doing a spread sheet online too, but I never looked at it more than 1x every 6 months or so. I'll have to check it out.

Short Stop said...

We need this. We haven't found anything yet that works for both of us. Sending the link to J.

Jenni S. said...

Oh wow. To be this on top of things... We may need to employ something like this.