Last century I used to use Quicken to track my expenses and income down to the cent, but I haven't done so for about ten years (although one of my goals for 2008 is to start doing it again, mainly to make my tax returns a bit easier to complete). That meant that I was able to get an accurate view of a year's income and expenses and make a pretty accurate budget for the following year. However, these days I manage without having any formal budget (at least I haven't written one down on paper for years) as everything is running more or less on autopilot, I have sufficient sources of funds available to manage any peaks and troughs in income or expenses, and I know my overall spending for the year will be won't throw out my savings plan.
How do I know that my spending will be in control, without using any budget? By living a very boring, predictable lifestyle (some would say, contented and stable). I have relatively fixed expenses on rates, utilities, travel etc. and we tend to eat the same things for breakfast and lunch (I bring lunch from home, although DW tends to eat out a bit more often), and randomly cycle through a selection of fairly simple home-cooked meals for dinner. For entertainment I generally watch free-to-air TV, browse the web, or read investment books from the local library (or while browsing in a book store). We also spend some time gardening, or travelling to the local parks and beaches, and I don't have a lot of free time anyhow since I'm busy with the kids and doing some part-time study by distance education. Of course this only works because we don't make any 'spur of the moment' purchases, and we don't spend anything on restaurants, movies etc. and don't do much (any) "entertaining" such as dinner parties. It also helps that I'd previously accumulated a whole lot of "toys" (camera, video, telescope, scuba gear, skis, mountain bike etc.) over many, many years, so that I now have a garage packed full of "stuff" to play with whenever the mood strikes (and I have any spare time!). Since I don't even have any room to store more "stuff" if I did buy it, it's quite easy to just go window shopping and ignore any pangs of temptation to buy a new shiny, plaything.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Saturday, 23 February 2008
Using QIF files to record Quicken transactions
I'm trying to use Quicken Personal Plus 2008 to record all my financial transactions this year, but not having a huge amount of success so far. Entering stock and mutual fund transaction details is easy enough, as I can enter them once a month from the statements. The trouble I have is keeping a record of all the miscellaneous daily transactions I make, such as buying lunch or a snack, or picking up some groceries during lunch hour.
Although I keep receipts for these transactions, the receipts tend to just accumulate in my wallet for a couple of weeks until I get around to entering them all into Quicken at home. Some cash transactions don't have a receipt either, so I end up writing these items down on scraps of paper which I take home. Often these odd notes get lost before I can enter it into Quicken, making my cash reconciliation rely on the dreaded "miscellaneous adjustment" item.
What I'd like to do is record these daily transactions on my PC at work, since I usually have some spare time during lunch or tea breaks which I could use to keep these small transactions up to date. But there doesn't seem to be any small utility provided by Quicken for doing this, and I sure don't want to buy and install a second copy of Quicken on my work PC just for these few transactions!
Using an excel spreadsheet would be OK, except that Quicken doesn't import excel files, and I don't want to have to reenter transactions into Quicken at home if I've already done the data entry once. Luckily the old QIF file format Quicken originally developed for sending transaction data to technical support can provide a simple solution.
Older versions of Quicken used QIF to import transaction data from banks, credit providers and the like. But the more recent versions don't support QIF import except for Cash accounts. (It's been replaced by the more comprehensive 'Web Connect' or QFX format, which is based on the open format OFX). However, the QIF format is fine for recording simple transactions, and the way around this limitation is to save transactions in a QIF file and import it into a dummy Cash account setup in Quicken for this purpose. Once the transactions are imported they can then be simply moved to the appropriate account within Quicken, without having to reenter the transaction details.
As QIF files are plain text, you can use a simple text editor such as Notepad to enter the transactions. I just email the file to myself from work, and can import the file into Quicken at home with a couple of keystrokes.
The QIF format is fully explained in wikipedia, but for simple transaction data you just need a header line and a couple of data lines for each individual transaction. For example:
Imported into Quicken this data appears as:
and can be moved to the relevant accounts by highlighting a transaction and using the Edit/Transaction/Move Transaction command to move them to the relevant account.
If I used a PDA I could even enter these transactions as I made them in the shops, eliminating the need to even take the receipts back to the office to do the data entry.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
Although I keep receipts for these transactions, the receipts tend to just accumulate in my wallet for a couple of weeks until I get around to entering them all into Quicken at home. Some cash transactions don't have a receipt either, so I end up writing these items down on scraps of paper which I take home. Often these odd notes get lost before I can enter it into Quicken, making my cash reconciliation rely on the dreaded "miscellaneous adjustment" item.
What I'd like to do is record these daily transactions on my PC at work, since I usually have some spare time during lunch or tea breaks which I could use to keep these small transactions up to date. But there doesn't seem to be any small utility provided by Quicken for doing this, and I sure don't want to buy and install a second copy of Quicken on my work PC just for these few transactions!
Using an excel spreadsheet would be OK, except that Quicken doesn't import excel files, and I don't want to have to reenter transactions into Quicken at home if I've already done the data entry once. Luckily the old QIF file format Quicken originally developed for sending transaction data to technical support can provide a simple solution.
Older versions of Quicken used QIF to import transaction data from banks, credit providers and the like. But the more recent versions don't support QIF import except for Cash accounts. (It's been replaced by the more comprehensive 'Web Connect' or QFX format, which is based on the open format OFX). However, the QIF format is fine for recording simple transactions, and the way around this limitation is to save transactions in a QIF file and import it into a dummy Cash account setup in Quicken for this purpose. Once the transactions are imported they can then be simply moved to the appropriate account within Quicken, without having to reenter the transaction details.
As QIF files are plain text, you can use a simple text editor such as Notepad to enter the transactions. I just email the file to myself from work, and can import the file into Quicken at home with a couple of keystrokes.
The QIF format is fully explained in wikipedia, but for simple transaction data you just need a header line and a couple of data lines for each individual transaction. For example:
!Type:Cash
D12/02/2008
T-77.43
PSupermarket
^^
D13/02/2008
T500.00
PATM withdrawal
^^
D13/02/2008
T-10.96
PTakeaway
^^
Imported into Quicken this data appears as:
and can be moved to the relevant accounts by highlighting a transaction and using the Edit/Transaction/Move Transaction command to move them to the relevant account.
If I used a PDA I could even enter these transactions as I made them in the shops, eliminating the need to even take the receipts back to the office to do the data entry.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
Belief-o-matic
While reading through YoYo's blog I came across a link to the Belief-o-matic online questionaire. You probably already know, more or less, what you "believe" in, but this bit of fun might help you find the appropriate label for your viewpoint.
According to the survey, my views best match the following:
1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (97%)
3. Theravada Buddhism (80%)
4. Nontheist (79%)
5. Liberal Quakers (78%)
6. Neo-Pagan (64%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (58%)
8. Taoism (52%)
9. New Age (48%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (48%)
Reading the summary on secular humanism I'm happy enough with that label, but I must admit it's surprising to see that Nontheist is only a slightly better match to my views than being a Liberal Quaker would be. Apparently belief in a god might be optional at the more liberal end of the Quaker spectrum.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
According to the survey, my views best match the following:
1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (97%)
3. Theravada Buddhism (80%)
4. Nontheist (79%)
5. Liberal Quakers (78%)
6. Neo-Pagan (64%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (58%)
8. Taoism (52%)
9. New Age (48%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (48%)
Reading the summary on secular humanism I'm happy enough with that label, but I must admit it's surprising to see that Nontheist is only a slightly better match to my views than being a Liberal Quaker would be. Apparently belief in a god might be optional at the more liberal end of the Quaker spectrum.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Time to buy Straw Hats?
There's an old stock market saying that one should "buy straw hats in Winter" - yet another way of saying it's better to buy low and sell high, than vice versa ;)
With the stock market off last year's highs by more than 15%, some sectors are looking especially "cheap". The banking sector in Australia is one such source of possible bargains. The table below shows that the banks are down by around 30%-40% from the highs last year, and are currently producing dividend yields between 5.2% and 7.3%.
The banking sector comprises 12.5% of the All Ordinaries stock index, but my Australian stock portfolio is relatively underweight banking stocks, at only 6.9% of my portfolio invested in bank stocks. My tax refund arrived by EFT yesterday (less than one week after filing with eTax), so I may use part of this money to increasing my existing bank investments.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
With the stock market off last year's highs by more than 15%, some sectors are looking especially "cheap". The banking sector in Australia is one such source of possible bargains. The table below shows that the banks are down by around 30%-40% from the highs last year, and are currently producing dividend yields between 5.2% and 7.3%.
The banking sector comprises 12.5% of the All Ordinaries stock index, but my Australian stock portfolio is relatively underweight banking stocks, at only 6.9% of my portfolio invested in bank stocks. My tax refund arrived by EFT yesterday (less than one week after filing with eTax), so I may use part of this money to increasing my existing bank investments.
Copyright Enough Wealth 2007
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