Must Have Guide on Using a PC to Organize Your Finances

Millions of people use Internet banking everyday, and with good reason. By having access to your bank account from the comfort of your own home you are given awesome benefits as well as simply queuing time at the bank. To start with, you have all the information you need regarding your finances, at the tip of your fingers 365 days a year, 24/7. There is no need to wait for that bank statement or hold for ages on ridiculous telephone queues. You know the ones – "press 1 if you wish to be taken to even more options, press 2 if you are wearing red underpants, press 3 if you are aware we are charging you obscene amounts of money for this call". Do not we all hate those? They should be illegal in my opinion. Internet banking eliminates all of this hassle and saves us time and money. Well, did you know that you could actually take this a stage further by using Budgeting software?

Online banking is one thing, but what if you want a whole solution to organize and keep your finances without spending hours with a calculator? What if you need to simplify your tax returns without paying an accountant? Welcome to the world of Budget Software. There are plenty of ways in which you can manage your finances with the help of your PC. Finding the right package for you however can be a little trickier. There are two main ways of doing this. First of all you can use a budgeting spreadsheet. This is the simplest way of keeping track of things. You can either create one yourself using a program like Excel, or you can download one, (often for free) that will cover most types of personal finances. This is a good start but options here are a little limited.

If you really want to get, and keep those finances in order then I suggest using budget software. Depending on how you want to spend, (if anything) and your specific needs there are some really amazing software packages out there that will take care of just about everything, and more. Companies like Quicken have even partnered with over 5100 banks and other financial institutions to enable their software to automatically pay your bills for you! By using the simple guides and wizards once you've initially installed your software you can have things up and running in no time. The software I use even has a built in debt-reduction planner which has proved very useful in the past. It finds out exactly how much you owe, the amount you can afford to repay each month, and how ling it will take you to pay off your debt.

There are so many features that software like this can bring you, it would be virtually impossible to list them all. Decide on your budget first of all. A good package will start at around $ 20 and range up to about $ 80, so we are not talking mega money here. Find the three you like the most and then compare each of the features to see which one matches your needs best. It may take you a little while to choose, but once you have it will be worth it's weight in gold. Literally.