Introduction

Hello everybody and welcome to our new blog. Our names are Randy and Kathy Finch. Back when we got married over 29 years ago, Kathy said she wanted us to start a household budget. Randy was a bit skeptical at first since he had been managing his money as a single guy fairly well without a budget. Fortunately, she was insistent because she had heard that many of the marital problems couples faced were money related. She did not want us to ever have a conflict over money. She wanted us to create a budget and only make changes that we both agreed to. So, Randy finally gave his consent. In the early 1980’s computers were just beginning to make their way into people’s homes. They had very, very little power compared to today’s multi-gigahertz multi-core processors and were quite expensive. So, our initial attempt at a budget consisted of a ledger book, a calculator, and a pencil. It turned out that our concept of how to do a budget was very good, but the pencil and paper implementation was a chore. We can’t tell you how many times our numbers just didn’t match our bank statement. Finding errors in entries or mistaken calculations were a real pain. However, when we eventually did get to switch our budget to a computer, things really got better.

Over the coming weeks we are going to be passing on to you the knowledge and skills that we have garnered over the past 29 years of budgeting. We will also talk about how to set up an easy-to-use spreadsheet to maintain your budget. Even though we now use Microsoft Excel for budgeting, any spreadsheet software will do, even some of the popular free ones. Our first electronic budget was accomplished using Microsoft Multiplan on a Commodore 64 computer. Later we bought a Commodore Amiga computer and switched to a program named Analyze. Then when we bought a PC, we began using Quattro Pro. We finally settled on Excel since it ultimately ended up being the standard spreadsheet software used at our places of work. So, as you can see, home budgeting can be done with limited computer and software power.

We will try to update this blog at least once per week. We will start with the basics of budgeting and build up to using software to accomplish this task. We will also eventually share with you the spreadsheet that we currently use for our personal home budgeting. We think you will find it very easy to use.

Randy & Kathy

P.S. Check out Randy's new novel, "Passion is a Harsh Taskmaster." It's currently available as an eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks (via iBooks app), and Smashwords.