Knowledge is power

I downloaded a trial version of Quicken and started putting in some account balances. The good news is that overall we are in the black. That's including the house, my wife's car which is paid off and our combined super. We aren't much in the black but we'll take anything we can get. "That's depressing," my wife said when she saw the credit card column. It is depressing. But at least we are doing something about it now. It will be good to see what we are actually spending our money on. My best estimate is that we spend about $1000 per fortnight on discretionary items. If we could cut that in half it would go a long way to spending less than we earn.

I also expect that by monitoring what we spend we will automatically spend less. In the last week we have only spent around $20 on groceries and our tithe. There has been none of the frivolous discretionary spending on credit cards that normally take place. The figures in Quicken may be depressing but my overall mood is good because I know we are taking the right steps to fix the problem.