Unfortunately right now, the entire world is facing a high degree of uncertainty. Not only uncertainties with regards to health and the COVID-19 crisis and civil unrest, but also economic uncertainly, and even possibly diplomatic uncertainty.
During times like these, our thoughts can be most productive by focusing on things we can control ourselves.
One thing we can almost always do better is to eliminate thoughtless spending. Thoughtless spending is when we get less value than we should from our hard earned money.
It could be the shoes we bought on impulse when we saw they were on sale, but after we bought them we never actually wore them. It could be buying food we don't have time to use before it goes bad and needs to be tossed. It could be saving money on an inexpensive hotel and then spending more of our precious vacation time sitting in traffic.
There are many applications available to help someone budget. Most of them automatically categorize transactions from your financial accounts to create pretty, but not very informative graphs.
At MyMoneyPicture, we consider giving a third party access to your financial accounts an unacceptable security risk, and that is why we never ask for access to your accounts.
But more importantly, manually entering and categorizing transactions yourself, using categories you create, allows more meaningful analysis of the value you are getting from your money. Entering a new transaction will take less than a minute, and provide more feedback than you could ever get from an automatic listing of all of your spending. For example, if you shop at a grocery store, you could be buying groceries for a charity, to take to work, or for yourself. At some major stores, you could be buying groceries, clothing, or even motor oil. Automatic categorizations based on the establishment where you made the purchase could never have the accuracy of categories you create and assign yourself. With MyMoneyPicture you can assess the value you receive from your spending in a way that is unique to you.
During this time of uncertainty, many of us want to make sure we are getting the maximum value for our money.
MyMoneyPicture is a simple online tool for tracking spending, developing a budget, projecting future cash flow, and analyzing our finances. MyMoneyPicture is fast, free, secure and anonymous.
