Money

If you wish to make changes to a recurring bill, you can do so in one of two ways: editing the bill series allows you to change a bill for all subsequent payments....

Now that you have set up your expenses, it is time to enter your income. You can track your paychecks in one of two ways: net or gross. Net pay simply enters the amount of take-home pay that you receive, without tracking taxes, insurance, and retirement contributions.

Now that you have set up all of your accounts, bills, and income information in Microsoft Money, you are ready to dive into how you’ll use it every day. As you track your spending, pay bills, and balance bank accounts, consider Money your daily financial companion, easily keeping track of all the details.

As you enter transactions, you can assign a category to them, to group income and expenses by their actual purpose. For example, a Dining Out category would track the amount of money that you spend on food at restaurants. Money includes a number of sample categories which you may find useful.

Occasionally, you may write a check or have other transactions that include payments for more than one category.

While entering a bill as a withdrawal transaction using the method above is simple, Microsoft Money has an even easier way of managing that stack of bills that you have sitting on your desk.

Printing your checks in Microsoft Money can save you a considerable amount of time and help reduce errors when compared to handwritten checks.

As your bank statements come in, you should balance (also called reconciling) your bank accounts to ensure that the transactions you have entered in Money match those from your bank’s records.

If you cannot successfully balance your account, Money can help in a few different ways. If you click Next when the value in the Difference field is not zero (meaning your account is not properly reconciled), the Balance Wizard will present you with three options for solving the problem....

Now that you have begun using the program to manage your income and expenses, Microsoft Money can offer a significant amount of customized advice. At the bottom of your account register is the personalized feedback area as shown in Figure 6-8.