Handy Dandy Budget Calculator

My thanks to Karen for this great resource! I met Karen in Edmonton when I was there to do a shopping seminar, a few years ago. She and I have stayed in touch via email. She recently sent me this link. It is a Canadian government site for resources to do with money.

I right away tested out the budget calculator. I found it very easy. It also was extensive. Usually these tools are missing categories. The only thing I would have liked would have been the ability to name a few. For example: in the income category it would be nice to add Income tax return, or odd jobs. Otherwise, you have a dollar amount and no idea where it came from.To remedy this, when I printed it I added my own categories by hand.

I loved how it tallied everything up for me! I loved how each page gave you a look at where you are at. In the end it even gave you a percentage amount that you spent in each sub category. I found this is very eye opening as you can see what percentage of your income goes where. At the end it does up a nifty pie chart and graph. You can choose to save it as a PDF, excel, or print it off.  I am definitely going to use this for my planning for next year! I am pretty excited! How about you??!! Thanks again Karen!

Free Things

Do you like free stuff? I do. To check out a great website that is actually for Canadians go to http://www.redflagdeals.com/ . Right now there's free ouchless elastics just click on this link and fill in your address http://www.goody.com/Promotions/freebies.aspx Also, check out http://www.save.ca/ for free coupons.





Free computer stuff: Need a word document program or powerpoint or excel type program? Don't want to pay huge dollars? Try http://www.openoffice.org/ it's all free! Or use google docs, which is a free program if you have a gmail account, which is also free. Gmail is a great email site because there isn't all the picture ads everywhere. I am hoping to get my contacts imported to gmail from hotmail and just use gmail.





Anti-Virus: I use the free version of AVG http://free.avg.com/. There are quite a few out there, but my computer guy likes this one best.





Website Hosting: Want to start your own website? Want to do it for free?http://www.weebly.com/





For really free things sign up for Freecycle in your area. You not only get and give things, you are helping the landfills stay cleaner!http://www.freecycle.org/

Ready to start tracking your spending? Need some free tools?
www.download.com/Rainy-Day-Budget/3000-2057_4-10857137.html or if you don't want to download anything you can do an online system http://www.myspendingplan.com .

Do you know of some free things you'd like to share?Please comment. Thanks. Happy Shopping Sue