Accounting software.

[Matt Graham]

From: Nathan England <nathan at nmecs.com>
> http://moneydance.com/ 
> Is by far the best, though it is not free

The OP said he was looking for free stuff.  I guess this might work if you're
willing to pay them whatever yearly fee they're charging now.

> GnuCash is an accounting program but it is so complicated to use it
> is not worth the time or hassle.

Seriously?  I started using GNUcash in 2000, when the documentation was barely
there.  I've never had any formal accounting training, and I figured it all
out pretty quickly.  The double-entry bookkeeping that GNUcash uses makes it
really easy to see how much you've spent from date X to date Y on (category of
expenses), and it'll track stocks/bonds/mutual funds if you install
Finance::Quote.

Take a look at the basic help,
http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-help/help.html , and see if anything in
the advanced help , http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/index.html is
interesting.

The thing to do when setting up GNUcash is to start out your checking account
opening balance with the opening balance on the first of (month), then just
enter all the income/expenses from then til today that are on your bank
statement.  Start your cash in wallet opening balance with the bills in your
wallet.  *DON'T* try to enter everything you have records of, just pick a
start date.[0]  Then spend 5 minutes every day recording what you spent that
day and what you spent it on.  It should become second nature pretty quickly.

If you're going somewhere without your computer[1], one way to keep records is
to write down how much cash is in your wallet right before you leave, and call
that X.  Then write down how much is in there when you get back, and call that
Y.  Take (X - Y) and charge that to Expenses:Entertainment:Travel [2] with a
description of "trip to $SOMEWHERE".  Debit card/whatever charges will show up
on your bank's page and you can just enter those numbers when you get back.

If you're really hardcore, you can read
http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/txns-registers1.html#txns-registers-multiaccount2
, so you can split every grocery/restaurant bill into "bill" and "sales tax". 
Then at the end of the year/month, you can complain about how the government's
wasting your $XXX.YY on $THINGS_YOU_DONT_LIKE .

[0] Accountants, feel free to gasp in horror here.
[1] I know, that's crazy talk, man.
[2] The default setup should create a bunch of expense accounts like that.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see