That’s good news – we don’t suffer from isolated pockets of financial idiocy. However, the fact remains that bankruptcies are much higher than normal due to the economy (and worsened by some local state policies). Its always the right time to revisit your budget and make sure you’re on track.

In a famous behavior experiment, 4 guinea pigs we put into a cage.
Each guinea pig had an electrode attached to them. There was a small circle on the floor at the center of the cage and when ever a guinea pig ran over the circle, the other 3 guinea pigs we given an electric shock. At the beginning when the guinea pigs were first put into the cage they sought a way out, and inadvertently scurried over the circle, causing the other 3 guinea pigs to receive an electric shock. It didn’t take long for the guinea pigs to learn the cause. After learning what happened, whenever a mouse would go near the circle, the other 3 guinea pigs would beat on the one.
After a while, one of the guinea pigs was removed and a new guinea pig was introduced into the same environment, but without an electrode attached to it. Of course, when first entering the cage, it scurried about seeking a way out and occasionally would run over the circle, causing the other 3 guinea pigs to receive a shock. The other 3 guinea pigs would then beat on the new guinea pig. After a while, the new guinea pig learn that whenever one of the other got near the circle, you beat on them. But that new guinea pig was not receiving any shock, it just learned from the others that that was how things worked.
After another short while a 2nd new guinea pig was introduced – same situation, no electrode. It too learned after a short while not to walk over the circle and to beat on any other who approached it.
In time, all of the original guinea pigs were replaced with new guinea pigs who did not have any electrodes. These guinea pigs had never received any kind of shock or other kind of punishment (other than from the other guinea pigs) for walking over the circle. But the learned behavior continued, and although none knew why, the circle was forbidden territory and you would get beaten up if you went near it. In actual fact, walking on the circle did nothing at this point, but the guinea pigs had learned to enforce this “rule of cage citizenship”.

We should ask ourselves – how similar are we to these guinea pigs? Do we repeat behavior simply because “thats the way its done”? Do any of the following wealth limiters apply to you?

• continue working in a job you hate because you have to pay your bills
• continue spending money they way you used to even though your income is not the same or inflation is growing
• continue living a wealthy lifestyle once you move out from your parents home, even though you can no longer directly benefit from their incomes
• go on expensive vacations even if you clearly can’t afford it
• eat out more often than your budget (and diet) should permit
• etc…

Don’t be a guinea pig. Wake up to the fact that you don’t need to blindly follow habits and patterns of behavior without good reason. More to the point, examine some of the bad financial behavior you do and determine why you do it. If you end up with “thats just the way its done”, seriously consider putting it on the chopping block or at least modify it to suit your actual needs.

1. Those that connect directly to your online bank account and pull your financial information for you and attempt to automatically categorize your purchases.
2. Those that require manual input but are much more secure since they don’t touch your actual bank account.

CalendarBudget falls under camp #2. We feel that security these days is one of the most important aspects of online personal finance management. Since this model does not connect directly to your bank, there is some manual input required to get your data into CalendarBudget. Until now, that has meant checking what actually happened with your bank account and manually entering each transaction into CalendarBudget one at a time (reconciling). Admittedly, this was a tedious process. However, the act of seeing each transaction has a benefit – that is, you get to know your money habits much better than if everything is automated.

Recently, CalendarBudget introduced a Bank Reconciliation Assistant, which keeps this important benefit of understanding your spending habits while reducing the tediousness of reconciling between your online bank transaction history and CalendarBudget.

For ongoing reconciling, you can now export your account history to an OFX file (these are sometimes called MS Money or Quicken export files – depends on your bank/credit union) and then import this file into CalendarBudget. CalendarBudget then automatically picks out the transactions that are already in your budget and correct and marks the transactions that need to be added or merged, making the reconciling process MUCH easier and faster.

Here’s how it works.

1) Export your data to an OFX file. (This sample screenshot is taken from ScotiaBank’s online banking interface). See here for a tutorial (http://financialsoft.about.com/od/softwaretitle1/ss/How_to_Export_Download_Financial_Transactions.htm)
2) Login to CalendarBudget and select the Bank Import tab in the sidebar (its the new 3rd tab). Click the browser and select your OFX file from step 1. Then click the Load Transactions button.
3) You’ll now see the transactions that need to be added/merged in this list. If the date has a red X beside it, the balance for that day is not correct. This either means that the transactions below that are red need to be created or merged, or that there are entries in your budget plan on the calendar that did not actually happen on that day that should be deleted or moved into the future.
If the red transaction already exists in the calendar but just has the wrong amount, or is on the wrong date, simply drag this red transaction from the list onto the corresponding calendar entry. You’ll then be prompted to confirm the update of that calendar entry to move to the correct date and update the amount. The original transaction name and category will be preserved.
If the red transaction needs to be created (it doesn’t already exist in the calendar), simply drag it to any blank spot or day header on the calendar and you’ll be prompted to create that entry and optionally give it a more descriptive name and category.

After a few minutes of reconciling using this new Bank Reconciliation Assistant, even a budget that has been neglected for a few weeks is easily updated with no frustrating addition, subtraction and flipping between screens trying to compare balances on your budget and online banking transaction history.

This feature has been a long time coming for CalendarBudget. Already I’ve been using this and its a HUGE relief compared to the old way. I hope you find the same.

CalendarBudget provides the hands on tool to aid the clients of W.B.White in implementing the great money management ideas they are learning from W.B. White. CalendarBudget’s easy to use interface was created with simplicity in mind so people, like W.B. White clients, can maintain their budget in a few minutes a day and plan their future with the expected account balance shown next to the date for each day.

W.B. White is an insurance brokerage firm serving the Durham Region in Ontario, Canada since 1929. They “are not tied to any one insurance company” and they “have access to an extensive range of policies offered by many of the major property and casualty insurance companies.”

Where do you see yourself financially in 2 years or 5 years? Create an account with CalendarBudget now and have a look at your financial future!

I use CalendarBudget to track my credit card spending. I usually put a purchase in CalendarBudget before I make it (planning for it) to know when I can pay for it before it collects interest or schedule the purchase for a later date when I can make the purchase without collecting interest. For those occasions when I can’t pay it all off and I do carry a balance over, I track the interest gained by making a seperate entry in my CalendarBudget Credit Card account (accounts are just another tab in CalendarBudget) for the amount of interest shown on my credit card bill. This way I can still see the trends of my spending and can also use a category for interest in my credit card account and track and see reports indicating how much I am paying on interst as time goes on. I’d rather keep the money in my pocket so it’s been in my favor to track my credit card spending and schedule it to be paid off before interest would start accumulating on my credit purchases. Also, CalendarBudget’s remind me feature sends me an email so I don’t forget to pay off the credit card before that nasty interest gets me.

What helps you to keep on top of your credit card payments and avoid interest?