Fixing my financial illiteracy

[Gregory Fleming]

I appreciate the recommendations. Keep them coming! I'm doing Khan Academy. Seems like a good place to start. Then I'll pick among the recommendations in this thread and I'm going to pay particular attention to socaldude's post on concepts I need to understand (I even got an emulator of the HP 12c).

 

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[Gregory Fleming]

Regarding finance: What do you guys think about Quickbooks?

 

[ryantreb]

I have a friend who swears by it for personal finance. I can't speak on using it in a business, though.

 

[InMotion]

Have you used Freshbooks? Its a SAAS invoicing and billing business. I've heard good things about them but I have not tried them yet.

 

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[PokerRich]

Regarding finance: What do you guys think about Quickbooks?

I use QuickBooks for my personal and business finances. Quicken is the more popular software for personal finance. I think mint.com has similar functionality for free so don't go rushing out to pay $100 and buy the new latest and greatest version.

 

[socaldude]

i don't think you need fancy software for personal finance. think about how really rich people managed their money 50-60 years ago. i found that the best way is to just get a sheet of paper out and write/draw up some tables/diagrams. maybe draw myself my personal balance sheet, personal income statement, personal cash flow statement, and then do some qualitative analysis. google has some free resources that you can use to make it easier i suppose, there are a lot of free resources.

 

[Pinnacle]

i don't think you need fancy software for personal finance. think about how really rich people managed their money 50-60 years ago. i found that the best way is to just get a sheet of paper out and write/draw up some tables/diagrams. maybe draw myself my personal balance sheet, personal income statement, personal cash flow statement, and then do some qualitative analysis. google has some free resources that you can use to make it easier i suppose, there are a lot of free resources.

The beauty of this approach is it helps you learn the fundamentals. John D. Rockefeller Sr. kept a handwritten ledger where he did his book keeping and accounting down to the penny. This example, of course, speaks to SoCal's point about how the really rich managed their money back in the day.

 

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[FionaS]

If you are just looking for budgeting
I swear by YNAB. They have a free month trial. It's been a life saver for me.

 

[squall74]

I actually build my own excel spreadsheets for a basic understanding of real estate valuations. It's not fancy and I still don't know how to do fancy formulas but writing it myself gave me more control as to what I want to look for when plotting numbers.

As far as books go most authors write one great book, and end up rehashing the same concept over other books. I'd be wary of any author who puts out a ton of books. Do your due diligence to see if it's worth reading more of their material.

 

[angelique]

Not sure how reputable this is, but I thought this was a neat tool. I want to catch up, too.

Learn Accounting Online for Free | AccountingCoach.com

 

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