As a full-time student I don’t have much money coming in, however I seem to constantly be spending it. Recently I was tracking my expenses and attempting to determine a reasonable budget with an app called Cha-Ching (iPhone and Mac). However this solution was imperfect. I religiously entered every single transaction into the app on my iPhone, but something was missing – I was not able to easily visualize my financial standing over time.
Watch your money
As part of Telfer’s Entrepreneurial Culture Challenge that I am competing in, I have received some really interesting financial advice. Eugène Tassé said:
“You have to work and you have to save… I can assure you today, I never spent more than $0.50 of every $1 I made. It is impossible, unless you want to throw your money away”
As a student this may not be possible, however I am going to see what I can do. In the third workshop, successful entrepreneur, and uOttawa grad, Renaud Brault said:
“I always lived below my means” .. and… “produce a financial statement for your personal finances to see where you stand throughout the year”
Although I could create a financial statement manually from what I have learned in Accounting/Finance classes, I would rather find a better solution for this. Luckily the exact financial software I need is out there.
Dough
Dough is a web app for tracking your personal/family finances. It is the perfect solution for what I am looking to do, allowing you to easily:
- enter in every transaction you make
- track all bank accounts, credit cards, and investments
- visualize your finances over time in a financial statement format
It has been perfect for my requirements, and would definitely be a good application for any student looking to watch their money. It is simple to use and maintain, yet provides a thorough output on the Summary page.
As a web app, Dough accessible from anywhere you are connected and keeps all of your data online. My only wish is for either an iPhone app or iPhone optimized web interface for using the transaction entry function on the go.
Check out Dough here: http://yourdough.com/