Oh the goodness of Quicken

Yes, another day has gone by and I am tired. Today got a little extra kick in the pants for me because a couple of guys who work for Home Delivery on the region level were in our terminal today. They gave out some good advice, fixed some problems and generally added more to my list of daily tasks. This is a great blessing because I'm basically learning how to take care of every piece of information that is worth taking care of and in the process I am learning what they all mean.

Over the lunch hour I was able to have a conversation with Nathan about finances. We have been doing some pretty cool things of late, such as buying a minivan!, and this requires some extra-special attention on the money end of things. Yesterday I discovered a heretofore unknown and extremely powerful tool in Quicken: The Analyze Button. I use Quicken to keep track of our finances and it has been very good to us up til now. From this point forward it is going to make our financial lives much smoother.

The Analyze Button reveals a bar graph containing month-by-month totals for the expenditure in any one budget category as well as calculating a yearly average. In other words, with a couple clicks you can see how well your budget matches your actual expenditures as well as which months were closer or further from your initial budget. This is wonderful; it accumulates and organizes the data into terrifically useful categories and allows me to get a feel for how well we're budgeting with just a glance.

So that's great. Also, David and I recieved a package with some books we'd ordered from Amazon. A telling collection I think: The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway, Gear by Doug Tennapel, and Love and Friendship by Jules Toner. Search away....

I prepared a meatless dinner that was very tasty. We had black beans and rice tortillas with some cumin and oregano and salt and pepper and two cheeses and avocados and tomatoes and sour cream and salsa and chips and salad and olives and it was nummy. Nathan wrastled up some drinks and we had a good conversation about our days and enjoying our meal in between bites. Joan and Liz needed to meet during dinner because we dont have any more time to spare.

Then we cleaned up and headed out to Party Central for some put-put under the lights. We had fun, especially Cathy and Liz and myself. And especially Brian and Liz and I when we drove home and beat the minivan with everyone else in it and cracked open some beers and skipped ahead on a DVD so it would look like we'd been home for a while and had just been lounging around because it took the other car soooo long to get back. We had a good time with that.

Now we're all convalescing, ready for a new day tomorrow and a Lord's Day barbeque with a family in the neighborhood. People of Praise: Changing the World One BBQ at a Time.