If you don't want to read all of this babble please atleast read the last paragraph! It might make you want to read the rest of this.

Woah, just barely got this one in on time. This was a quickie, since I spent most of the evening doing bills, well after an unplanned nap on the couch with Kenai and Dixie, I thought it would be nice to show how I spent my evening. Yes folks you may ask yourself "What is that thing with the pen sticking in it. Thats a checkbook for those of you old enough to remember, for those too young to remember I will explain. See not so long ago people didn't use debit cards to "store" their money, they used these little books of paper usually wrapped in leather to "store" their money.

When they wanted to purchase something they would write a check and hand it to the clerk at the place of business or they would have to actually MAIL the check to a place of business to pay bills or order merchandise.

I myself almost never carry cash anymore, I love online banking and the ease of use and protection of debit cards. I will admit there are one or two places of business here in Knoxville that still don't take credit cards so for those old stone agers I keep the ol checkbook around. Eventhough I love that I can download my statements from my band and import them into Microsoft Money I do still keep a "paper" trail in my checkbook to keep a simple balance going. The rest of my cost analysis and planning is done in MS Money.

For those of you who have online banking with your bank and have never used MS Money or Quicken, I highly recommend it! They will download all of your bank statements and transactions and then once you assign them to categories you can start letting the programs make reports of your expenses. It can tell you to whom you give your money two. Say for example if you wanted to know how much you spent on Camera gear/equipment, prints and such once you have assigned all of those purchaes to a "photo" category it can create a report showing you how much you have spent on your hobby as a total or how much you have spent on that hobby with a single company, say for example how much you have spent at www.bhphotovideo.com compared to a local camera store.

It is also an excellent tool to help you find ways to save money. I was shocked at how much money I was pulling out of the bank in the form of "quick cash" and where did that money go? Usually spent on fast food, since up until recently fast food places didn't take debit cards. So my bank account got smaller and my ass got bigger. So you could say that the use of electronic finance programs such as MS Money have actually helped my identify ways to make myself healthier cause I know now that cash usually goes to fast food so if I hold of on always having some cash in my wallet then I will be less likely to get fast food.