My Story, and how MoneyPlan came about

I created MoneyPlan shortly after I bought my first home in November of 2011.  But that's not really where the story starts, so lets rewind another several years earlier.

At 19, while still living with Mom and Dad, working full time and pursuing my dream of becoming a pilot, I attended a session on budgeting put on by my pastor.  Aside from his pastoral zeal, he also had a passion for teaching people how to handle his money well.  While it was new to me at the time, his system was simple and probably familiar to a lot of people:  Divide your income into categories by percentage, and record all of your spending in a notebook.  Spend within the amount available in your categories.  That was the gist of it.  Quick and dirty.

Well I really liked the idea of being in control of my money and handling it wisely.  So I gave my pastor's system a shot.  It lasted all of maybe 3 weeks before I gave up.  In my view there were some fundamental flaws in his system, at least as it applied to me.

1. It was a lot of work to manually write down everything I spent, and then manually do the math to see how much I had left in the budget.

2. Dividing my income by percentage was problematic for me considering I had a variable income.  I worked in construction at the time and the hours I worked were never consistent, so dividing my pay-cheques up by a percentage would often mean I was short in some categories, or had way too much allocated in others.  It would then take a significant amount of time to sit down and move money between categories to fix things.

3. And finally I was still living at home, so the majority of my money was only going into a couple things: Flying lessons, and paying for the expenses related to my car.  The budget system was a lot of work for my simple financial life at the time.

So I stopped budgeting.  I did what most people do: Spend money if/when I had it in the bank.  I didn't plan, and I didn't track.  That works fine when you don't have a credit card and you don't have a lot of different bills and expenses to manage.  All I had to worry about was putting gas in my car, fixing it when it broke, and paying for flying lessons.  Life was simple.

Fast forward a couple years.  I had now moved away to the Niagara region to work at a flight school, chasing my dream of being a pilot.  I now had my own apartment, a credit card, my own bills to pay, and was basically living financially on my own - like an adult.  But I still used my old method money management:  Spend when I wanted/needed to.  No plan, no tracking.  Well I got by, barely - until I lost my job.  The part time job in construction that I found wasn't enough to cover the bills.  But I didn't realize it because I wasn't tracking my spending.  Slowly but surely the balance on my credit card creeped up.  I was getting more and more in debt but I didn't realize it.  Soon enough both my cards were maxed out!  I was broke, six grand in credit card debt, and it hit me like a brick wall because I wasn't paying attention.

Well finally about that time I managed to land my first real pilot job.  It was a remote part of Northern Ontario, and it didn't pay much at all, but it was enough to slowly start paying down my debt.  It was at this point that I started to "sort of" budget.  My employers covered my housing, and I didn't need a car in the small town, so my living expenses were once again minimal.  I knew my priority was to pay down my debt, so each paycheque I set aside a portion for groceries for the month, a very small amount for discretionary spending, and the rest I would pour into debt repayment.  That's a budget in its simplest form.  At least I was starting to plan, but still not much tracking.  Through pure dedication and sacrifice, I was able to pay down my debt in just over six months.

Fast forward again to November 2011.  By now I had been working as a pilot at a new job for a couple years, was now debt free, and had been saving for a down-payment on my first house.  I took the plunge, and by the end of November I had the keys in hand. It was at this point that I knew things would get much more complicated.  I would now have tons of new bills coming in that I would have to plan for and keep track of:  Mortgage, condo fees, several different utilities, and all the other expenses life brings.  My pilot job was once again a variable income, so I was nervous about being able to cover my expenses during the slow months.  By now I was wiser to the fact that debt can creep up on you, and I wasn't about to let it happen now that I had the responsibility of home ownership.

Especially as a brand new home-owner  I knew I didn't really have a good idea of how much a house is ACTUALLY going to cost me.  All those extra expenses like property taxes, home repairs, insurance, and a long list of utilities were still all a mystery to me.  Additionally I wasn't known for being very well organized.  Often times in the past I would forget to pay bills, or would bounce cheques because I forgot to make sure I had enough money in my chequing account.  Knowing the number of bills I would have to keep track of was about to triple, and remembering the hard lessons I learned about getting into debt, I decided to commit to tracking all of my spending for one full year.  Drawing from the knowledge of my pastor's system I built a spreadsheet which included a place to track each purchase by category, as well as a little chart indicating which bill was due when and for how much.  Now I was planning and tracking.  I was on the right track.

The spreadsheet was a little easier than writing things down on paper like my pastor's method, but it didn't take long for me to realize that a spreadsheet was still a clumsy way of doing things.  Computer programming is a hobby of mine, so partly for fun but mostly because I knew I could make something way better than a spreadsheet, I began creating a dedicated budget management program.

And here enters MoneyPlan (I know the name is terrible, I'm open to suggestions!).  In less than a month I had a very limited and bug-ridden version that I began to use.  Slowly but surely however I made improvements, fixed bugs, and added features as I learned from my own usage.  EVERY feature contained in MoneyPlan is a result of me doing real-life budgeting with it and thinking, "hey it would be really great if..."  Necessity is the mother of invention!  Today I have what I think is a fantastic piece of software (and I may be biased) and I'm sure other's can make use of it.  I've been using MoneyPlan now for well over a year, and it has honestly changed the way I handle my money for the better.  It is especially well designed for those with a variable income (like me), has a great interface for quickly logging transactions, powerful features for sorting, filtering, and graphing your data, and is a great tool for helping you meet your savings goals!  Because of MoneyPlan I have total control of my finances.  I now have less stress and MORE freedom because I have a plan, and when I spend money I know I can afford it.  I'm also able to stretch my money further because I have awareness of where my money is going, which drastically cuts down on frivolous spending.  Life is better with a plan.