I’ve mentioned before how invaluable I’ve found Wesabe in coming to grips with my financial situation. So when I came home from my trip, in particular need of watching my money, I was taken aback to see the notice on the site that Wesabe will be shutting down at the end of this week.
Wesabe was one of the few (free) sites out there for users with non-US dollar accounts, with a level of granularity that I understand other, similar sites haven’t matched.
But although I’ll miss geeking out over its pie charts and bar graphs and tag clouds, using it has put me into good habits that will continue on without the site.
I don’t know why I was ever one of those people who thought I could make extra payments on credit cards with what’s left at the end of the month to clear the balances faster, because let’s face it, there never is. So now I’m an adherent to the pay-yourself-first method of budgeting and I knock off a chunk of my debt on pay day. Although I still try to have something left over to make a small extra payment, it’s ok if I don’t because I’ve already made a dent in it that month.
I have a basic spreadsheet (we’re talking Microsoft Works wizard-generated basic) with three tables — income, fixed expenses and variable expenses. Fixed expenses obviously covers stuff like rent and bills. The variable starts out with a combination of things I expect to be paying out for that month and blank categories that I fill in as I spend, like eating out. That’s been crucial, because I would often check my bank balance and see I had x amount left and feel ok to spend, forgetting that certain bills had yet to leave the account. So now I don’t bother looking at the balance — I check what the spreadsheet says is actually available, which keeps me reined in as it edges lower. It’s a simple thing, but a different way of thinking that makes a big difference to how my finances look each month.
So I’ll miss Wesabe and uploading transactions for tagging, but now that I know my spending habits in detail, I feel like the training wheels are coming off. That won’t stop me from keeping an eye out for the open source version, though, or dropping in on the wesabe groups that will remain active, to keep motivated and pick up tips.
Tags: finances
