A Dawn Journal

How long should you track your expenses?

How long should you track your expenses? It all depends. You can do it for three months, one year or for good. If you are looking to take immediate action on cutting unnecessary expenses, three months of tracking will give you a fair idea. If you want an in-depth financial picture, I would recommend tracking for four to six months. If you want to keep track of your changing patterns of spending behaviour and make adjustments accordingly to meet your financial goals, I would recommend tracking your expenses on a continuous basis.

Personal Finance Software 

Now, here comes the main question - What financial software you should use to track your expenses? Personal finance software programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money are able to keep track of your spending. However, I recommend a simple and easy to use web-based program called Expensr. Expensr keeps track of your income and expenses and tells you where your money goes. It is very simple to use and let me describe some basics you need to know.

Sign up for a free account. On the main page, on the top left, you will see five tabs. These tabs are Home, Accounts, Analysis, Budget and Community. Accounts and Analysis tabs are the ones you will be using most. Enter all your income and spending daily under Account tab. You can create multiple categories to categorize you entries. Entering an item is easy, and you should be able to do it in a snap. Analysis tab shows how much you are spending in each category. You can view this either in a pie chart or in a bar graph. Charts or graphs show spending trends. Trends can be used to see how your spending behaviour has changed over time, and you make adjustments accordingly.

Expensr has many other features. I mainly use it to keep track of my spending and income, and to plot graphs to visualize my trends. If you are looking for simple, easy-to-use but powerful personal finance software, expensr is your answer.

NB – I started using Expensr about eight months ago. At that time, I thought I was going to use it only for three months. But I got hooked to it and still using it.

Award-winning book Invest Now is jam-packed with timely information and timeless advice for the beginning Canadian investor. To purchase a copy, visit Chapters Indigo or buy online - Invest Now: A Canadian's Guide to Investing 

This restaurant gets a little creative on a frigid cold day. Located near the intersection of Sherbourne Street and King Street, downtown, Toronto. 

Budgets Don't Work 

I don’t believe budgets work for the long run. We have our unique and different ways of doing budgets. Some of us allocate certain amounts for each expense category. Some go by envelop ideas such as putting money in different envelops for different expense categories, and spend money from these envelops based on circumstances. The problem with budgeting is that we usually stick to it for a couple of months and then get bored and get rid of it. Although I don’t believe in budgeting, I do believe in tracking expenses. Why and how you should track your expenses? Let’s talk about it.

Track Your Expenses 

Tracking expenses gives you a visualization of where your money is exactly going. You need to know this to cut unnecessary expenses and increase your savings. You can do all sorts of calculations and thinking in your mind to figure out where your money is going - but the real picture may not be the same as your mind tries to depict. Don’t be surprised if you see a very different picture than what you had in your mind. Spending just a few dollars here and there daily can add up to a large amount at month’s end and tracking expenses will show you how powerful it can be to cut once-daily visit to your coffee shop. Tracking expenses will gradually help you make better decisions.

To Be Continued
Award-winning book Invest Now is jam-packed with timely information and timeless advice for the beginning Canadian investor. To purchase a copy, visit Chapters Indigo or buy online - Invest Now: A Canadian's Guide to Investing

2007 Tax Return - Don't Forget to Claim Children's Fitness Tax Credit

This will be the first time you can claim a non-refundable children's fitness tax credit on your tax return. This post gives you some basic information.

Schulich, New Gold and The Stock Market

Canadian billionaire Seymour Schulich is in the news again. Read this post to find out what he is buying these days.

A Dawn Journal - Behind The Scene: March 2008

Interesting behind the scenes facts about A Dawn Journal.

Student Alert - Don't Forget To Claim Tuition, Education, And Textbook Amounts

Students – don’t forget to read this article. Eligible students should be cautious filing their returns.

No One Cares About Your Money

It’s your money and no one cares about your money like the way you do.

And The Winners Are ...

Three randomly picked winners get free copies of award-winning book Invest Now.

Tax Saving Tips - Some Highlights

Sixty eight per cent Canadians are not familiar with new tax savings available to them. Read this article to find out some of the tax claims you can make on your tax return.

West African Letter Fraud - A Perfect Example

Here is an example of A scam letter I received in my mailbox.

Who Uses Yahoo These Days Anyway?

Miscellaneous Yahoo ramblings.

Some facts you need to know. What is a tax deadline mean?

A Dawn Journal main site is located at www.adawnjournal.com

 Tomorrow is tax deadline. Here is what you need to know:

• Tomorrow is the deadline to file 2007 tax returns.

• If you have a balance owing, and you don’t file by tomorrow, you will be paying compound daily interest starting May 1, 2008 on unpaid balances.

• The interest penalty rate is 8% annually.

• If you owe tax and late file, you will be paying late-filing penalty.

• Your penalty is 5% of the balance owing + 1% of the balance owing for each late month (up to a maximum of 12 months).

• If your line 435 is more than line 482, enter the difference on Line 485. This amount represents your balance owing.

 Tip 

If you cannot afford to pay your full balance owing, still file your return before due date. Thus, you will be avoiding paying a late-filing penalty.  Visit these CRA links for more info: Important dates for 2007 and Balance owning.

Yahoo Ramblings 

Portal Is No Longer Popular

Who uses Yahoo these days anyway? A few years ago Yahoo was the only kid on the block. Unfortunately, things have changed. A portal homepage is no longer a good thing. Who uses portal anyway? Yahoo portal is full of clutter, services and annoying links. No one likes it. Just look at Google. You won’t see any portal kind of start page there. A portal is a thing of the past. Every one realizes that, except Yahoo.

Yahoo Email

Are you still using Yahoo email? If you are, I will give you an A+ for being such a patient and loyal Yahoo user. I don’t know how you can put up with its intrusive and user-unfriendly layout. Also, it takes too long to load.

Flickr

Flicker was originally a Canadian(Vancouver, British Columbia) site. Yahoo bought Flicker in 2005. What other Canadian sites were bought out by giant sites? Investopedia, StumbleUpon just to name a few. Read this article here Investopedia, StumbleUpon, FeedBurner and Last.fm 

Yahoo can’t be creative enough to come up with new ideas. Therefore, it needs to buy creative sites to broaden its horizons. Check A Dawn Journal’s Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/adawn

Del.cio.us

This is a social book marking site. Yahoo acquired this in 2005.

MyBlogLog

This is Yahoo’s one of the latest acquisitions. MyBlogLog is a widget (a box like tool) which sits on a bog’s side panel (just look on A Dawn Journal’s lower right side) and shows recent visitors. Yahoo bought MyBlogLog to strengthen its growth in the blog world.

Final Thoughts

To hold onto users, Yahoo needs to enhance site’s design and layouts to increase its usability. A site like Yahoo should give users a pleasant browsing experience, and should never force users to get yahoo accounts.

Robert Gourlay portrait located in ST. JAMES park. On the corner of Church Street and King Street, downtown, Toronto.

In my book Invest Now I dedicated a whole chapter to Internet Scams. West African letter Fraud is a common form of Internet scam. You receive a letter in the mail convincing you to give out your personal information, and then scammers empty out your bank account. This type of scam can come from anywhere, in any form. It does not have to come from West Africa. Today I have a perfect example of West African Scam to post. I just got this email and picture in my mail box. First, I am going to give you an excerpt from Invest Now, and then I will show you the letter and picture I received.

The following is an Excerpt from my first book Invest Now. Invest Now is jam-packed with timely information and timeless advice for the beginning Canadian investor. Invest Now covers a broad range of topics including Internet Scams. To purchase a copy, visit Chapters Indigo or click here to buy online - Invest Now: A Canadian's Guide to Investing

The Excerpt

West African letter fraud: You meet a 20-something-year-old girl in a chat room. She sends you a few hot pictures. Then she mentions that her dad was a high-ranking government official or industrialist who left her millions of dollars. She explains that she is not able to move this fund from her dad’s account due to regulations, and she needs your help. All you have to do is to give her your bank-account information to transfer her money out of the country; in return, she will give you 40 or 50% of her 10 or 20 million dollars. Wait, even more incentives remain. Since you are such a nice guy, she even would not mind spending a couple of months in a resort with you. You don’t waste a second to grab this lifetime opportunity, handing over your banking information. A few days later, you find out that your bank account was emptied out. Your dream of spending quality time with a beautiful girl as a freshly minted millionaire is gone—and so is all the money in your bank account. Sometimes, the scammer claims to be from Nigeria, but it’s always the same scam. Be aware.

A Perfect Example

from Angie Keong <giveslife@yahoo.com> reply-to giveslife02@yahoo.com, to giveslife@yahoo.com, date Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 3:37 PM subject FROM MRS.ANGIE KK mailed-by yahoo.com signed-by yahoo.com Images from this sender are always displayed. Don't display from now on.

hide details 3:37 PM (4 hours ago)

Reply

FROM MRS.ANGIE KK
THE CRY OF A WIDOW
Do accept my sincere apology if contacting you through this medium goes against your moral values and code of conduct. My name is Mrs. Angie KK, the wife of late Mr. Sherif Keong who happen to be an international business man dealing mainly in contracting.There is something I personally need your urgent attention and assistance in, hoping that you are living well with your family over there in your country. I want you to personal assist me to safeguard a reasonable sum to your country or any other place where you are familiar with for a productive investment. The fund were generated through a legal means by my late husband but due to some issue between my late husband and few foes, I am mandated to make this transfer and the onward investment on my own.

The fund in question is the sum of Twenty One Million United State of American Dollars which was deposited on a vault by late husband in a Financial Institute, and it is due to be transferred, but the major problem I was facing for quite a long time now is finding a capable person who will help me to make the transfer, and also negotiate some areas of lucrative investment down on-behalf of my son Franklin

Due to my medical condition(Cancer of the large Intestine which was not noticed at the early stage) and situation of things around me, I can't effect the conveying of the project on my own and for the safety of my son without an aid of someone. This was the major reason that drew my attention to contact you personally for an assistant regarding the execution of this project. I am in a critical position since the doctors have confirmed that the cancer was not noticed at the early stage and it is only a miracle that can heal me. Thus, I am doing all this because I want my son to have a future incase if anything happens to me.
I will give you all the necessary information you would require to know about this project when I read from you. I will be expecting to hear from you any moment from now
Regards
Mrs. Angie Keong

The Lesson

Do not give out any financial or personal information in an e-mail or chat room.

Sixty eight per cent Canadians are not familiar with new tax savings available to them – A recent poll done by Environics Research for H&R Block shows. I am writing today to give you some highlights of 2007 tax savings.

Basic Personal Amount

The basic personal amount is now $9,600. You don’t have to pay taxes if your income is up to this amount. Goes on line 300 on your return.

Amount for an Eligible Dependent

If you supported an eligible person with an income of less than $9,600, you may be able to claim this amount. Goes on line 305 on your return.

Spouse or Common-Law Partner Amount

If you supported your spouse or common-law partner who made less than $9,600, you may be able to claim this amount. Goes on line 303 on your return.

Children’s Fitness Amount

Up to $500 eligible fitness fees paid for a child may be claimed. I wrote a full article on this. Click here to read. Goes on line 365 on your return.

Public Transit Credit

If you were taking public transit in 2007, you may be able to claim this amount. Goes on line 364 on your return.

Textbook Amount

If you are an eligible student, you may be able to claim this amount. I wrote a full article on this. Click here to read. Goes on line 323 on your return.

This is just a partial listing. Visit Canada Revenue Website for more tax saving tips.

Award-winning book Invest Now is jam-packed with timely information and timeless advice for the beginning Canadian investor. To purchase a copy, visit Chapters Indigo or buy online - Invest Now

The following is a paid review 

If you are looking for a free blog site with lots of extra features, look no further. Thoughts.com offers a free blog site with tons of added extra options. I will describe you some of the features momentarily. Let me tell you the first thing you will notice when you come to this site.

I like the clean and simple layouts Thoughts.com offers. It’s easy on the eyes and unlike some other sites, you are never lost figuring out where to go or what to click on. Thoughts.com is more than a regular blog site; it’s something like a portal. On the front page, you will find recent news, blog posts, featured photos, videos and so on. Let me describe some of the features making Thoughts.com a unique site.

Features

• Free unlimited bandwidth

• You don’t need to worry about getting traffic to your posts as Thoughts.com is a community-based site and will provide you an instant audience.

• Very easy to create your blog; no technical knowledge is required.

• Ads free. Yes, I did not find any ads while I was surfing. Not sure how long it will remain that way.

Something Worth Mentioning

Placing the Charity button in the top right navigation menu is a good idea. You can visit Thoughts.com recommended charity sites by clicking the Charity button. Giving back to the community is always encouraging.

Contests

Right now, Thoughts.com is having a writing contest. Our lucky winner and a guest will receive a 2 Nights 3 Days Getaway. Also, Thoughts.com giving away one free 6 month Netflix membership each month.

To visit Thoughts.com, click here - Free Blog

To visit writing contest page, click here – Thoughts.com Writing Contest