A Proud Moment

Bear with me here. I am going to brag on myself briefly. But it really is a "bragworthy" occasion, if I do say so myself. Those of you who know me, know that math, in any form, is not my strong point. Throughout our eighteen years of marriage, I have worked out a system for handling our finances that seems to be working okay, that is, if okay means in all of my 39 years, I have never, not ever, not even once, balanced the checkbook.

Jeff handled that for the first ten years we were married, and for the past eight years, it just hasn't been balanced. Amazingly, we haven't bounced checks or missed payments, we just don't bother with that pesky statement that they send us at the end of every month.

So...........when I was actually hired for a job that included "bookkeeping", I was as surprised as the next guy! But I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and jumped in. Really, it isn't too bad and so far, it's gone swimmingly well, thanks to Quickbooks!! I am a big fan!! It really is as easy as all the commercials claim it is.

My great work experience with Quickbooks inspired me to purchase Quicken for our personal finances, which was all well and good until I realized that our checkbook was so screwed up, it was beyond repair. So, off to the bank we went, opened a brand, spankin' new checking account, switched over all our automatic withdrawals, waited for everything to clear from the old account, and started with a clean slate.

Last week, on one of our three snow days, I spent about eight hours entering everything into Quicken. Armed with that pesky bank statement, my checkbook register, and my computer, I added, subtracted, erased, and groaned until it BALANCED! Really!!! The checkbook, the bank statement, and Quicken all had the same balance--to the penny! Amazing!

I know my high school accounting teacher would be proud.......