I’ve had a buy queue for a few years now, but keep it listed privately in my filofax, or more recently in Evernote. I thought it might be nice to write it here on my blog, and maybe make this an occasional series.
The philosophy behind the buy queue is that I don’t just make big purchases on a day, or a week, without really thinking it through. I don’t just decide one day that I need a Wide screen television, new computer, car or sofa. I’ve (hopefully) had these items in mind for a while, and mulled it over for some time. I’ve allowed the idea to ferment. To get out of debt, you really need to stop spending so much bloody money.
So on to this month’s buy queue, in no particular order.
1 - I’d like a new vacuum cleaner, our one is pretty awful, it’s surely causing the house to be a health hazard. I’d like to get either a good quality Dyson, or even a robot cleaner, like the Roomba.
2 - a Finsbury filofax. My filofax is pretty basic, and although a nice leather one wouldn’t improve it’s utility much, it would improve my experience somewhat
3 - a little Asus eee, solely for using Microsoft Money. I’m resigned that good personal finance software will always require MS Windows, at least until there’s a good online alternative.
4 - a shiny new digital camera. Mine is so old that my camera phone almost has more megapixels. Isn’t a digital camera a human need in this day and age?
Couple of items that have recently been taken off the buy queue. I bought Mozy for her indoors, though it’s still backing up … I also bought VR+ for the BlackBerry, which is great for making and archiving voice notes.
I recently applied for a bunch of low and zero interest rate credit cards, and most of the transfers have now happened.
There’s a couple of accounts where I just wasn’t able to do the transfer, so the interest amount will remain. But the graph below shows the savings I’ve managed to make in the past 6 months; from around $700/month just in interest, to around $200/month now. That’s a great saving.
I’ll now have to make sure that I keep paying them down, and keep the spending under control, and of course swap over to new low rate cards just before the 20% interest rate kicks in.
Annie Leonard has produced a compelling 20 minute video about the consumer economy. I suggest you watch it, if you haven’t seen it.
She goes through the Story of Stuff, the way that stuff is made, consumed and disposed of. Old notions of Stewardship, resourcefulness and thrift have been replaced by consume consume consume.
The Buy queue is my own term for consumer items that I want to buy - and I want to buy NOW - but will instead add to a list or a queue, where it can sit, ferment and generally get lonely for a few weeks, months or years, before I finally decide whether or not to actually put my hard earned cash down on it.
The ScanSnap looks to be the best marketed portable scanner this year, and is priced at US$295 retail. An acceptable price point. The ScanSnap would fit nicely into my Paperless strategy. I’ll let it brew for a while.
I still an issue with Moneydance that will stop me using it for the time being.
I’ve lost the information in my accounts on “Transfers”, as in movements between accounts. The transactions are still there, but not linked between accounts any more. The debits and credits do cancel each other out, but are not linked. I can’t just “surf between accounts”, I have to actually go into the account and look up the transaction at that date. That’s not really good enough.
It has a worthwhile experience though; I have learned how QIF files work, I have managed to clean out some spurious transactions in 2 of my accounts, which previously meant my accounts weren’t balancing for a while.
I now don’t feel as tied into MS Money, I can see that with some effort I can get out of MS Money. I’m going to run MS Money on WinXP on VMware for a while, and I’ll keep my data as clean as possible ready for a migration in the future. Maybe to Moneydance.
I’m going to try out Moneydance again. I remember reading about Moneydance a few years back, and I remember having this image in my mind of a very committed programmer, a lone warrior, programming Moneydance from his home office. I liked that idea. Personal finance software shouldn’t be that hard. I also like the way that Moneydance is written in Java, and would run on both my Windows and Mac computers.
The hardest thing will be importing the 10 years of data - I suspect I should run MS Money and Moneydance in parallel for a few weeks … before I decide …
I found Moneydance again today. Written by a guy called Scott Reilly, he’s been working on this piece of software for over a decade. I’m seriously considering migrating my 10 years of data from Microsoft Money over to Moneydance, it if runs ok. It means I’ll be free of being attached to Windows, and it will hopefully fix the glitch in my file that causes the balances on two of my accounts not to match.
I also like the idea that this one guy is building and maintaining this software: personal finance software isn’t a hard concept, once you get your head around the debits and credits and all those downloads. It shouldn’tneed a whole division of Microsoft working on it, at least not for the basic needs that I have. Especially when you consider that the actual members of the Microsoft team have probably moved onto bigger and better things in the time between each release - I’d imagine the codebase is getting passed around like chinese whispers.
Scott Reilly looks like, from his various posts I’ve read on the web, he looks and sounds like he lives breathes and loves his product. For me, that’s important - I want to give this Moneydance a go. Although just a single developer, I feel re-assured that I won’t be locked into Moneydance if I move my transactions over - more than I can say than for Microsoft.
Its also a good opportunity to cleanse my data and see what are the reports I really need out of my personal finance software. The plan is that I’ll parallel run it for a few weeks, as I migrate my data and get used to it.
I’ve been using my mobile to call home quite a bit, and my Telstra mobile has been charging me a small fortune for the privilege. Although I can call directly from Skype, I do prefer calling from the mobile.
So I’m going to try out Skype to Go. They have a fixed rate plan at 4 euros a month to call unlimited landlines. But I’m not convinced I’ll either a) use it that much b) call landlines - everyone but my parents use their mobiles these days. So instead I’m going to try the pay as you go for a month, and track how much it costs me.
Oops, I’ve re-read the site, and I don’t think I”m entitled to it, living in Australia. EU citizens only. Confusing this site …
Rates look ok, not really sure if that’s cheaper than the Telstra bill. I’ll have to check.
