This morning I had some free time when ds1 was at pre-school and ds2 decided to take an unusual morning nap - so I sat down at the computer and made up a spreadsheet with all my accounts, cc, and investments. I want to be able to track where the money is going. Usually I just look at the checking and savings accounts, but then it looks as though we are losing money even though we put $2k into our retirement account. So I thought this might be a better way to look at the overall picture. I know there must be some magic computer program out there that will do this all for me, but I have tried a few and not liked them. So I just made up my own and I think it will work out fine. The only problem is that I want to track it monthly, but only a few of my accounts run from the 1st of the mnoth to the last. For example, all my BOA statements start on the 6th of the month through the 5th of the next month. I called to see if they can change my statement dates, but they cannot. So I just have to do a little figuring, that's all - I would have preferred the easy route of looking at the top and bottom of me statements to know my beginning and ending balances.
So far, it looks like net worth decreased by $1200 last month (due to a whopping $2700 tuition bill for DH - paid mostly in cash, but partially with cc). But after the fact, I realized that I did not put our student loans and car loan on the spreadsheet. That will bring us up a little more as we paid about $300 on the loans last month. I think it will be a helpful tool for me to look at the big picture.
Another day off tomorrow...I'll see what I can tackle then.