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There are plenty fancy ideas out there for personal budget planners. You can use them on your computer or on handheld devices. They sound like awesome little gadgets except it gives you the idea that owning one will mean you'll somehow have tons of extra money. Excel has one of those programs that let's you graph everything out or plot your progress on pie charts. While they seem fancy and look cool, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as my grandmother used to say. In other words, if you don't have the money to spend, a fancy budget planner won't help you very much.

I don't think it's half as important if you have one of these things than it is to actually use one. Sometimes they're too complicated than they're really worth. I personally like the idea of a paper log book, a nice sharp pencil and maybe a calculator. I like the idea of seeing the numbers all work out for myself rather than having a computer do it all for me. The computerized budget planners are too abstract and it makes me nervous not to see the numbers right there.

I have a great brown leather bound budget planner. It's elegant and, for the most part, it's easy to use. But I've decided that's not my real problem when it comes to budgeting. The problem is my taking the time to make use of it. If I slack off, the numbers won't add up and nothing really makes sense. I remember when I was making a ton of money in one of those upstart Internet companies; I didn't think I needed to worry about budgeting. I was definitely living high off the hog, though, and I needed to find a way to get my finances in order. I made a few notations in my personal budget planner and, since I was making so much cash, it didn't take long to catch up and be more financially secure.

Well, as you may imagine, the dot com industry didn't last forever, so I took another position as a systems administrator. I wasn't making as much money and it wasn't a good time for me. I felt like I never had enough money. I thought maybe I wasn't using my budget planner correctly and the bills started stacking up. I lost more than a few nights' sleep, worrying about the whole thing. After a while, I realized that my personal budget planner was not at the root of my money problems at all. Rather, I simply wasn't making enough money to keep up with the lifestyle I really wanted to live.

So, I took action and got a second job to make up the difference. It was a boring job but it paid pretty well. I quickly found that my finances were much better and I'm back to doing it the way I once did.