The Golden Pencil: The Freelance Writer’s Resource

Getting Clear on Finances

by Anne Wayman on June 10th, 2007

Several years ago I bean a program to overcome my under earning and general chaos around money. And it’s working. I’ve more than doubled my income, am getting debts handled and no longer fear my bank or creditors.

Part of this program includes getting clear about finances. It’s been a struggle. For years I’ve operated out of total vagueness – I mean total lack of knowledge about how much I earned and how much I spent. So I’ve been learning to track my numbers as we say.

This means logging in every single cent I spend. It took awhile, but after I made it part of my spiritual practice I’m pretty good at it.

The next step for me was to begin separating my business numbers from my personal numbers. In other words, two checkbooks, and that has meant learning to reconcile or balance both of them.

Yikes I don’t do this well! Even with Quicken linked to my accounts online. Oh, I’m way better than I used to be… even the fact I’m working on it is a major shift. But it seems like something is always out.

This morning, for instance, I’d gotten a draw from my business checking to personal entered twice… that was fairly easy to find. Then the personal account balanced. But my business account was off by $27 and change.

After about 30 minutes of trying to locate the problem I gave up. I hit the adjust button. I want clarity about my money, but there comes a point, and for me it’s pretty quickly, where the effort isn’t worth it.

My current plan is to reconcile every week, at least for awhile. My thinking is that will reduce the errors or at least make them easier to find and correct. We’ll see. Meanwhile…

Write well and often,

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