MS Money's breakdown of my spending

I bought MS Money the other day to help me with keeping track of my expenses, take care of some of my bill payment, and to make me seem uber 1337. Well, ok, it's probably the most un-1337 thing I could do, but I bet my grandparents would be impressed... and that's the scale I usually use, since it's tilted in my favor.

Last week I realized that the next day my credit card payment was due. I figured, "Hey, it's 8:00, and my bill's not due until tomorrow, so I'll just pay it online and I'll be good to go." How silly of me. It turns out that it takes at least two days for payment to clear... no money is credited immediately. This is where things get good. I look at the site to see what my options are to avoid having a late payment, and I see that I can call and do an e-check payment, which will clear immediately.

I'm not sure why I couldn't do this online, or if I just overlooked it as a payment option, but I figured "What the heck... I'll do that." I go through the prompts, entering my digits and routing numbers and such, after which I find that this e-check process will allow my check to clear this very day.

It was such a magical, instantaneous payment process that the credit card company had to charge me an extra $15 dollars on top of my payment. I assume it's to cover the overhead of grinding pixies and unicorn horns to fuel their magical instant process that can't be achieved online in a similar, less expensive fashion.

After I made the payment, I cried for a little while, and then realized that this wasn't a good habit that I keep falling into - realizing the night before something is due that I better get on the ball. I made it through college just fine on that premise... writing many a term paper in a blurry haze of caffiene, google, and fatigue. However, unlike English professors, who are unable to distinguish utter poo from literary masterpieces, credit card companies make a monetary distinction between last minute payments and timely, pre-planned payments. I've been having too many untimely payments lately.

Anywho, this is why I bought MS Money. Oh, I could've bought quicken, but a quick feature comparison showed that for $20 someodd dollars less would get me MS Money with 2 years of online bill pay. So, for $23 bucks or so I bought MS Money.

I brought Money home and installed it the same night, then hooked up my online accounts and did a little categorization of expenses. Today, I updated all my accounts and looked at the little expense pie chart... Here are the results.

I realized a few things... that I spend way too much money eating out every day (since my boss no longer buys our lunch each day), and that entertainment costs should be cut down. I'm gonna try to start buying less expensive groceries, and making my lunch each day. Next, I'll tackle entertainment spending, though that's really important to me. I'll formulate an exact plan later and see if I can stick to it. I think MS Money has a feature that allows me to create a budget against my income per category... I'll try that probably.

Oh, and a last thing I see as I look again at the clothing expenses... I need new clothes. My budget for clothing has always been low, usually buying nice clothes only on sale and every few months. However, I've only got two pair of jeans that fit me (I really should cut back on those eating expenses) and the ones that do are deteriorating rapidly.