Got No Money? Your Mac Needs A Free Buddi.

I know my way around money. Well, at least I know what to do with it when I’ve got it. Knowing where my money went is a different issue.

No matter how much I have there’s always more month left at the end of my money. Buddi is a free money manager that can change that.

That’s can, not necessarily will. The human element always seems to screw up the best laid plans, right?

Our Macs have many opportunities to assist us with daily living. We can use it for email, voice communication, video conferencing, web browsing, storing lists and to-do items, and a whole lot more.

Can your Mac be counted on to count your money when it counts? Sure. Uh, well. It depends. That pesky human element strikes again.

Buddi is a classy little application that manages money and does so without a lot of pomp, circumstance, confusion, or a Money for Dummies book. Buddi is also free, which is why I like what I see.

Buddi is somewhat traditional in that you have to set up your accounts when you start. Savings, checking, whatever.

After all, you may not know how much money you have, but if you don’t tell Buddi then it won’t even hazard a guess.

So, guess. Anyway, an account already starts to sound all financially difficult, but it’s not. An account, as Buddi says, is where you either store money or owe money. I have more of the latter than the former.

Creating accounts is easy and takes just a minute or two. It will take you longer to know how much you owe or have stored than to tell Buddi.

Once that’s done, Buddi needs you to create a few categories. Any money that comes to you or goes out from you is a category. For example, salary comes in, alimony goes out.

Lottery winnings comes in, phone, electricity, car payment, and plastic dashboard finger to show the boss goes out. See? That’s how it works.

Buddi categories can be what you want them to be. Mostly. Car, gasoline, rent, utilities, income from neighbors for not letting your kids play outside. Whatever.

After that it’s just math. Every time money comes in or goes out it’s called a transaction and that’s what Buddi keeps track of-- transactions. What you spent or received, when, how much, why?

Whatever you spend, stick it in the right category. Whatever money you find, collect, borrow, confiscate, stick it in the right category. What could be easier.

See how much easier your financial life is already? No more shoe box of receipts and loose change. Buddi holds the details. What’s next? Reports.

A money manager doesn’t mean much if there’s no way to tell how much you’ve put in or how much has left. Buddi’s reports are simple. Buddi only has three tabs. My Accounts. My Budget. And, you guessed it, right? My Reports.

Reports are simple. Show me my income and expenses by Category for-- pull down menu selects the date frame. There’s even a pie graph of income and expenses and a chart of your net worth.

My only complaint with Buddi, and it’s a minor one, alright, there’s two, still both minor.

The first is that Buddi does leave you wanting a little more. It’s not Quicken, doesn’t go online, doesn’t dazzle, but it works. But that’s all.

Finally, Buddi is an open source-like project which means it’s free, usually a good thing. It’s also written in Java which is why it runs fine on Macs, Windows PCs, and Linux PCs, provided they have the Java run-time engine installed (most Macs and Linux PCs do, Windows? not so much).

Still, Buddi, though not pretty and slick and sassy looking like some Mac money managers or Quicken, is simple, almost elegant in a crude Java-like way, and gets to the basics and sticks there.

If you don’t want to spend money to count your money on your Mac, Buddi could be your money buddy.

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