"I just don't know where the money goes!"
1: Paul Morrison, Riverview Church,
Burswood WA 6100
19 January 2006
To Whom It May Concern,
Finally something that is inexpensive, easy to use, and most of all - helpful in managing the family budget. As someone who has almost no accounting skills whatsoever, I found it was simple to set up and took me no time to find out all the main things I wanted to keep track of - our Net Worth, current debt levels and best of all where all that money seems to be leaking out every week. The Five Minute Money Manager has given us a quick way of keeping accurate records and hopefully on track with a household budget that will get us saving again.
Kind Regards
Paul Morrison
2: Sandra & Patricio Rives,
Dianella WA 6059
9th January 2006
Prior to being introduced to Budgeting Made Easy, we were way over our heads in debt and were financially unorganised. Budgeting Made Easy has restructured our finances and now we know where our money is going. We consolidated our debts, learnt where we could cut back, on things and are now making conscious decisions about our purchases. Most of all we have been financially educated and have money to live which has led to a tremendous improvement in our lives.
Kind Regards
Sandra and Patricio Rives
3: Bevan and Cath Jones
Atwell WA
29 May 2006
To Whom It May Concern
We are in the same situation as many families. We are a single income family with three young children, paying off a home loan for our 4 x 2 house in the suburbs.To add to this we had accumulated a credit card debt of around $9,000. The monthly interest payments, along with our home loan repayments, were slowly but surely dragging us backwards.
My wife made me aware at the end of each month that we had again spent more than we earned! Our response to this was different, I (Bevan) put my head in the sand, worked my butt off hoping the problem would just go away. My wife (Cath) tried cutting expenses where she could and attempted to write balance sheets and budgets on bits of paper and leave them around the house for me find, and stress about.
After trying our separate techniques of "getting through", my wife and I agreed to sit down together for a couple of hours and use the "5-Minute Money Manager" that we had been given as a gift and encouraged to try.
We sat in front of the computer and worked through the program, entering 'honestly' our incomings and outgoings, and what our goals were. When the "5-minute Money Manager" program showed us where we are at really and what is possible, we actually felt quite empowered! Having all the figures, and 'plan', laid out before us helped us to actually confront where we are at but also see a future without debt.
We came up with a plan that we both agreed on, made some decisions on what to cut out, and what to keep. For the first time in ages we felt we could work together to get where we both wanted to go.
We even 'dared' to plan having no credit card debt and how we would use the freed up money. Nothing big, just some short term goals we wanted like a holiday and having a saving buffer to cover an emergency.
We are currently half way through our 'get rid of credit card debt' plan, and its actually working! We feel encouraged at the end of each month when we have managed to pay off the extra debts and still survive. No offense to financial planners, but it was good to sit down with my wife and work things out, without feeling pressured by some guy in a suit sitting in my lounge room telling me what to do.
I would encourage anyone in a similar predicament to give the '5-Minute Money Manager' a go. It forced us to be honest, but we now feel we have control over our own future, not just constantly being pushed backwards by circumstances out of our control.
My wife and I are smiling a lot more now knowing that there is a light at the end of a very short tunnel.
All the best, Bevan and Cath Jones
Atwell W.A.
4: Diane Johnson
Spearwood WA
29 Septempber 2006
We have found the 5 Minute Money Manager keeps us honest as far as our spending goes, we now realise we were spending a lot of money we couldn’t really account for, now we know where it all goes.
I ask my Husband to keep his dockets so I can enter them on the spreadsheet, we now have a clear view each week of when we overspend. It has made us realise that we were living beyond our means and this program has really helped us become much more aware of our spending..it also gave us a clear view of our assets and liabilities in a graph form. we love it..the on-line help has been great..very fast and useful...we are very happy we invested a small amount in the programme for a much bigger return.
Thanks
Diane & Malcolm Johnson