Web-Based Home Budget Management Application Adventure

Web-Based Home Budget Management Application Adventure

You are catching me in the middle of this project, but since I have had to run across new undiscovered land mine fields with untied combat boots, I thought it might be a great blog to start concerning a project that I have started, stopped, and restarted I have no idea how many times.

My home budget could have been easily handled by commercial software certainly capable, and readily available on the open software market.

The problem with me is though, once exposed to software development, I just feel dirty paying someone else to do what I can do myself. Granted, that "someone else" has a degree, or an array of degrees that more than adequately shore them up educationally to the task I would be paying them for. That certainly doesn't pertain to me. But I am a quick study, and I live for doing what is told can't be done, and I love to explore rabbit holes that go deeper than most do-it-yourselfer's dare to go.

My first budget management creation was in the form of an Excel workbook. Actually, my memory fails me here. I believe it was a worksheet and before such sheets were packaged together in a workbook. I blew up the rules of what could be done with functions and created a pretty nice environment that a simple stubborn-minded middle-class fool like myself could financially survive with. I will have to study and research the evolution of Excel before I comment more on this, but safe to say, somewhere down the road, I had to breach the limits of formulae within a cell and hire the specialized black-ops caliber power of VBA. I was able to add features and the beginnings of AI that learned from my financial mistakes and tried to protect me from future stumblings.

Many a flavor of software of my home-grown budget management has evolved since then, and if I find the time, I will chronicalize and enumerate the stages wikipedia style for you. For now, safe to say that I landed in the wonderfully feature enriched awesome and completely fantastic world of web-based apps!

Ah damn, real life intrudes and dinner, movie, and bed await me.

Stay tuned! I will elaborate more about this wonderful home budget adventure tomorrow! Writing about it thus far has been FUN!

NIGHT!