Another fine article at Bankrate.com (noticing a trend here?):

"Time For Your Year-End Financial Review"

Since we're only eleven days into 2005, this would be as good a time as any to start tracking your expenses if you're not doing so already. No, really. Get with it. You owe it to yourself and your future.

Anyway, the Bankrate article does a nice job of explaining why expense-tracking is such an important cog in the financial-success wheel.

Have I mentioned that I love Quicken Deluxe 2005? Retrieving all the measurements ("top line," "bottom line," "cash flow," etc.) discussed in the article becomes an absolute snap with Quicken (and probably Microsoft Money, too). This assumes you're diligent with your data input into Quicken, of course. Garbage in equals garbage out, as they say. Treasure in equals . . . well, you can guess.

Tracking my expenses in detail with Quicken was probably the second-most important thing I've yet done to improve my family's financial situation. (Holding the top spot, I think, would be planning ahead for upcoming expenses via a monthly budget / spending plan.)

Could 2005 be a turning point for you?