Personal Document Management Software

Household Budgeting

2009-11-07T02:01:00.000-08:00

"Some couples go over their budgets very carefully every month; others just go over them." — Sally Poplin

Humor apart, Formal surveys have indicated that merely by creating a household budget & comparing it with actually increases the annual saving by up to 10 % !

This may sound very fancy, but experts believe that budgeting & variance analysis, instills discipline in the individual thereby sub-consciously increases the actual savings.

Budgeting is an inculcated discipline. Even though it sounds like a time consuming process, once a budget is created, all that needs to be done is compare the actual with the planned figures.
On a day-to-day basis, this comparison barely takes up 5-10 minutes per day. And since you are spending so much time earning that money, wouldn’t you like to see where and how you spend it?

There are other benefits of Budgeting too:

1. It is a good tool to plan for the future. Everyone uses budgeting right from corporates to individuals.

2. It is great for giving the right values to children about saving and planning money. Children should be taught the value of "a penny saved is a penny earned". Scholarship money, birthday gift money etc should be put in a bank account for children so that they can actually see their money grow. If this kind of cash is given to them, there is always the chance of spending it. however, with a bank account, the discipline of saving money begins right from an early age.

3. Budgeting is an excellent tool for planning the future. Unplanned expenses have a tendency to crop up when you least expect it. However, if you create a budget and make a provision to take care of such expenses, it reduces the stress of having to look for money at the last moment.

4. Cash flow management as used by the older generations, using money only for essentials and saving the rest for a rainy day is a credo that served them well. however given the changing attitudes of today, disposable incomes etc, budgeting serves to ground them to the reality that endless reserves are an illusion. Money always has a tendency to shrink when you most expect it to serve your purpose.

A case Study:

JK was a software engineer with a reputed firm. His career graph was looking good with his promotion to team lead within 3 years of joining the firm. As a result, his salary was also increased with periodic assessments. His spending mantra also followed the pattern of 'earn today, party tonight!' He had to be up-to-date with the latest gadgets and fashions. No amount of advising him to budget his earnings and save for a rainy day had any impact on him. Till one day, his father passed away making him the sole earning member of his family. Suddenly, the whole family depended on him for sustenance.
The landlord was making threatening noises to evict the family from their rented accommodation. JK hadn't even thought of investing in a place to call his own. Right from paying the rent to college fees of his siblings, he had to curb his excessive spending and get his budgeting onto track.
A tough year of scrimping and saving every last rupee earned, and today JK is well on his way to buying a flat of his own for his family.

what would you do? Are you really looking for a tough situation to wake you up?

Personal Finance Management Software

2009-10-27T04:22:00.000-07:00

Document Safety

How many times do you search for an important document only to find that it has been misplaced / lost? When you lose an important document, have you ever put a price on it? Are you aware that documents are also paper assets? Can you find your personal documents of insurance policies, bank account numbers, and credit cards, Investment / Retirement Portfolio, Tax records, in 5 minutes or less or do you at least know where you may have last seen them? Surely this all gathering of paperwork may seem overwhelming to you but it is nothing compared to what you may face during a time of crisis and you are caught off guard.
There are some traditional methods to keep your important documents safe:-

Most can be easily scanned onto a CD and stored in a safe deposit box or fireproof box.
Have a ready list of people who you do business with: Insurance agent, financial or estate planner, attorney, brokers etc. so you know who to contact in case you do lose relevant documents.
Another alternative is to make copies, and keep the originals in a safe deposit box.

Now you have one more alternative to keep your documents safe, in a reliable hand which is quickly accessible and also easy to carry.

V Soft Solutions and Consultancy Pvt. Ltd (Soft) a leading software firm in Pune launched India’s First Personal Finance Management Tool on Pen Drive: VAULT, with an inbuilt document center. VAULT is your Personal Finance Management Tool that lets you maintain your personal financial details easily & securely. It combines the features of alternative accounting packages, online portfolio management and spreadsheets. The Software is securely deployed and distributed on a Pen Drive and the entire data is stored on the pen drive itself.

Vault allows you to create, store and maintain your financial records - and thus ensures that you have better control and full knowledge about your assets and wealth. It has several power packed features that are guaranteed to make your financial records easy to access and update. VAULT helps you, the user, to instill a discipline of keeping your financial details up to date and then use that data to make a number of informed and data driven decisions regarding your assets, investments, liabilities etc. You are also recommended to take regular backups of your data on a local drive or a location specified by you .You can also export reports from Vault to MS-Excel, MS-Word for further analysis. In the document center, each family member can store details of various documents, and also scan or upload previously scanned documents to its database. The retrieval is easy and the user can also take printouts.

VAULT automatically connects to the internet (if your copy is registered) and gets the last closing rates of Shares, Mutual funds, gold and Silver. It also allows the user to plan their finances using various ‘what –if’ scenarios. Some other power packed features include a Loan EMI working that saves time in going to the bank, preparation of WILL, prepare household budgeting and directly usable reports for auditing and tax purposes.

To know more about VAULT or to get a free copy of the demo, please feel free to visit http://www.myvault.in