Family Ledger

Ledger for Families and Individuals

ledger.mdb	Office97 edition (1.7MB)
ledger2003.mdb	Office2003 edition (1.5MB)
LedgerSetup.pdf	User Guide

LEDGER.MDB is a simple family budgeting program created for Microsoft Access. It originated as a paper ledger in a 3-ring binder, which we used in our family for many years. About the time the binder fell apart, I acquired my first computer and wrote a program that would do automatically everything that we had done manually on paper. I have looked at other popular financial programs for the computer, but I find them unsuitable for our purposes.

The concept of this ledger is quite simple. Imagine that when you get paid, you take the check to the bank, and instead of putting it in the bank, you get cash instead. Then you take your cash home and divide that cash and put it into envelopes that are designated for specific purposes -- such as food, rent, utilities, medical, clothing, insurance, etc. When you spend the cash, you take it from an appropriate envelope. With this plan, you will have money on hand for predictable expenses. You know that you can't spend money that is in the car insurance envelope for a Friday night movie.

With LEDGER.MDB you create imaginary envelopes, or "budget categories," where you assign the money you have. You can choose to assign your money to various envelopes (categories) by fixed percentages of receipts, or by set monthly amounts. When you first set up the ledger, you decide what are your budget categories. Then you decide how much money you will assign from your income to each of those categories.

We have used this program (or its original paper-and-pencil version) throughout our marriage. It has helped us to maintain mutual accountability for our spending. It has helped us to communicate about our finances. And it has helped us maintain records for tax purposes.

Our children used it for their own financial record keeping while they were high school and college students. They have also shared it with their friends. And I share it with newly wed couples who want to start their financial management as families on the right foot.

Installation instructions

Note: You must have Microsoft Office Professional Edition or Microsoft Access installed on your computer in order to use this ledger. Access comes as part of the MS Office Professional Edition suite, or you can purchase Access separately from www.microsoft.com. (Unfortunately, Access is currently not included in MS Office Standard Edition nor Office for Small Business.) If you have Office/Access 97, 2000, or XP, download the original ledger.mdb file. If you have Office 2003, 2007, or higher, download ledger2003.mdb.

Downloading the ledger file may be a bit tricky on some browsers, especially newer versions of Internet Explorer.

RIGHT CLICK the mouse over the link.

Select "Save target as...:" or "Save link as..." from the menu.

If the ".mdb" exension does not appear with the file name, manually type .mdb at the end of the file name, as it appears in the link. This is very important.

Select the folder in which you what the file saved, and then click SAVE.

LedgerSetup.pdf has step-by-step instructions on how to set up and run the ledger to suit your specific needs.

If you have questions about the ledger program, contact me via r.friedrich@juno.com

Ron

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