Money
First, you will need to download and install software that will help you. There are a lot of tools to track expenses and budget on Palm devices. When you select your software we suggest taking in consideration these aspects:

1. What functionality is included in the software? Tools for expense tracking may have several elements: Classifying expenses or income by categories in one element, and the most important one. But will your software also let you track the transactions derived from these expenses? Will you be able to see your accounts, and to find the balance in each account? Another important model is balancing. Will your software enable you to define a monthly budget for each monitored category?

2. Will the software show you graphical information or just textual information? We highly recommend that you use a tool that includes also graphic analyze functions.

3. Will you be able to export the data to other software?

4. Will you be able to sync your data with your PC?

5. Does the software support multi currency? Will you be able to use it aboard?

6. Is the software friendly and self explained?

7. What level of support do you get? Is there a web site for the company behind the software and does it include a user manual, an option to ask questions, a forum of users etc?

8. How many years the software is on market? Is it stabled? How many users for this software?

9. If you purchase in the future another PDA, will you be able to continue using the software on your new PDA or phone?

10. Does the software include online web information?

I am working with a free finance management software called HandWallt. In the HandWallet site you can read more about Home Personal Finance, Business Personal Finance and Saving Money.
You can use this free Palm download page to download and install HandWallet.

After you selected the software to use and learned how to use it, we recommend that you decide what your goals are: Do you want to check you bank or credit card statement? Do you want to understand your financial habits or do you just need a tax report. After you decide what you want to achieve you should start entering data to the software accordingly.

Rule # 1
You will always need to enter at least some of the data manually. No software will do the whole work for you. Remember that writing down every expense or transaction takes time and efforts.

Rule # 2
Don't start an archeological project. Write down your expenses from today.

Rule # 3
Focus first on your main and "big" payments. If you spent 1 dollar on a drink on your way home, typing it to your Palm will give you nothing.

Rule # 4
Write you transactions as soon as possible. Decide what is the best time for you to do this work during the day.

Rule # 5
Always backup your work. There is nothing more frustrating than loosing this data after half a year of work.
Palm Money
Have a Palm pilot? Use it to control your money. Palm PDAs has a lot of utilities: using your Palm Pilot you can read emails, find your way by using a navigation software and write notes anytime anywhere. This article is about a new and very important use of Palm PDAs: It can help you to track and to monitor your money. If you have always wanted to know how much you spend on food, house keeping, paying bills etc, this dream can now be achieved.
About us
Palm Money is a non profit site. My name is John Climber and I am using Treo 270 since 2005. I saved a lot of money by using my handheld for analyzing my finance, and wanted to share this information.