[ale] KMyMoney2 Cool Stuff

[BruceG]

Hey all,

	A while back I posted asking for financial management package information - 
basically a GNUCash vs KMyMoney2 vs MoneyDance sort of thing. As a past user 
of MS Money - I wanted something simple to use and understand. So - it's 
update time.

	I installed KMyMoney2 from my SuSE 9.0 distribution and kinda sorta liked it. 
It worked well, was easy to use - so I subscribed to the KMyMoney2 users and 
developers e-mail lists to see what was going on.

	The buzz on the current stable version of KMyMoney2 was pretty good, so I 
installed 0.6.1 from source. A nicer package all around. Installing from 
source on SuSE 9.0 and Debian Testing was okay with help from the list. After 
checking, I didn't really need to install from source. SuSE has KMyMoney2 
0.6.1 on their FTP server under the KDE upgrade section (under KDE apps).

	I imported 6 months of CC data, then manually (ouch!!!) entered 6 months of 
checking data. Now I've got from January to current. It certainly helps in 
seeing how much I am spending by category. As a side note, I took the 
scissors to my credit cards, opened a Credit Union savings and checking 
account, and selected a small amount from each paycheck to automatically go 
to my credit union savings account to start building a much needed emergency 
stash 'o cash. Nothing like looking at expenses versus income to make a 
person get a little focused. (hmmmm, income should be MORE than expenses - 
what a concept).

	There was a lot of good information on the developer's list about new 
features in the development branch of KMyMoney2 - so I decided to install 
from CVS. It was very straight-forward and worked like a charm. The newest 
stuff has some built-in reports (with data export to CSV so you can pull it 
into OpenOffice), income / expense category templates, and gpg encryption.

	I'm still trying to learn some features, but definately like the package.