I’ve been reading on PDAs and the iPhone for years now; I haven’t picked up a paper book since 2006. I liked that I could carry multiple books on a single device and that I could read anywhere with it.

But once I got the Kindle I realized it’s an even better experience.

It’s everything that’s good about a paper book, without the bad. I ponied up for the 3G model so I could connect anywhere. No monthly fee. Stores 3000 books, 1-2 months battery life (with wifi off). The touch screen is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. The display is great; it reads like paper.

I’ve bought quite a few new books after I bought this and I’ve finished reading several more over the past two weeks. I’m reading like I used to fifteen years ago: voraciously.

And I’m also excited to be publishing on it as well.

I couldn’t be happier with this reader.

It’s been three years since a devastating pandemic transformed most of the world’s human population into vicious, wild animals.  Ed Brady and his two sons rely solely on each other in order to survive in a world completely devoid of stability and structure.  Their goal: reach the city by the river, where they may have some chance of finding salvation.

As they travel across the wasteland that was once the Midwestern United States, they encounter other survivors along the way.  As their paths inevitably intertwine, Ed must remain steadfast that his sworn mission to see that his boys know safety and happiness is not compromised.  Surrounded by the constant threat of attack by infected humans, can Ed and his sons make it to the city before their luck runs out?  And, if they can, what will be waiting for them there when they arrive?

Into The Badlands is a fast-paced, post-apocalyptic thriller that will take readers on a desperate journey for salvation through the wasted remains of a land overrun with the stuff of nightmares.

Into the badlands is 83,000 words/239 pages and is available on the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony eReader, Smashwords, Kobo, and Apple iBooks.  Check it out here.

Why would you use this?  Well, let’s examine a few scenarios.  Let’s say I have a category called Parties.  Let’s go a bit further and say that I threw a backyard BBQ called “Project Velociraptor” in 2011 (which I did) and I placed all the expenses incurred for that party into the Parties category.  Now when I run a category report I see these expenses summed up in the Parties category just as I expect.

Suppose a couple years later I want to throw another party of a similar nature.  I want to see how much it cost me last time, so that I can budget properly.  I could run a category report for Parties for the year 2011 and get my total.  Easy enough.

But, what if I end up also throwing a Halloween party in 2011?  Now I have to try to figure out which transactions belong to the BBQ, and which transactions belong to the Halloween party.  That’s kind of a pain.

I can solve this problem with Tags.  First, I’d create a transaction tag by clicking Tools -> Edit Transaction Tags from the main menu.

I’m now presented with a list of Tags.  I would then click on the “+” sign to create a new Tag.  I’ll call it 2011 Project Velociraptor, then accept the changes.  I then repeat the process, calling the new Tag 2011 Halloween Party.  (I like to prefix my tags with the year so they’ll sort correctly in the Edit List window and the drop down list.)

Now when I enter any transactions associated with the BBQ I’ll assign them to the Parties category, but I’ll also add the 2011 Project Velociraptor Tag to it.  This can be done by clicking on the Tags field, then scrolling to the appropriate tag and left clicking it.  That will place a check mark beside it.  Hit the Enter key, and it’ll accept your selection.

For any expenses associated with the Halloween party, I’ll repeat the process, but this time I’ll add the 2011 Halloween Party Tag instead.  (Keep in mind that all these transactions were still assigned to the Parties category.)

Now I want to run a Tag report to see how much I spent on each party.  Click Tools -> Graphs and Reports to bring up the dialog box below.

In this example we’ll run for all dates and for all types of accounts.  This will show us everything.

So if I want to see the totals I spent on parties in 2011 I’ll run a category report for Parties.

In order to see how much I spent on the BBQ and the Halloween parties individually I can just run the tag report and both of them will show up with distinct totals.

What’s also nice is that a transaction can roll up to multiple tags.  Be careful though; due to this fact Tags really aren’t additive with other Tags.  The Tag report won’t sum them at the bottom which will help keep you from making that mistake.

Another example of Tag usage is vacations.  You might have a Travel category, into which you placed the expenses from two vacations taken back to back.  Tagging each vacation allows you to track the expenses for each individual trip.

I also used this to track expenses for my Nintendo wii.  I bought it several years ago and placed the expenses in the Gaming Consoles:Hardware subcategory.  I also bought games for it, which I placed into the Games Consoles: Video Games subcategory.  Over subsequent years I bought more games, then more hardware.

Rather than have to build a report manually and try to include every transaction over multiple years, I tagged them all with a wii Tag.  Now I can refer to the tag report to see how much my wii itself has really cost me, and my category report shows me overall how much I spent gaming console-related stuff (which is not necessarily all wii-related).

I use this general rule of thumb when deciding whether or not to use a Tag vs. a Category.  If it’s a one-time expense then I’ll probably use a Tag.  If it’s going to be a recurring expense then I’ll usually use a category.  Other uses can and do apply, of course, but this is generally how I use them.  One of the most useful aspects of Tags is the flexibility they provide.

Moneydance’s Transaction Tags can be a very elegant and useful way to group expenses above and beyond the usual category groupings.  Hopefully this example aptly demonstrates this.

This is useful if you’re contemplating taking out a home equity loan, or maybe selling your house.  You might want to see if you’re upside-down on your car.

Moneydance doesn’t allow you to associate liability accounts with assets.  I liked this feature of Quicken, so I set out to recreate it within Moneydance.

I accomplished this by creating customized net worth reports and graphs.  The graph trends my equity over time, while the report shows me exactly how much equity I have at the time I run the report.

I started by building a standard net worth report.

I first chose the “Net Worth” graph from the list on the left.

I had to manually set the date range for the asset in question.  In this case it was my car.  I set the start date to the beginning of the month I acquired the car, and the end date to the end of the current year.  One thing to note: I will, unfortunately, have to change this end date each year.  You could get around this by setting the date further out than the current year, maybe as long as you plan to own the asset.

I then set it to group by quarter, and changed the “Show” value to “By Individual”.  This allows me to choose the type of assets and liabilities I want.  I clicked “None” to ensure I was starting with a clean slate, and then chose the asset account and the liability (loan) account for my car.  I clicked the “Generate” button to build the graph.

This produces the graph you see above.  In the example image here I placed an arrow on the point where I broke even on my car (when it was worth what I still owed on it).  If you travel the line upward, this shows my equity increasing.  (I know, I paid too much for this car.  Don’t lecture me; I learned my lesson.)

Now this graph is great for trending over time.  However, I want to see exactly how much equity I have right now, down to the dollar.  I built a report to handle this.

Here I did almost the same thing that I did for the graph.  Click “By Individual” and MD will show you specific accounts.  Then choose only the asset and associated liability accounts you want to report on.  I set the date to 12/31/2099, well beyond my lifespan.  That will ensure I always have the latest value.  Then I clicked “Generate”.

Above you’ll see the resulting report.  This shows my asset account’s current value, as well as my associated loan account’s value.  MD will do the math, and show you the difference.  That’s my equity.

Even though these are really targeted net worth reports, I call them “Equity” reports when I memorize them for the MD home page.  I built one for each of our cars, and one for the house.  Since I have two mortgages on the house, I included my house’s asset account, and both the first and second mortgage accounts.  You’d also want to include any home equity loans the same way (they take away from the value of your house too).

Hopefully this will be helpful to those of you need to see the equity in your larger assets.  You’ll likely still want an overall net worth graph/report, but these specialized reports can be complimentary to those.

If you just want to track the total amount that goes into escrow as an expense, then this is fine.  Just create a category called something like “Mortgage Escrow” and set the loan account to transfer your monthly escrow payment into this category.

However, if you want to track the discreet breakout of each portion of your escrow payment, this poses a problem.  My escrow payment is a combination of my home insurance and my property taxes.  I want to track both of these expenses under Insurance and Taxes categories.

Quicken could do this right from the loan account.  Unfortunately Moneydance can’t.  There is way, however, to make this work in Moneydance.

I first created a new asset account called Mortgage Escrow.  I made this a subaccount of my house’s asset account.

Then, as you can in the first screenshot, I set my escrow payment to go into this asset account instead of a category.  Now each time I pay my house payment, Moneydance will transfer the total amount of my escrow payment into this asset account.

If you click on the above image you’ll see in the larger view that my escrow payment shows up as a positive balance in my asset account.  I debited my mortgage account, then credited my Mortgage Escrow asset account.

Now I can payout the specific amounts to both my homeowners insurance categories and my property tax categories.  And when I run reports on taxes and insurance now I’ll see the true cost of these categories as a whole.

Each month when I pay my mortgage I accept the scheduled transaction from the homepage, then I go directly to my Mortgage Escrow account.  There I right click each transaction from the prior month and just change the date  to the date of my current month’s house payment (I have to manually create the first payments, then I can just duplicate them for ease subsequently).  In most cases the dollar amounts are the same each month, so I hit enter to accept the transaction.

While this is a bit more work than Quicken it provides exactly the same functionality.  Maybe one day Moneydance will allow users to split their escrow payment directly from the mortgage payment.  Until then this approach will work just fine.