If you don’t want to spend money on a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel, you can try the free equivalent fromOpenOffice. I’ve used OpenOffice before and it’s an extremely capable alternative. You can also take advantage of the free personal finance templates provided byGoogle Docsor...
If you choose to connect without a firewall or choose not to use automatic updating tools to keep your system as up-to-date as possible, it’s on you to know what you’re doing. Why? Why is it like this? It’s hard to say. Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers: ...