Welcome to our new blog series, “Moneydance in Action.”  I’m Angie, one of the Moneydance support staff.  One of my favorite things about working for Moneydance is that my job is largely location independent, which allows me a lot of flexibility in work and life.  In 8 days I’ll be leaving for a 6 month trip across Europe, and I’ll be using Moneydance to keep my finances in order and blogging about my experiences twice weekly.

I’m visiting at least 12 countries and will be using a minimum of 10 currencies, so we’ll all be getting a crash course in mega multi-currency use.  I’ll be using a zero sum budgeting for the pieces of my trip when I’m moving about frequently, and experimenting with envelope budgeting for the months I’m settled down in one place.  I’ll be detailing how I set up and track my budget, working with multi-currency cash accounts, using the iPhone app in foreign currencies, creating and tracking savings goals, and of course the odd little hacks and tweaks I use to get the program to conform to my (admittedly unusual) life!

In the next few posts I’ll still be in the U.S, and I’ll be detailing how I set up my data file and budget for a trip of this magnitude.  On September 30 I arrive in Iceland, October 7 in England, October 26 in the Netherlands, October 29 in Brussels, and October 31 in Paris.  October’s posts will be devoted to using the iPhone app abroad, using multiple currencies, and a few other surprise topics.

I hope you’ll join me as I take Moneydance on this spectacular test-drive!  Next post I’ll be detailing how I customized Moneydance to better meet my needs.

The information in this blog post is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

As Gary V. Vaughan found out last year, Moneydance and Moleskines are two great tastes that go great together. Essentially store daily receipts in the Moleskin pocket and empty them out at night, while entering them into Moneydance.

I had been using my own version of this system until about September of last year, and it worked brilliantly for me.

Now that I have replaced my moleskin with a sleek little smart phone you may have heard of, I just take pictures of the receipts I get through out the day, and only keep the ones I need to keep. The rest go in the recycling bin as soon as I come across one.

How do you use Moneydance?

As Forbes.com originally reported earlier this year, LaSalle (another bank that offered free OFX based Bill Pay) has been sold to Bank of America. ABN AMRO has been entertaining bids from Barclays for a potential merger for the majority of the year. A consortium of banks including the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis, and Banco Santander has set up a rival bid.

Regardless of which offer is accepted later this week, according to the International Herald Tribune, the sale of LaSalle to Bank of America has been confirmed.

“‘LaSalle customers and commercial clients can now enjoy the benefits of the largest retail bank in the nation,’ Kenneth Lewis, chief executive of Bank of America, said. LaSalle branches will begin to change to the Bank of America brand during the first quarter of next year.”

Of course, this has implications other than the possible dissolution of ABN AMRO. It has been suggested that with the acquisition of LaSalle, and the also recent acquisition of US Trust, Bank of America may now standing dangerously close to the 10 percent threshold. And that could mean more hassle for Bank of America users, both old and new.

Are you proud of where your money is invested? Do you keep your ethics and financial matters separate? If you prefer to put your money where your morals are, you might want to check out the Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign. Found via a post on Money and Values.

I generally try to avoid posting too many “10 ways to…” lists, but this one seemed short and universally applicable. Make It Big’s article, 10 Ways to Immediately Start Saving Money, has some great tips for how to save money on expenses you may not have even noticed you had. Improved budgeting will be a big factor in the next release of Moneydance so it should be easier to integrate advice from articles like this into your own finances.

From the Get Rich Slowly blog (itself a great resource) comes a link to a Consumer Reports list of 20 free ways to save energy. Since saving energy usually equates to saving money, this article is particularly relevant to Moneydance users. Another great article over at Get Rich Slowly describes how to save on electricity costs by cutting back on some things you may never have guessed were energy hogs.

A recent NY Times article talks about the huge commissions that real estate agents charge for the sale of a home in the US. With the rise of free online directories, virtual tours and boilerplate contracts, why do most buyers and sellers still accept that traditional agents charge 6% (3% each to buyer and seller agent) for showing a few people through a house? It boils down to control of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) database, which keeps inexpensive agents out of the system.

Our recent move to Scotland was very enlightening in this regard. Realtors (or “Estate Agents” as they’re called here) are less common than solicitors who help with the process and negotiations but leave you to locate your home using whatever means you find convenient. In our case it was easy to locate and explore flats using the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre. Our solicitor did all of the work and negotiations and we ended up with a great deal, paying only a fraction of the price that a full agent in the US would have collected.

Educating yourself about the process of buying a home (securing a loan, inspections/surveys, using or avoiding a realtor, etc) could save you a huge amount of money.