Mike Brown from North Carolina, a new B Word user and a writer, purchased this program on 5/7/05. Below are his unedited comments to me on 9/1/05 (about a 4 month period but not sure if he started immediately after purchase). At the end of this article there is a link to his blog (where I intially found his original comments). There he explaines further and compares other product experiences...

Yes, things are going very well with Bword. Because I have 2 Visa cards (I'm working on paying them off and reducing to one), and accounts at 2 different banks, things are a little complicated sometimes. But I finally settled into my new job and weekly pay schedule, and things have smoothed out. I created a Word file for myself that serves as a checklist for each session and that also helps me determine from which account (fixed or flex) to pay certain credit charges. Then I go online at my bank, move the final amounts around. I'm able to contribute to my savings goals pretty consistently, but  I have to diddle the  amounts sometimes.

One worry I had, that having two accounts (fixed and flex) instead of one would add to my processing time, turned out to be unfounded. The fixed account actually has little activity except for auto withdrawals, transfers to my other accounts, and deposits. The flex account gets more hits, of course, and it takes as long as before. But that's OK. The great benefit of the flex account to me is that it contains the damage, if you will, to one place, and those miscellaneous expenses can be dealt with without affecting my savings goals and required payments.

It's odd, actually, to have all that stuff wrapped up in a 60 minute or so session. I always feel that I should be doing something more, but in fact everything is done! Did I forget something, I wonder; nope, I review my checklist and confirm that everything is taken care of. And it is heaven to get a financial statement in the mail and just put it in my tickler file for the 1st or 15th; I love having that stuff off my mind.

I remember a programmer telling me of a program he wrote for his church that automated a particularly onerous manual process. The guy in charge of doing that work used the software the first time and said, "It can't be that easy...It can't be that easy..." The program had taken away the challenge for the guy. Well, for me, Bword has taken away the challenge of managing my money. And I'm not complaining. I am, in fact, always amazed at how much I'm saving and how well I'm able to curb my spending by simply knowing how much I have left to go for the period.

I met with my financial planner the other day and was able to tell him the exact amount I can contribute to my IRA after paying off my credit cards. That's a feat I could never have done without the work and discipline that Bword painlessly enforces.

Sorry for the gushing post! But I don't talk about this stuff very much with anyone. Hence my blog post. That post was written over the course of several days as I tried to distill my thinking, history, and thought processes related to managing my money. I re-read it today and cringed at some of the writing (I'm a tech writer and always cringe re-reading my old stuff--improvements can always be made). I don't think I gave away too much of the Bword methodology; I made sure that anything I said was already mentioned on your web pages and was thus freely available.

In any case, yes, feel  free to link to the page if you like. I should probably update the post with what I just wrote to you, as my use of the program and its surrounding processes has jelled more and I could maybe sound more intelligent about the whole thing.

Thanks very much for your program and for getting in touch with me.

All the best,
Mike Brown
Durham, NC

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