Homeschool Helper - a planning app!

I am a planner.  I love to plan everything, so that makes homeschooling even more fun for me.  I am also an office supply and organization junkie, always on the search for the perfect homeschool planner. I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with my current paper planner.  (I totally scrapped the online planner from mywellplannedday.com and homeschoolschedutrack.com)

On a whim, I decided to look for homeschool apps for my iPad.  I have searched plenty of times and found nothing but figured it had been a while since I last searched.  WOW!  When I found Homeschool Helper, I immediately thought... I need this.  They had me from the beautiful design, but all the awesome features made it ridiculously necessary.  And... it is only $4.99.  Ha!  Boy are they giving the expensive planners a run for their money!  I've used them, and they fail miserably in the digital department.  Obviously some people just love paper.  I am one of those people.  But, I think I could stick with this planner.  It is SO easy to use and beautiful.

I've tried to find things to change about this app, and besides making it available on multiple devices via cloud, and allowing a student login (where they can view and check off work, but not edit) I can't think of anything it doesn't have. Attendance tracking, lesson planning, scheduling, field trips, grades, reports... You name it!  You can effortlessly use it for multiple students, add your planning information, and view your plan on a beautiful format. I was pretty skeptical at first, not wanting to be fooled by the initial "wow" factor like I had been before. Especially considering it was a fraction of the cost, and I only had to pay ONCE. How could it possibly be good?

Well, if I wasn't sold before, I am now. I love it, and will be using it to plan our next year as soon as my curriculum arrives. What do you use when planning?  Do you enjoy apps as much as I do?

Changes

Today I realized something.  While using a new app for my iPad (HomeBudget), I came to the shocking reality of needing to *actually* budget.  Normally, we do very well with budgeting, meaning we have always been able to pay our bills.  We don't carry a balance on anything except the mortgage.  Although we do pay for everything with our Discover (or Visa, if Discover isn't accepted) we pay them off monthly.  It has benefited us greatly to do this, because we get 1-5% or more back on everything.

Lately, expense after expense has been coming up, and after inputing everything into this new app, I realized if we don't make some changes, we could be in trouble in the near future.  My job, as a stay-at-home-mom, is to be in charge of the home, the finances, etc.  And I have been doing a good job, but not a "great" job.

So basically what I'm getting at, is although I knew we were making big changes in our lives by getting ready to homeschool (Monday!  Eeek!), we will also be making more changes from finances, to schedules, menus and food...  It's kind of ironic that Mommy will be learning/improving "math" and "home economics" right alongside the girls.