I’ve been spending a lot of time organizing my calendars. I haven’t really kept up a personal calendar, mostly relying on my work Outlook calenders and entering important personal items – doc appts, vacations, girls nights – as they pop up. At work I have two separate email accounts, thus two separate Outlook calendars which populate independently. I manually sync between the two every week, and that’s working fine. Not perfect, but it works.

My personal calender is another story. My company hasn’t blocked Google Calendar – gCal- so I’m keeping my personal calendar there. Even better, my friend Maureen told me that gCal will show up on my iPhone calendar! Having the ability to edit/view/share my calendar at work or home on the go is perfect. Perfect! So far, I’ve set up 4 different calendars under my primary Google account (I have 4 different Google accounts, but that’s another story for another blog post). Mine, Miles, Races & Training, Bills.

Miles || I decided create a Miles calendar, and I shared it with JJ. The kid’s only got one entry so far – a doctor appointment later this month – but JJ receives email and text reminders too. Hopefully, he won’t forget these types of events. And I don’t always remember to remind him. Best bet is to automate the process. Thanks Google!

Races & Training || I opted to put my planned marathon training workouts on its own calender for flexibility. Currently, I have all 18 weeks of workouts entered according to the Smart Coach plan. I’m pretty sure I won’t continue following this specific plan, so I may delete the entire calendar and start over. I do have planned and tentative races scheduled, along with RMRR Track Workouts and their Fall Marathon Training series plugged in.

Bills || This is something totally new for me. For years, years, I used Quicken. I would download account activity from my bank, schedule my bills into the register, reconcile transactions weekly – it worked great. I loved knowing exactly where I stood money-wise at any point in time. When I bought my new iMac, i bought a newer version of Quicken. I hate it. Hate it! Updating accounts doesn’t really update. My Quicken balance never matched my online bank balance. It was a lot more manual work and double check than my old version of Quicken. We had no confidence in it. Anyway, I’m going to try using an online calendar to track bills. So that’s what this one is all about. All recurring incomes and expenses are entered and I’m going to just balance the register each week. We’ll see how that goes!

At first, only my primary personal calendar would display on my iPhone. Well, that isn’t going to work. I could see all the calendars via the Google App, but I’d have to log in. I don’t always use my primary Google account, so logging in all the time isn’t exactly efficient. A few discussion board searches, reading different workarounds, 3-way syncing, only able to create on one but not the other…. GAH. This how-to is perfect. I followed the steps. Checked my iPhone. All my lovely little calendars are there. Done.

I {heart} my iPhone.
I {heart} Google.

This new little capability makes me {heart} them even more.