This paper is concerned with the determination of exact buckling loads and vibration frequencies of variable thickness isotropic plates using well known finite difference technique. The plates are subjected to uni, biaxial compression and shear loadings and various combinations of boundary conditions are considered. The buckling load is found out as the in plane load that makes the determinant of the stiffness matrix equal to zero and the natural frequencies are found out by carrying out eigenvalue analysis of stiffness and mass matrices. New and exact results are given for many cases and the results are in close agreement with the published results. In this paper, like finite element method, finite difference method is applied in a very simple manner and the application of boundary conditions is also automatic.