Ask the Readers: How Do You Manage Your Money?
Thursday, 27th March 2008 (by J.D.)This article is about Ask the Readers, Tools
Tomorrow I’ll be participating in a brainstorming session about online personal finance tools. The people behind this workshop want to know what the average person is looking for when she chooses a tool to manage her money. I promised to poll GRS readers for suggestions.
How I manage my money
For years, I’ve used Quicken to manage my money, both on Mac and PC. I’m using the Mac version now, and it’s way behind its PC cousin. The program has all the features I need to track my bank accounts, my investment accounts, and my business ventures, but these features are difficult to find and use, mired by a lousy interface.
Though I like the idea of an online personal finance tool, in practice I find they have too many barriers for me:
- They take too long to set up.
- They have limited functionality.
- They have annoying interface quirks.
For me to move to an online tool, it would have to offer fuss-free setup, not have a subscription-based income model (I’d rather pay a one-time fee), allow me to customize my transactions, and be able to track investments. I don’t really care about social networking stuff. I’m not that eager to compare my expenses with everybody else.
Meanwhile, I’m gradually moving to a paperless personal finance system. I’ve automated as many transactions as possible. I scan every important document that comes my way. I make regular backups of my data. I’d certainly give serious consideration to a tool that helped with this.
How you manage your money
How do you manage your money? What strategies do you use? What tools have you tried? What are you currently using? Do you manage your money on your computer with Excel, Quicken, or Microsoft Money? Do you manage it online with Wesabe, Mint, or Expensr?
What are the top three things you want out of a personal finance tool or service? Do you want to be able to budget? Connect to your investment account? Discuss money management with other users?
Finally, what are your biggest personal finance challenges? Becoming debt-free? Learning how to invest? Finding money to save? Resisting the temptation to spend?
I use Quicken (mac) as a check register and keep track of my bank balances. I’ve never really learned about the other features. I haven’t had any investments until this week, so I might try to learn about that part of Quicken.
In addition, I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all transactions in a monthly-budget form (including CC transactions), so that I always know how much money I have left in the monthly budget, not just in my bank account or credit card. I also track my monthly savings here.
I did try Quicken Online, but when it marked every single debit card transaction (most of them) as POS/Check Card instead of going further like my bank does and adding the description (where I can figure out where the transaction was made), it became far too irritating and I quickly cancelled my account.
I would love to move both my check register (and investment tracking) and my Excel budget online. I was using Google Docs for the spreadsheet, but I have to design it on my home computer and then upload it to Google (to get all the details right just how I like them). And on this version of my budget, when I upload it, Google docs screws up the formatting. So lazily I have left the spreadsheet at home.
Will be interested to see what your post turns up, JD!
I use Quicken which I find helpful for tracking our expenses. However, the Quicken budgeting tool has been a complete failure for us and Quicken up-keep is time intensive.
I’m currently trying out both Quicken Online and Pearbudget. However, the most useful tools I use are spreadsheets I’ve created for myself.
Top 3 things I want to see:
* Importing: Automatic import of transactions from all of my accounts (banking and investment). I like the way Quicken Online imports and categorizes transactions, but it currently doesn’t handle my 401k.
* Budget tracking: So far I love the way Pearbudget handles this, but the fact that it has no automatic import is a problem.
* Bill pay: I haven’t seen this in either of the tools I’ve tried, but right now the only reason I’m logging into my bank’s online banking is to do bill pay and transfers. If I could do this from my personal finance tools instead, it would be great.
My biggest personal finance challenges are to resist my own temptations to impulse spend, and to convince my wife of the importance of sound personal finance (spend less than you earn, save for retirement, remain debt-free, etc).
As a newbie to the whole financial responsibility thing, I’m still working out my system. Right now, I’ve created an Excel budget sheet and use my online banking tools. Bank of America allows you to create a budget in your online account and has some nice features with charts, etc.
An online tool would be great so that I could access it from work or home, but it would need to be easily customized. I’m working to get out of debt so it would be helpful to me to have access to discussion forums or help tips.
We, family of 6, use atm debit cards with auto bill pay for fixed monthly expenses like mort, auto ins, phone, and etc. Also, use debit card for gas cause we can’t go in store and leave kids in car. The rest is cash for groceries, clothes, eating out, and other incidentals. Don’t use rewards cards and like the reduced risk of credit fraud among other benefits of cash. We tried quicken but quit after a month and stick to excel spreadsheets for budget, net worth, and other incidental tracking like how we spend the federal tax stimulus rebate. It took about three years of trial and error to get to a plan that was workable for us.
I have used Microsoft Money for eons. I use it primarily as a check register, and love it for that purpose. I can always balance my account. (I could never do so on paper.) I also love being able to download my statement instead of having to enter transactions manually. I hate how intensive the newer versions of Money are. If my bank would support MSMoney 1998, I’d go back to it in a second.
I also use a Palm-based register system to track cash and credit card purchases. This program interfaces (though not very easily) with MSMoney.
I’ve never quite gotten the hang of using Money to track my retirement accounts, etc.
I would highly, highly recommend a service I used daily called yodlee.com. As an account aggregator it does everything you need.
I never got use to quicken. I use an excel spreasheet. i have inputted everything into mint.com and am trying that. it is nice to be able to look up all accounts on one site. i have the capability to save most accounts at say bank of america, but it doesn’t allow for what it thinks are duplicate accounts–that is, since my wife and i have indiv accounts at the same bank, it won’t allow both. mint.com does. the interface is easy. not all expenses are categorized necessarily correctly, but for the most part, i like it although i won’t be scrapping my excel spreadsheet anytime soon. i’ve customized the spreadsheet to fit all my needs, so it is hard to use anything else.
I’m a longtime Quicken for Mac user (since the early 1990s) and have no complaints. It works for my purposes, but I don’t use most of its more complex features; it works fine as a basic accounting tool.
My main hesitations about using an online service are:
1. What happens if the provider goes out of business? I’d have to be confident that there’s a way to export my data in a format that would be useable by other programs (such as Excel or Quicken) and keep it on my own computer.
2. Subscription fees: Like JD, I don’t like these. If you use just one or two online services, the subscription fees aren’t a big deal. But as more software and services move to the online model, those subscription fees can nickel and dime you to death. The firm 37signals, which is one of the leaders in online subscription-based tools (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Highrise) has been seeing complaints about this from customers who subscribe to multiple services.
3. Security. Even though Wesabe and others are confident that the financial data of their subscribers is secure, I still think a lot of people (myself included) are reluctant to put their financial info online.
The ideal money management solution for me would be a non-proprietary tool that runs on my own computer, using a program like Excel (or Apple’s Numbers) that I can be confident will stick around and will not force me to upgrade every couple of years.
Other thoughts: One of the most attractive features for me is to be able to receive and pay all my bills through one interface. I was able to do something like that when Quicken directly connected to my bank, and it made everything much easier — I could reconcile my bank account in a couple of minutes, pay my bills in a snap…it was great! My current bank doesn’t have that capability so I have to enter everything manually in Quicken. I actually don’t mind that so much as I feel more in touch with my finances because entering data by hand forces me to pay more attention, but it is a lot less convenient. For me, the online banking functionality is the main selling point for a program such as Quicken.
For day-to-day management I use Quicken2006 running on a PC and have been using Quicken releases since 1986. Using scheduled payment function each month is loaded in two installments that coincide on paydays. I have been ebanking through my credit union since 1994. Direct deposit is mandatory where I work, automatic distribution to my accounts, my wife’s checking and savings. I have more than 70% of regular payments on either draft or scheduled release. Investment portfolios are all online and receive only e-statements. Finally I have been using Insurance Information Institute’s terrific “Know your stuff” for household inventory and that allows storing scanned sales receipts with the inventory. I do keep a full-picture budget spreadsheet on Excel that I compare Quicken reports to projected budget expenditures at the end of each year, but I don’t really think it is worth the extra work now.
I have a very simple and very successful strategy for keeping track of my money, no software required. I keep a money journal in a notebook, writing down every penny that comes in or goes out. I write myself notes and make plans for paying bills and encourage myself to be more frugal–all right in the same journal. For me, managing my money required first of all a change in attitude toward myself. On the front of my money journal, I pasted a picture of a Victorian family in all their finery, posing solemnly for the camera. I wrote under the photo, “We have enough. We are enough. We do enough.” Then I pretended that I was a member of that family. I realized that I don’t need to keep buying to be “enough.” I, myself, am already quite sufficient. Once I truly felt this, I was able to stop shopping and spending for entertainment and giving elaborate gifts to hopefully make people like me or be grateful to me. All my relationships as well as my budget have benefited from this change. And all it takes is a notebook and a pen!
This probably isn’t the kind of answer you’re looking for, but we don’t actually use any fancy tools to manage our finances. We don’t keep a checkbook or track every penny.
We have an Excel spreadsheet for our annual budget. Once a year, we list our monthly salaries at the top, then list off all our various expenses. We review past bank statements (online) and determine what our monthly costs our for regular recurring expenses (phone, cable, water, gas, etc.) and add those to the spreadsheet. If the expenses are more than the salaries, we adjust the variable expenses (gifts, monthly “play” money, etc.). We NEVER reduce the amounts dedicated to retirement savings. Those are considered inflexible.
Anyway, we try to have a small ($300 or so) surplus in the monthly budget to cover any miscalculations or surprises.
Then we forget about it.
When a bill comes, we pay it. We don’t update any software or anything, because we already know that our monthly incomes can cover all the expected expenses. We have our “play” money that we can spend each month on whatever we want (entertainment, travel, whatever), but we never touch the money in the account except for bills listed in the budget. Everything works out.
Online banking for paying bills and tracking other accounts (ie. savings, CDs, Mortgage, auto loan, etc.). Old fashion Pen and paper for budget and keeping my checkbook balance. I try not to write things twice. I enjoy this blog and am looking forward to reading more of the comments.
I am boring and just a variety of methods. I use my good old checkbook and I use Google Documents to set up my budget and keep an idea of how everything is doing. I like it b/c it’s free and I can access it anywhere.
I also track my purchases on my Palm.
I’ve just started really tracking my expences, I’m new to the whole fiscal responsibility thing. I wanted a online tool to track my expences, I also wanted it to be available from my cell phone, so I could check a budget category to see if I had money.
Buxfer (http://www.buxfer.com) to the rescue. Web 2.0 coolness, auto sync from my bank account, auto tagging of expences, budgets and categories, txt and email alerts. It’s cool. A month in and I’m digging it.
I tried switching to one of the older computer programs (Quicken I think) but I have been using paper and pencil for years now and am comfortable with that method.
I know that it is ancient. AT least the final results are easy to read because I will use red, green, or black ink depending on the entry type.
I print out a blank spread sheet every two weeks and fill in the rows with each debt and deposit.
I break my paper records in to HouseHold (all the day to day plus yearly; e.g., car insureance, expenses); Retirement accounts, Taxable accounts, and other (safe deposit box, cash on hand etc.).
It works for me and forces me to know where my money is going. True adding up the various columns by hand does led to some errors but it is not that difficult.
My biggest goal is early retirement (at age 49 1/2) which will happen in 7 years.
We use Quicken on the PC.
As far as online services, as a computer guy who has worked as a computer security analyst, I’m a bit nervous about putting all of my financial information in one spot.
Let’s just say I know the “sins” of the security realm. The thing to keep in mind is that, much like finances, it’s a game of managed risks. Your vendors are doing their best to keep your information safe because they know it is central to their business.
However, they have to balance security with other business requirements. For instance, most people want easy access to their information without having to use “special magic”. “Special magic” technologies are enormously expensive and hard to use. But from a security standpoint, the “special magic” technologies are the best. These things include two-factor authentication (similar in concept to ATM cards, with a PIN). They are hard and expensive to manage on a large scale.
And, authentication is only 1 part of the 7 areas of security that need to be managed.
[Addendum: I'm not trying to dissuade you from using these services, but it is good to know some of the risks up front when you do. I am tempted to use them but I don't think I will in the near term.]
I’m old school - nothing beats a custom Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for my purposes. I have a workbook with ten or so tabs that I’ve designed including a checking ledger, retirement tracker, cash & investment tracker, networth calculator, etc. I have it stored on an encrypted flash drive and back it up once a week or so. No account numbers, nothing personalized that anyone could use to identify the person behind the numbers.
I am hesitant to input anything online that requires account number entry. I figure no one is as protective of my data as I am. I would not be against using something that I updated manually, however that sort of defeats the purpose of building an online interface to show real-time balances.
If I were to eventually move online I would love to see a system that uses a pin or some other non-descript account identifier rather than a password or account number for each financial institution. Of course, this would all have to be coordinated with the institutions, but it would be nice if I could enter something like, “542322fd” and it translate to my savings account at the Bank of Frugal. This way, there is no risk of sharing my account number, my online banking password, or any personal information associated with my account. I’ve yet to try an online application that didn’t ask for at least one of those to “connect” to my bank accounts.
Online bill pay, automatic transfers into 401K, Roth, etc but for daily expenses I use an old fashioned ledger. I write it all down by hand…
Personal issues: We’re out of consumer debt and student loan debt and have been for awhile…so now we just have mortgage debt (for our house and a piece of property we own adjacent to it) but I find it very hard to send extra money toward it when it seems so big in my mind…like it’ll always be there…I’d like to figure out how long it would take us to pay it off…i.e. 500 extra a month would be X number of years or 200 extra a month would be this many years.
I started using mint about 2 months ago, and I really don’t like it. It’s aimed at me and my generation, but I would almost rather use a more tedious program than mint because the program is too smart. It should be more intuitive and allow me to break down the expenses the way I want, not the way it thinks I want them.
I need to try out some of the others, but I’m still pretty much dead set on creating my own in excel…
Daniel @ Young and Frugal
I have been using Microsoft Money for years now and like it well enough not to change to something else. It has some quirks like when it classifies things incorrectly but I think those types of problems are evident in other types of software so it is not a big deal to me.
I also recently started using Mint but I do not rely on it to keep my finances in order.
When I first set out to organize my finances I looked at a lot of different tools like MS Money, Quicken, GNU Cash, and some of the online tools. Unfortunately, none of them were offering quite what I was looking for so, being the geek that I am, I just put it together in Excel. It took me a LOT longer to setup, but improving it gradually over the years is a process that I’ve enjoyed. I have one tab to put in expenses & income (either manual entry or downloaded from my bank or credit card website), one tab to track net worth, one tab to track the cash flow in my chequing account, and one tab which sums all the individual expenses up and shows actual spending vs budget amount for each category in my budget. I’ve also added a few graphs and such so I can easily see where my money is being spent.
I realize that this isn’t for everyone because the setup time is so high. Being a software developer, this type of thing is appealing to me though. Now that it’s setup, it generally takes about 20 minutes per week to update it and make sure that everything is on track.
I can’t really see myself ever moving to an online tool. I’m much more comfortable and familiar with Excel so I don’t think they’d be any easier to use. The only benefit that I can see is that I’d be able to access it anywhere, but I’m not sure that’s really something I need or want.
Basically, I don’t see any problem that is solved by switching to an online tool.
I use Moneydance. It’s cheaper than Quicken and is cross platform. It also doesnt throw a bunch of ads in your face when you are trying to cncentrate on saving money.
I also really like how it can directly download my transactions from my bank! Not a lot of Finanace programs can do that.
Even better, unlike Quicken, the people at Moneydance are resposive when you email them. It’s not like shooting an email ino the void.
I use an excel spreadsheet to track, online bill pay through my bank to pay.
One thing I’ve never found in money management software is the ability to take my paycheck (when it’s received) and then disperse it into different “accounts” (really budget categories). Then purchases are deducted against the account. I really want to know at a glance how much money I have in my grocery fund, not what my checking account balance is. Does anyone have experience with an app that will give me something like this? My excel spreadsheet works fine, but it could be better (I may write my own app one of these days).
I am a long-time Quicken user and rely on it heavily to manage all my savings and investment accounts. The budgeting piece isn’t that great, so I have my own spreed sheet. I love the look of Mint, but I am just not comfortable storing my whole financial life out there off my own pc. Its so personal I’d really be worried about security. I’m already being issued a new credit card due to a sercurity breach with a grocery store.
I’ve used MS Money for probably 10 years now, mostly because it was included in the standard s/w pack that came with my PC(s). Probably unlike most people, I love tracking our expenses, so that I can find *where* our money is going and also track our overall networth as it changes over time. It’s also really handy at tax time when you can sort out what you’ve paid to charities, etc.
For budgeting, I find nothing beats an Excel sheet.
Ah, one of my favorite topics.
I use two main tools: Quicken and Excel on my Mac, with the data on an encrypted disk image. (I don’t use Quicken’s or Excel’s password protection, because it’s probably not as good as what Apple uses on disk images.
In Quicken, I track all of my deposit and credit accounts: savings, checking, car loan, college loan, mortgages, credit cards, escrow (I did this even before I was escrowing for myself), IRAs, flexible benefits (FSA), PayPal, money loaned out (or pending rebates on purchases made), etc.
JD, you’re right that the Mac version of Quicken is WAY BEHIND its Windows cousin: I find that Quicken’s budget features are lacking, and that’s why I use Excel. I have several spreadsheets that I use, and I will describe those in a moment.
I have multiple checking accounts - one for billpay (at ING Direct, and into which my direct deposit goes), and one for monthly expenses (at a local credit union, and the only one for which I use debit cards). The reason for this separation is that any problems in my debit account will not affect any billpay activities - that is, my mortgage payment will never bounce because of illegitimate charges to my debit card.
I have the following Excel workbooks, each of which I will describe briefly, and will supply more details upon request:
- primary spreadsheet: this wraps everything together, and is where I track my monthly budget. It shows my expenses as well, so I can predict where I will be in the coming months. Originally this was created to give me an exact figure I could send to credit card companies (when I was getting out of CC debt) yet still have money at the end of the month (I didn’t want to send them too much money, and then not be able to pay something else off)
- monthly spending checking account: this has one sheet per category in the monthly spending account. The sheets are simply ledgers, one sheet per category. There is a summary sheet in the workbook that gives me an at-a-glance view of how I am doing for the month
- Escrow account - similar to the monthly spending account, with a summary page and one page per escrowed category (homeowner’s insurance, HOA dues, auto tax, property tax, etc)
- Savings account - similar to the monthly spending account, with a summary page and one page per savings category (emergency fund, etc)
- Fuel economy workbook - one sheet per car; the real reason I have this is because I’m Type A, but it has practical benefits too: I can predict with very good accuracy when my car will hit the mileage for its next service; this helps me escrow properly for auto service needs.
- medical reimbursement workbook - this is used to track my EOBs and FSA expenses (I can’t submit for FSA reimbursement until insurance has paid me, so I track the status of the claims)
On billpay: I pay nearly everything through ING Direct’s billpay feature. Like the next commenter, I prefer PUSH billpay to PULL billpay. Here’s my setup:
- charity: handwritten check
- cable, gas, electricity, trash: all done by push from ING
- cellphone: paid manually with CC
- mortgages: automatic push from ING
- escrows: automatic transfer at ING
- local phone: automatic CC payment
- NetFlix: automatic CC payment (when we had it)
- college loan: automatic PULL from ING by creditor
- insurance: automatic PULL from ING by insurer
I am happy to provide any more details about my system, if anyone is interested.
—–
My biggest personal finance challenge is spending money on myself. I am so dedicated to getting out of debt and taking care of the other things that I need to do that I neglect spending money on myself - I neglect enjoying my money. I have about $500 in Christmas money that I have yet to spend - why?? I don’t know…
I started out with a DIY Excel spreadsheet that tracked all my expenses (categorized by type) and catalogued all my debts and savings … that really helped me get a sense of where my money went. I did it on Google Docs so that my husband and I could access it from work. Because it was just a record, not including any account numbers, I wasn’t concerned with that info leaking out (who cares how much I spend on groceries?).
I am currently using AceMoney to track expenses. It has some benefits over my Excel spreadsheet (I can more easily tell if I have miscalculated something, for instance, because it handles tracking of expenses across debit, credit and cash accounts) but even though it’s got fancy reports, I think I found my ad-hoc Excel sheet more clear about whether I was on track to meet my goals. I have tried a number of online tools, and Microsoft Money, in the past but found they overcomplicated things. I spent too much time tweaking the system and not enough time analyzing the data.
Quicken on the PC. We download transactions and reconcile everything once a week or so. We use Quicken to track, categorize, and review spending. We’re not budgeters; we’re trimmers and adjusters.
Once every month or two, we look at where the money’s going and adjust plans accordingly. About every 6-12 months, we talk about what we want to be doing in the Big Picture and the Long Term.
I pay bills online as much as I can. PUSH ONLY — in other words, I must initiate the transaction. No autopay. We probably write about 8 checks/month.
As for our goals, we are debt-free (except for mortgage), have college savings for the kids set aside, are maxing out retirement savings, and trying to start a rental real estate empire.
DH is a stay-at-home dad, so “buying him” a flexible part-time job that halves our housing costs, gives us another income stream, and (hopefully) takes advantage of the current real-estate market seems like a reasonable risk to take now.
Our ideal lifestyle would be to each work 20-30 hours/week and make enough to have adequate insurance and keep saving. DH has been “semi-retired” as a SAHD with our two kids for more than 6 years while I work full time, and we have about $850k net worth (married with slightly negative numbers 14 years ago). We’re slowly, slowly moving in that direction!
Pen, Paper and an accordian file.
Like HollyP, I have been using Microsoft Money since the 90s. Overall I like it, but it has grown very cumbersome during the last few years. It takes forever to open (at least 20 minutes) and it doesn’t automatically update my accounts anymore, I have to do it manually. I wish I could go back to an old version too.
I use most of the tools in Money: the check register, the budget tool, the reports, etc.
I recently signed up for Quicken Online and I really love that I can have all my accounts in one place and check my balances from anywhere… but I was expecting more. Like bill pay, a budget tool, and better reporting.
If I could find an online service that had most of the features of Money, that would be ideal. I wouldn’t even mind paying a subscription fee, as long as it was reasonable.
I have online banking set up for all of my accounts (Check and Savings at ING, Credit cards at Citibank and Bank of America). I then manage all of my spending via my Excel spreadsheet you featured about a month ago.
I base my purchasing decisions largely on the excel spreadsheet. It doesn’t, however, follow my bank account balances (which is on purpose), so I check my account balance every few days and make sure things are all ok. On the 1st of each month I transfer any extra money in my checking account over what is budgeted for the month to my savings account, for some forced savings.
Works well for me
Mark up another tally for buxfer.com for me. I find that since I can text in my purchases w/ tags, that I’m actually able to keep a better log of what I spend. I pretty much force myself to log (either by text msg or online) all purchases as soon as I make them. So far, this has helped me eliminate the big pile of receipts and or the “pile which will never be processed”.
second the use of yodlee.com.
It’s a great site that can bring all your various accounts (investment sites, banks, loans, credit cards, mortgages) together, show you and categorize transactions from all them, graph spending trends, etc. I’ve mostly used Quicken since that was what my CPA mom used, but have been slowly relying more and more on yodlee
I recently had the same question? Where is the best place to manage your finances online. I did some research and found an article in (I think) the Feb 2008 Money magazine that talked about this. Money Center at moneycenter.yodlee.com, seem to be what everyone is looking for. It seems to be an online version of quicken, but a better interface. It tracks almost any kind of investments, accounts, real estate, insurance. Online bill paying, quick dashboard reports. Spending charts and reports, and budget charts reports. I have used it since Feb and I like it alot and makes tracking my finances a lot easier. Plus it is secure, that was one of the biggest issues that I had. I hope that this helps someone else as much as it has helped me.
1) Excel file
2) Wachovia Online Bill Pay
3) That’s it
I use quicken (pc) obsessively. I have my entire finacial life on there and i love fiddling with the planning tool. I would go so far as to suggest using this tool for premarital counciling as it would reveal expectations of everything from spending to kids. I was recently forced to upgrade to 2008, which I was mad about. I considered switching to ms money, but too much time and care had been invested into my plan, and money seemed more flashy than useful. 2008 is a buggy thing, and their customer care has been terrible. On the plus side they now have a envelope system spending and saving feature now that offers a deeper level of obsession (I used to have to do that on excel). The only thing I could wish for now is for a budget that can be updated so that a report showing how you are following a budget does not show the budget change as being retroactive. The savings plan makes that less necessary though.
Currently I use the “Quicken Deluxe” program for personal finance. It works if you want a basic check register and “net worth” calculator. Quicken Deluxe, for PC, is useful because it allows one to track expenditures that are associated with retirement accounts. For example, my Roth IRA is tracked in Quicken and it tells me the current value of the fund, how much I have put into the fund, and how much I have loss. It does this through a percentage and in actual dollars. Quicken also tracks the stock market, which is convenient. I do not use this feature a lot, but it does work. I will say I am not pleased with Quicken because of the formats used in the newer version. Now that they have changed the file format I unable to have an “automatic update” from my credit union. However, it does work well with ING Direct.
For me it is all about customization without the fluff, as well as the ability to create different models for my accounts and allocations. The only tool that really does what I need with no mess is Excel.
I use gnucash for to keep track of my money. I had a tight budget 2 years ago and followed every cent back then, but now I only check my progress once every week or so and not all cash payments are accounted for.
Gnucash might not be the perfect for everyone as it uses double bookkeeping. It took me some time to get used to, but once I figured it out I loved it. As the name implies it started out as a free software program, and it was not available for windows until last year, but now it works well for windows also.
I love gnucash and would recommend it to everyone. I have not tried Quicken or Microsoft Money so I cannot argue about its strengths or weaknesses, but I do not want to spend money on tool to keep track of money.
I tried Quicken about 10 years ago and didn’t like it. I rolled my own budgeting spreadsheet and have been using (and tailoring and evolving - which is a major benefit of this approach) that ever since. I’ve looked at other people’s budgeting spreadsheets (Pearbudget, et al), and have stuck with my own creation. It serves me well.
Also, I stopped using paper checks many years ago and have a second spreadsheet for my checking account register. I manually balance it online through the bank’s website every week, which isn’t a big hassle because I use cash for most transactions. I also pay 99.999% of my bills through the bank’s site.
Oh, and I also have a small envelope system (thank you Dave Ramsey) in place with 4 categories: clothes, car, pets and toys. Recently I used the latter to save up and pay cash for an Xbox 360. Also just paid cash for a new work wardrobe with plenty of cash left over for some badly-needed shoes (I tend to let things get really worn out before replacing them).
Hey JD - Like many others here, I’ve been a long-time fan of Quicken and have used the PC version of the software for nearly 10 years. I also keep a couple manual Excel spreadsheets namely for tracking recurring bills and budgeting (as others have mentioned, Quicken budgeting is a little tedious).
I think the biggest thing I want to see out of my software is the ability to quickly and easily pull meaningful reports to observe how I’m spending my money. I’ve always been very satisfied w/ Quicken in this regard.
Finally, most difficult thing: My weakness is eating out for lunch during the workweek, and can easily rack up a couple hundred dollars a month in unnecessary eating out expenses. Ultimately that comes down to naming my eating-out budget, sticking to it, and planning ahead to bring a lunch!
I am terrible at this. I want to get better but I want a tool that is easy to update. I’ve tried Mint, Wasabe, Yodlee and they are ok. I’d love an application or website that would let me track everything AND pay the bills. Or I’d like a solution for my phone where I can easily enter my purchases. The problem with the web applications is they don’t play nice with mobile browsers.
I second the recomendation for Yodelee. I don’t use it directly, but I’m nearly certain that it is what powers the “My Portfolio” feature on the Bank of America site. It really is a thing of beauty. Once I’ve registered all my accounts (investment, banking, credit card). I can set up rules to auto-categorize transactions that occur on any account. The transactions themselves are automatically updates, so there’s no import/export/reconciliation from various QIF files. There are a few improvements that I’d like to see, but overall it is great.
We use MiniMoney on our Mac. We just switched from a PC to a mac, but were using Quicken on the PC. MiniMoney is a free application, is prettier than Quicken and is super simple. We’ve also just started using our bank’s bill pay program (WaMu) and it’s been working out well so far!
I use Mint to track my spending and create budgets. I found that the budgeting tools in Mint do everything that I need to keep on track every month.
As for paying bills - almost all of them are on autopilot. I have my cable/internet and cell phone bill automatically charged to my credit card each month. At the end of the month, I only have to make my rent, credit card, and electricity payments. I transfer everything else out of my checking account into ING direct (save a little bit for ATM withdrawals the following month) once/month. All in all - I have 4 transactions that I have to worry about making per month…and then I just keep track of my spending on my credit card.
I guess I’m the only open-source geek here. I use GnuCash and the usual online accounts/bill pay to track spending, loans and retirement accounts for my wife and myself. In addition, I’ll generally track expense categories (dining, etc) on a monthly basis in a spreadsheet.
It has import features for Money and Quicken formats (though I find I have a better idea of what’s going on with my finances if I enter it by hand, rather than importing and checking).
We use Excel only. I’ve tried Quicken, Mint, and Wesabe. I track everything “by hand” with Excel — opening up the individual accounts and moving stuff around from cell to cell. It can be tedious, but it runs like a well oiled machine.
The top three things I want out of a personal finance tool:
1. flexibility
2. data privacy
3. flexibility
I use Excel because the other systems can be clunky, or put items in places I don’t want them. For example, I can’t automatically track lunch expenses from one restaurant for work or non-work. So some of those programs automatically associate every purchase after I ‘tag’ it once with “work food” or something similar.
I use MS Money to keep track of individual transactions to my checking account. I tried downloading statements from my bank through Money, but I had trouble getting it to work. So I keep entering every transaction by hand. I find this is better anyway because it forces me to look at what I do instead of blindly downloading things and possibly ignoring them.
Ad for my budget, I like to play around with numbers and categories. I prefer Excel for this because I can write VBA code to make my macros do exactly what I want. It’s highly customizable.
I’ve been using Microsoft Money for many years now. I usually pay merchants with credit cards and make sure to save the receipts from each transaction. I use these receipts to enter my expenses into Microsoft Money on a nightly basis.
Unlike many people, I don’t use the online features of MS Money. This is very important, because my nightly input to Microsoft money is also a form of review. How much money did i spend? What category? Am I spending too much?
Since I am a college student and my most common expenses are eating out. I like to keep track of this number so that I know when I am getting too close to my budget.
Online and automatic payments are a tad too automated - they don’t demand involvement and it is easy as a person to ignore them
Some features I value highly in a tool are good automatic category suggestions (e.g. If I type Caribou Coffee as the merchant - the tool should automatically choose dining out as the category (or a custom category (coffee) based on my usage patterns) Good reporting functions - this is very useful. Especially any reports that show net-worth or net-expenditures over time, comparative expenses from different months.
Of course I was able to track my accounts from the very beginning. Something I realize is not possible for many people. Under these circumstances the ability to easily import transaction info from banks or credit card companies. One very useful tool would be a pdf importer. That might be able to import and interpret pdf statements.
More specifically, for every pay period I write out what monies are coming in and what expenses must be paid in chronological order.
Rent, Public Transit, cable and food/gas bills never change so I have a set amount come off of each cheque into an ING account to cover them and the phone bill does fluctuate by just a couple of dollars/month so I budget a slightly higher amount than I typically need and that goes into ING as well. Then my RSP contribution comes off (my personal RSP, work is already deducted at the source), then I have 2 savings accounts for car insurance (pay it in full each renewal) and emergency (which as long as I never actually need it for an emergency will one day in the not so distant future be a house downpayment). Then I set aside a personal expense budget of $20/week which I don’t track because that’s just “whatever I want to do with it” money and the rest goes to paying down my credit card debt (which should be done by mid summer allowing me to pump that much more into the emergency/downpayment fund).
I withdraw the cable and phone bills from ING manually and pay online through my regular bank. Each week my food and gas budgets are deposited automatically for use. I always try to come in under budget on food and gas and then apply the difference to my debt.
As monies come in or out I check them off my list and at the end of the pay period it all balances perfectly. Quarterly I prepare a full asset to debt report to get my actual net worth also with pen and paper although I then type it out into a chart I made in MSWord.
I don’t track my expenses per se because they are all pretty much identical each month. I pay rent, transit passes, food, gas, cable and phone and besides $20/week the rest goes into savings or debt repayment.
Every once in a while I’ll put in some overtime or receive a small bonus and that money gets put into another savings account labeled “fun” and usually goes to small trips a couple of times a year. I worked a couple of Saturdays earlier this year and got a couple of bonuses for taking courses so in 2 weeks we’re going to Cleveland to see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This summer I’m planning to see Quebec City.
Nobody ever mentions the single best online solution I have found (and the one that Mint uses as its “backend”) Yodlee MoneyCenter. It is by far the single EASIEST, FASTEST, LEAST UPKEEP system I have ever encountered. It is highly configurable, cross-platform (i.e., web-based) robust and feature-rich. I simply could not use anything else. It makes Mint look like a toy, and MS Money, Quicken, etc. look like Windows 98. It is that good. No social web stuff, so if you want that then Wesabe or Mint would be a better choice, but for real hard-core money management (including morgage/home value, student loans, every single type of credit or savings/brokerage etc. account is catalogued. It is extraordinary. Check it out, you will not regret it.
I have used my credit union’s online banking for about a decade now. The Web Bill Pay is free, it updates once a day, so I can balance my checkbook daily, and I can do things like start a CD right on the website. I also download to Microsoft Money, which I’ve been using for about three years. It’s handy, it’s paperless, etc, but I’m not thrilled with it. I hope to upgrade to a Mac Laptop at some point and use Quicken, but a computer upgrade is pretty far in the future. Right now, I’m not looking to change anything, since I have enough going on with my husband’s deployment and another temporary sojourn into single-parenting.
Never liked online tools either. They seem redundant. Everything they will do, my Money will do, and I only had to buy the software and enter everything once. Plus, it’s hard to convince me to put my financial information onto a website. I know that my credit union could be hacked, but I have far more confidence there than in a website still in beta.
We use Quicken to keep track of all transactions, but use an Excel spreadsheet for budgeting purposes (and use Quicken reports to compare actual spending to budget) because Quicken’s budget features are lacking. Like many other commenters, I am not comfortable storing my financial information online.
I use yodlee.com to track my basic accounts (rather than checkbook ledgers).
I recently started using a spreadsheet for strict budgeting and tracking each expense by my category (yodlee has this feature, but I prefer to do my own). I use google docs for convenience.
I use networhtiq to track my overall progress. I currently don’t track my investment portfolio gains/losses, just the overall balance.
I have been using Moneydance lately. I tried Quicken, MS Money, Wesabe, and Mint - I like moneydance the best so far. I just purchased a license and have been importing my accounts. It has a fairly simple interface but does everything I need. Also, there is an active support forum and it work across Mac / Win / Linux with the same data file.
Whew! I’m glad I’m not the only stone age person here. We used to do nothing, just review monthly checking to make sure the checks went through.
I like to keep it really simple. For day to day transactions, have 1 checking account, and 1 credit card. We deposit all cash and use debit card, checks, or credit card for all transactions.
Every month using checking account and credit card list of transactions I simply create a list of ingo (money in) and outgo transactions, with sub categories of recurring(fixed), grocery, restaurant, drug/medical, gas, and miscellaneous. That is sufficient for us to track what we are spending our money on.
Also I put the totals of the subcategories in an excel file by month so I can track changes, but usually wait till the end of the year to do that.
If I wanted to get more fancy I would like to automatically download both credit card and checking account info into a word or excel format, without losing information. I wish Amazon listed what the item was, not just “amazon”.
I would love to do automatic bill pay through checking for more of my monthly recurring expenses. I already do for a handful but the rest do not offer that option.
I’ve been using Quicken on PC for years now. Since 2001, or so, I think. After moving to a Mac for my personal machine and finding Quicken for OS X to be rather lacking (and nearly impossible to move Quicken data to) I’ve fallen back on running the PC version in Windows under VMware. It, and some development tools, are the only things I haven’t been able to completely switch to OS X.
I used Mvelopes for about a year as I was getting the hang of budgeting. Now I use an Excel spreadsheet and just track all income and outgo for the checking account. I have separate spreadsheets for Savings (broken into sub goal categories such as vacation, emergency fund, auto repairs, etc.), and Net Worth.
I liked the Mvelope system for the most part, especially “assigning” the transactions. It took about 2 hours to set up, not terrible, but still 2 hours. My excel sheet is customized to me, I’m good about tracking everything so it is not any hassle for me. I probably spend less than 2 hours a month keeping track.
I use Buxfer. As of this morning.
I use Moneytrackin.com
Has a nice look with lots of graphs and diagrams and all the features I need.
But I use it just to record transactions, not to actually pay bills with it. Nor do I download transaction automatically since it’s never supported for my bank anyway (with no online or offline program I’ve ever used).
I’ve used Quicken (PC) for years. I like it the way it is now. I prefer NOT to have transactions downloaded automatically, as I enter them manually to check for discrepancies in anything. I have every account - checking, savings, credit cards, IRA - in there. I like being able to ‘exclude’ certain amounts from the total net worth, it helps me budget because it removes money I don’t want to spend from my total figure. I also like reports. Since I categorize everything, I can see how I’m doing both short and long-term with respect to my budget. I use automatic transactions for recurring payments, which saves me time.
I use Quicken as well, and find it does a good job: the basics that I need to know. The pie chart is definitely a useful tool that keeps me (and my spending) in check.
I have been forming my method for about two years; I call it cruise control. I don’t have a formal, written budget. Instead, my deduction from my monthly paycheck is set each year to the maximum allowable for a 401k. I update each year in November to whatever the IRS has raised the ceiling to.
Then it is direct deposited to my checking account. All of my bills that are non-changing amounts are set up with automatic Bill Pay. Only my water bill requires a physical check on the first of each month. All gasoline, groceries, and other incidentals like eating out go on the debit card, to be immediately deducted. I follow my checking balance each week, balancing against receipts.
Clothing and any other expenditures go on an American Express credit card(returning 4.5%) which is paid in full each mid-month date.
Two days before the next paycheck, any remaining funds above the minimum checking balance required for free billpay and my next month’s float of expenses (so as not to overdraft), I send by EFT to my Fidelity investment account.
I live below my means, so over the past two years I have saved a $10,000 cash emergency fund while accumulating $3800 in stocks in two DRIPs that automatically invest each month, and an additional $4000 in stocks in excess Emergency Fund cash I decided to invest to prevent inflation eating my lunch. (Naming it the Emergency Fund in my Fidelity nickname for the account really seemed to help me be able to leave the cash alone in it, too.)
All this while still deducting the maximum of $15,500 from my annual pay. I do still have problem areas: I have pets which is expensive, I moved into my own apartment after roommating it for quite a while, and I am making large car payments for one more year.
My best improvements - not eating out so much, price listing and shopping listing my grocery expenditures, and never, ever going out to shop for electronics or clothing. I mail order everything I really need, which prevents me from impulse shopping in the stores. It also makes me really consider - is this worth the shipping cost? Will I use it enough to justify the price?
Pencil, paper, and patience. My financial situation is simple enough (four budget lines) that I can put a year’s worth of information on four pages of paper: 1 page for monthly asset reconciliation, 2 pages for income/budget tracking, 1 page for “notional” savings accounts dedicated to specific savings goals.
There’s definitely a diminishing return to monitoring more and more data when you factor in the possibility of burn-out.
We have two installations of GnuCash which are used daily. After getting used to the established double entry accounting model*, I do not know what I would do without it. Thanks to GnuCash, reconciling bank and credit card statements is effortless. We also heavily use the search feature. The only negative for us is that Gnucash reports cannot be easily customized.
*double-entry does not mean you enter the same info twice, instead it means that every transaction affects two accounts
I’m with Frugal Dad on this one.
I’m old school - nothing beats a custom Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for my purposes. I hesitant to used online financial applications because of the many security issues discussed in the comments above.
Besides, they don’t save any time. My friend uses an online financial application, but he spends more time then I do fiddling with it. Although I may not move to online financial planning, the momentum is moving in that direction and the next generation will likely fully embrace the trend.
Like others here, I also use a combination of Microsoft Money and Excel. MS Money is used to aggregate all of my accounts and transactions electronically. I then copy the totals and summaries into an Excel spreadsheet for budgeting purposes.
I have used Google spreadsheets recently, one tab for the budget and one for net worth. It’s not a very complicated system, but because it’s an easy way to get a sense of my financial health, I’m motivated to use it. I heard a financial “expert” suggest that you shouldn’t track your budget for more than 3 or 4 months–long enough to know where you spend your money, what your fixed and discretionary expenditures are.
I think this makes sense because it teaches you to manage your money, but you don’t spend a lot of time tracking every penny (not that it’s a bad thing, just not something I choose to spend my time doing). Investments can easily be tracked with the online brokerage you use, TD Ameritrade, Etrade, Fidelity, etc. In short, I think the system you use should teach you how to be frugal and not get in debt. For example, if you know you want to keep your weekly grocery bill under $100, you might not make that luxury purchase or maybe buy the store brand.
I looked at Mint and liked the idea, but security is a huge issue for me.
Google Docs
After testing all the online services available, I have settled on spreadsheets in Google Docs.
One sheet is the monthly budgets based off of examples I found online. The second sheet is an envelopes style method of tracking funds available in each category. The third is simply a log of expenses with totals based on categories.
I still keep my free Mint account up to date, along with the new Mint style service included in my Bank of America online account.
Mint and BOA make it easy to visualize where our money has gone, but doesn’t really help our goal to budget and be debt free.
It’s a little more work doing it ourselves, but having it all online with Google Docs makes it super convenient, especially when my wife needs to discuss finances when I’m at work or when we are travelling.
I made a big Excel spreadsheet. Nothing else reports like I want it too or else it’s too clunky to use. 432kb right now, and requires no installation across computers. And eventually when Google Docs catches up with Excel a bit more, I’ll put it back up there.
Here are the sheets I have:
Position: I get paid twice a month, so those are my “periods”. For each of my major categories, I have budgeted, actual, difference, and expected figures. I also have my current bank balance and projected balance for the period.
Historic/Budget/Compare: Just a bunch of sheets that show how much I spent and how much I budgeted for each period, so I can make changes to my budget or spending habits.
Register: I copy and paste from my bank website to here, then add the category. This goes back to all my records (one year so far).
Debt: A big sheet with all of my debts listed (including principal, interest, min payments, and contributions). I’ve also added my income, savings, and other expenses so it’s my current projected budget. Very useful since I’m considering purchasing a new vehicle next year and possibly taking out my first mortgage! Not to mention paying off all my credit cards, other debts, and possibly even my student loans.
Wishlist: I also keep my 30-day or whatever you want to call it wishlist on here. If I can buy something with the spending cash I pull out each week, I don’t sweat it (usually under $20), but if it’s a larger purchase, this combined with a separate savings account has REALLY curbed my spending.
So it’s a little complicated, and there’s a lot of intermediate and advanced Excel functions, but it’s 100% cross platform, compatible with Open Office, and can be e-mailed about. It does everything I need and nothing more.
I use Yodlee because it accesses 99 percent of my accounts, has a calender and includes a budget feature. Oh, it’s also free.
Wesabe is more of a social program for people who need motivation to stay on track. I’ve outgrown the MySpace fad.
My biggest challenge is paying off debt. It’s not that much, but it bugs me.
http://www.shoyustuff.com/archive_31.htm#7010
I’ve been developing a Google spreadsheet over the past two years or so. While Excel/Open Office Calc has a lot more functionality, it’s really helpful to be able to look at my expenses anytime I’m at a computer, such as at work. At first, the spreadsheet was nothing but a list of bills, and I put an ‘x’ in a cell next to the bills that had been paid. Now, it tracks my goals, my total debt left each month, my net worth, etc., and makes estimations on where they’ll be at the end of the year.
I use excel spreadsheets to create my annual budget and track my monthly bills, retirement, savings, and net worth.
I use a feature provided by my bank to categorize expenses once they go out. I have very detailed categories - for example, for food expenses I have: breakfast out, lunch out, lunch w/SO, dinner out, dinner w/SO, groceries, happy hour, snacks, etc…
Excel, online bill pay, and checkbook. I tried Quicken and couldn’t get the hang of it. What I like with my spread sheet is that I can see the whole month at one time — with weekly pay, some things have to be shifted around each month to be sure they are paid before the due date. Quicken doesn’t really allow this flexibility to me… that I’ve figured out. I really WANT to use it, but so far it has just irritated me. I got the missing manual, but it’s for a different edition — not the starter edition. Very frustrating.
I use Mint- I think it’s OK, but they need to add more features before I’d want to pay for it. The main thing that I don’t like is that you can not create your own categories to track spending in them. For example, I wanted to know how much I was spending on wine, but that doesn’t fit into the categories that they already have, so I put it in “coffee shops” since I don’t go to coffee shops I know that everything that I put in the category is wine. Pretty clunky.
We use “Budget” from http://www.snowmintcs.com. It works on both Mac and Windows. It uses the tried-and-true Envelope method. It takes some getting used to, but once you’re set up, it works great. We just past our first year using it full time. Now we never spend more than what we’ve put in our “envelopes” which has been great!
Two years ago I tried to use quicken, I gave it a 3 month trial, but I was very dissapointed by the experience. It seemed very non-intuitive as a program, and I was slightly worried about the potential security risks.
So I went back to my old spreadsheet method. I set my budget on one tab, with expenses broken out by fixed monthly costs(mortgage, electricity, cable, etc), and then yearly irregular costs (car taxes, gift spending, travel, haircuts, etc). On another tab I would have upcoming purchases, primarily for large ticket items so we could plan what to save up for next. I would review my budget against my online statements (via online banking, and online credit card statements). We automate as many bills as possible.
I am now giving pearbudget a test trial while it’s in beta. So far I like it, the budgeting is very similar to my current spreadsheet. And I just finished yesterday transcribing our past 3 months of financial data. I’m going to try to use it as a running checklist to see how we’re doing on a day to day basis against our budget.
I think that if I can actually spend a few minutes a week on it, it will be useful and might replace the spreadsheet method… We’ll see.
I must be old-fashioned - I use my check book register and credit card statements to manage my money. I have 3 accounts - local checking, non-local checking, non-local money market. I have the non-local stuff because it gives a great rate and I can do all transferring, etc on line. Local checking is mostly for ATM service. My fees for all 3 accounts amount to $1/month.
I do budget each month (on paper), but I don’t have a spending problem. I’ve found if I don’t go to stores I don’t spend money needlessly - makes budgeting very easy.
I just can’t put financial info online. I haven’t taken the step to get computer software either. We’re all wired differently and if you have a system that works for you why change it?
A combination of Gnucash, spreadsheets, and recently I gave in and accepted that I will be using Mint.com
I used to use Quicken for years on my Mac and loved it. When I got married, by PC-loving partner already used MS Money. So I gave up the control and yielded the floor to her. She keeps the accounts; I pay the bill. We check receipts, payments, etc., nearly every day, and it’s bliss.
I follow the Keep It Simple Stupid principle in most areas of my life, personal finances being no exception.
I have all my bills on autopayment, except credit cards because I don’t trust them (long story).
I have an online Vanguard account where I track all my investments. Easy, efficient, automatic investing.
I use Open Office spreadsheet on my laptop to track my budget. I only spend about 2 hours at the end of each month entering data from receipts, printed out bank statements, printed credit card statements, etc. Very easy.
Wow. Your responses are amazing. Thank you. I almost didn’t post this — it was a last minute inspiration last night before going to bed. I’m glad I did!
It sounds like what most of you are looking for is flexibility and customization, the very things I want, too…
Keep the comments coming!
Pen, paper, and calculator! I have a typed out budget table and list expenditures in individual cells on my table. We’re on such a small income that I write down EVERY purchase.
We have 2 credit cards, 1 debit card, and a checkbook. I track my bank accounts and credit card accounts online. We use credit cards only for online purchases.
I use Quicken. I add transactions and then reconcile monthly with account statements.
I’ve tried Wesabe and Mint, but decided that I’d rather not put my account information into online tools like that. Now I’m using MoneyDance and I find it just a little bit quirky, but overall, very helpful.
I’m sure you’re getting almost too many answers, so i’ll keep mine short:
I would NEVER NEVER NEVER use an online money tracker. Too much of a chance of loosing it all, for too little gain.
I’ve tried using Quicken, but i never seem to be able to keep up with it. I would love it if there was a very simple version of Quicken i could install on my computer, that would download the quicken files from my banks, and look for discrepencies for me.
I would love it if the program could initiate automatic payments for me, so i could control them all from one source, instead of from the 4 or 6 bank accounts.
I plan on keeping track of my finances once i buy an Eee PC (or knock-off) that i am getting for going back to school. I plan on keeping the recipts i use through the day, and when i get a chance during the day, to get on and update the software. (either a Linux version of Quicken itself)
While I don’t track everything in great detail, here is what I do:
1. Balance checkbook by hand as I go, and then reconcile about once a week by viewing the account online.
2. Use Excel to come up with a general guideline of spending/saving at the beginning of each year.
3. Have retirement and college savings plans set up on auto deposit.
4. Have Excel spreadsheets for both short-term and long-term financial goals. This was important because I kept feeling as though I wasn’t making any progress in saving. By having the short-term goals [monthly by category] and long-term goals [a 20-year projection of my savings/retirement/college savings goals, and a projection of my mortgage balance], I can see if I’m on track to reach these goals and don’t get as frustrated by the slow but steady progress which doesn’t look like much in the short-term but which adds up over time.
I tried both Money and Quicken but found that using those programs was much more time consuming than just balancing the checking by hand and using a custom Excel sheet for everything else.
I just use one big excel sheet to create my spending plan. All the expenses are put under the right time column (weekly, fortnightly, 4-weeks, quarterly and yearly) then converted to a weekly figure and automatically duplicated to the right bank account (where they’re again doubled as i do my finances fortnightly).
My income comes into one account and the spreadsheet gives the precise figures of the amounts required in the other accounts (which are then auto transfferd the next day). Anything which can be direct debited is done through one credit card which is always in the plus. The discretionary expenses (food and petrol mainly) are transfered to a debit card and are managed on the fly ie. i don’t keep precise tabs, just know how much i can generally spend).
Right now goals are to pay off old credit cards which have been locked in the cupboard (2K owing) and then continue to put that money towards savings and an emergency account. Have 7k owing on a car however i treat it as simply another auto expenses as i beleive its a good debt.
I use Quicken 2007. I was hesitant to upgrade from 2004 because of bad reviews in a few places (Amazon, CNET) but it has worked fine for me.
Our primary checking account has too many transactions to get every dollar to match, but for all other accounts, we are able to get near-the-penny accuracy. Firstrade, Fidelity, ING Direct, and Wachovia are all institutions I use and they all work well with Quicken.
I don’t use the budgeting features. I do use the reports, a lot, and export directly to TurboTax in April.
I have started lending via Prosper.com and am using a data entry technique that uses only 3 transactions per month, recommended by the Rateladder and Lazy Man and Money blogs.
The best part about Quicken is that while it has taken awhile (3 months or so, fixing an account here and updating a statement there, etc) to get most things entered correctly, once it is set up, the ability to open up one application, hit a few buttons, and know our in-the-moment net worth is very powerful. We can also look back in time and see spending patterns and impacts on Net Worth. I also use the Retirement Planner to explore What If scenarios on adjusting my 401k contribution. My goal is to get things to a point where once a week, I cover all the financial bases for all accounts in about 30 minutes.
I use MS Money for my financial needs and have been relatively successful with it. I did try to go the paperless route earlier this year, getting most of my bills and paystub delivered electronically (via ePost, I am in Canada). I found it more work that I expected to log-in, view the bills, schedule the payments on my bank’s site and enter them into Money, so I have reverted back to paper bills that come in the mail.
For an online tool to be successful for me, it would need seamless integration with electronic billing, so that it downloads my bills and automatically schedules payments (on the due date) with the correct amounts to avoid swapping between multiple webistes to get it done.
I use GnuCash, a free finance program for *nix systems. I don’t know if you can install it on windows or Mac. It’s great and it’s free.
For online tools, I used to use Wesabe a bit, but recently have been more interested in Mint. I like their interface, the fact that they will soon be including investments, and that you can easily see how your spending compares to other people.
Until recently my biggest financial goal was getting out of debt. I did that in Nov 07, and am now battling to keep spending down and save as much as possible.
I use a Google doc to track my finances. I have a budget there as well as a balance sheet. I avoid more complicated online tools both because I don’t think I need them, but mostly because I do trust the security.
I run my finances with an eye towards keeping myself from overspending (Im stingy about purchases bigger than ~$50 but for some reason have no real inhibition towards spending ~$15 10 times without need). Based on my budget I have a weekly allowance for Food/necessities needed weekly and one for fun/non necessary expenses. But, knowing that I cannot trust myself to track these things I now have a system that does not require that and also means I only need to think about spending 1x per week. I have one debit card each for food and fun that receives the budgeted amount via direct deposit weekly. Meaning that so long as I stick to spending with those two cards, I never go over budget. A bigger account receives the bulk of my pay, pays my bills automatically, and moves money to investment accounts.
Because going over budget cannot happen without being noticed with this setup I merely keep track of my net worth to ensure that it is progressing appropriately, making adjustments if it isn’t. I have only student debt and paying that off quickly is my goal as the rate on this debt has eclipsed that of my high interest savings account.
As an aside, I found recently that I was going over budget on food and realized that the fix was by reducing my weekly allotment. I had enough money to eat out ~4 times a week which meant I was not keeping dinner groceries at home leading me to eat out for the 3 dinners that didn’t fit the budget. Reducing my budget leaves me with a max of one night out a week and the rest at home. I’m easily meeting this reduced budget and as a bonus, am loosing some weight from avoiding unhealthy restaurant food. Nice little double bonus.
I’ll also recommend Yodlee’s MoneyCenter application. It’s the same application used by banks like BofA. Been using it for about 9 months now and I hardly have to spend any time tracking my spending. Nearly everything besides Paypal transactions get categorized automatically. I had tried to use Quicken for a year, but that failed in a big unusable mess.
Excel spreadsheet. I would do paper and pencil but I scramble numbers when I do math! I let Excel do the math for me. With good basic Excel skills, a person can do just about anything.
I get paid bimonthly, so I have the monthly cash flow plan set up, with two columns (one for each paycheck) and a third column adding up the left ones into the monthly figures. I have categories with recommended percentage ranges for each, and in each category section, I total actual budgeted/spent amounts and set a cell formula for actual percentage, so I can see how I’m doing. Categories: Giving, Saving, Housing, Utilities, Food, Transportation, Clothing, Medical/Health (not covered by insurance or HCRA), Personal, Recreation, and just deleted from all future monthly cash flow plans, Debts! (I became totally debt free last week.)
I don’t have separate columns for budgeted/spent as a before/after thing, I just update the cash flow plan on the fly.
My personal category tends to go over but it includes Business and Education categories which really aren’t quite personal.
Most entries are in black, but green/bold for cash envelope system monies, and purple/bold for sinking fund accumulation amounts.
I’ve not been good about tracking sinking fund accumulation, but I recently set up a spreadsheet to track these accumulations. Right now it’s just for annual/semiannual bills, while I finish the emergency fund; however, once I start more sinking funds for more savings goals, I’ll have to see how that’s going.
If I’m not tracking that well, I might put medium term savings goals into Smarty Pig (car replacement, big foreign trip, boat replacement, etc.), or switch to YNAB. http://www.youneedabudget.com
I like Excel because I can beat it into submission and make it do what I want. Simple. Quick. I hated Quicken and MS Money.
I check my accounts online and auto bill pay everything that I can, but I don’t need to download that account info into my budgeting software. I can’t really see the advantage of that compared to how I do things now.
I use Mint and a spreadsheet (Open Office, natch). The whole thing about tracking expenses is I refuse to pay for something that I can get for free.
Paying for finance software….
Thats like paying a barber to cut my hair. 1/8 inch all around please!
Another happy Moneydance user here. I was a long time Quicken user but was irritated with the annual upgrade fees, with little or no value add. I looked for a more cost effective solutions and settled on Moneydance. I’ve been on Moneydance for 2 years now and love it.
Mint.Com Very Nice, Clean, web2.0. Love every bit of it. they are constantly making improvements to it as well.
I keep it simple.
I converted Dave Ramsey’s budget forms to an Excel spreadsheet, removing lines we don’t need (alimony, organization dues, debt payments :-)) and simply doing sum() at the bottom for each pay period.
I track our spending with GNUCash, because it’s free software. We used MS Money, but it was more complex than we needed.
I bought quicken two years ago to try and track every financial aspect of my life but it was too labor intensive to maintain and does not work with my TSP/401K. Now all of my bills are automated and I use Quicken to simply track my cash flow to make sure that there will always be enough in my checking accounts to cover everything. It is not perfect but it is the best one I have come across to track future balances. I also use Quicken and Mint.com for spending habits categorization feature but that too requires a lot of re-categorizing in the beginning. And of course I always kept the basic excel spreadsheet of monthly bills and monthly income. I download my info manually into the software to avoid the monthly fees.
I’ve been using expensr for several months now, and I love it. I really like that it is not tied to my bank account, and I have to put every transaction in. It has significantly helped me curb my spending, b/c I know when I get home, I have to put it in.
I also use an excel sheet for major bills. I planned out the whole year on it, and it’s very helpful as I am using the snowball method to pay off my credit cards. I’m halfway there JD!
I’m currently dealing with the same issue - trying to decide whether to move from Quicken to an online service. I reviewed Mint, Wesabe, and Yodlee on my site after giving each a test. I think Yodlee was the best of them, but I still might stick to Quicken.
http://www.soundmoneymatters.com/yodlee/
Pen and paper. Nothing fancy. I can’t stand the computer programs. It allows me to think more about where money is going/not going while writing.
I don’t have any software and wouldn’t even consider it. I have a ledger book, and at the top of the page, I write the month, then list the expenses. I do this for each month. I have bill pay and auto pay at one online checking account, all free. When I pay a bill, I put a little checkmark in my ledger with the date I paid it. So I don’t print out anything from the online account. I do not deal with receipts whatsoever. After my bills are auto paid, and my savings account is auto paid, what’s left I take out in cash at an ATM, for groceries, entertainment, gas, fun purchases, and that’s it. Once the cash is gone, it’s gone, so I’ll slow down my impulse spending to prevent that. It’s a challenge living below my means, rather than living to see how much credit I can qualify for, but doing the former truly brings me so much peace of mind, that the sacrificing I do now, so that I’ll have money for the future is so worth it to me.
Excel spreadsheet for projections, check registers, 401k balance, CC transactions etc.
Online Bill Pay for my regular bills, except my rent which is the only check I write a month.
Everything else either comes out of my paycheck (medical insurance, etc.) or we use cash. We have an envelope for our slush money, eating out, gas, groceries etc and they all live in a little lockbox on my desk.
As for keeping paper records, I have a filing cabinet I picked up at the thrift store for $10 with a tab for everything or anyone we have dealt with.
Old fashioned in someways, but we find it works.
My spouse and I have used Quicken for years, but with on-line bill pay and automatic transfers for investments, plus a cash budget for daily expenses, we’re finding that Quicken is overkill. We use a simple Excel spreadsheet to plan our expenditures for the month and transfer the necessary funds from savings to checking. Then, we sit back and relax. No muss, no fuss.
I use Quicken (Mac) I am sure I am not using it to it’s potential. I basically use it as a checkbook and to track spending. I use online banking and pay cash for most transactions. I agree that if I were to use an online program I would prefer a one time fee. I would also want it to track expenses, but I would need be able to customize it. I would want it to be linked into my bank accounts, money market accounts and investment accounts too. I wouldn’t want to manually transfer the information every month.
I still write out my budget on paper every month using Dave Ramsey’s budget sheets, old habits are hard to break I guess.
My biggest issue right now is investments. Since we are debt free I am focusing on building up our accounts, but it is so confusing!
Earlier this week I registered with Moneytrackin.com but I wasn’t impressed. I like the tags but I want something with more budget type features.
I’m looking at Yodlee right now. I’m interested in the bill pay but I’m nervous about giving them my bank info.
Also, my financial challenge is paying down debt. I’m a college student though, and so paying down my car isn’t really an option right now (I owe a little over 12grand on it). I’m not looking at paying down school loans yet either…but I do have some credit card debt I’d like to tackle so I’m moving in with the parents for the summer to get rid of it once and for all. (no the easiest decision…i’m a bit older than your typical undergrad at 25)
I use Spb Finance on my PDA/cell phone. Works fine for me.
I use You Need A Budget (YNAB). Been using it now for about two months and really like it.
It’s not near as robust (nor is intended to be) than Money or Quicken, but focused on budgeting.
I use Mint.com to track my overall finances and maintain the higher level view.
My finances are simple, so the tool I use is as well: Just a collection of Excel sheets for check register, tracking spending, my budget, fixed-income maturity dates and amounts, 401(k) purchases and performance, emergency $, and (heh) the fluctuations in my poker bankroll. Online bill pay for everything except my power bill, car insurance/registration, and rent. I foresee no need for online management tools, because I only ever access this info at home from my own computer, and because I have no faith in providers to keep my information secure (& there’s no guarantee of redress as there would be with a breach of privacy at a bank, brokerage, 401(k) provider, etc.)
I used to use Quicken but it only told me what I had done, not what I was planning on doing. Once I found the envelope-based system, I was hooked. Every envelope (budget category) has its own balance so it supports short and long term savings goals as well as seasonal accumulation categories like gas and electricity. I can setup my budget and I can see how I am doing against it before I spend. And amounts left over at the end of the month, stay allocated to that envelope so I don’t spend it elsewhere unless I intentionally move the money between the envelopes. Great for bi-annual auto insurance payments!
KellyB previously mentioned Mvelopes which supports envelope based budgeting in an online format. I am not keen on having all my information available at one provider and would prefer to have it stay on my PC. In addition, it is a subscription service. Not cool.
Then I found Crown Money Map Financial Software. It supports envelope based budgeting, keeps my information local to my PC and I only have to buy the software once (until the next version :-).
What strategies do you use?
* Track expenses daily - This is a huge help!
* Create balanced budget
* 10% Giving, 10% Savings, 80% Living (10/10/80 rule)
* Envelope based budgeting
* Emergency savings
What tools have you tried?
* Andrew Tobias’ Manage Your Money
* Microsoft Money
* Quicken
What are you currently using?
* Crown Money Map Financial Software
What are the top three things you want out of a personal finance tool or service?
1. Envelope based
2. Local data repository
3. Ease of use
Do you want to be able to budget?
* Absolutely
Connect to your investment account?
* Useful but not necessary
Discuss money management with other users?
* Useful but not necessary
Finally, what are your biggest personal finance challenges?
* The constant battle with advertisers feeding the “want” in me.
* Knowing how much to save for the future.
I have no time to read all the replies so far, so I don’t know how repetitive I might be here, but . . . what would I require in an online money management program? Absolutely ironclad, guaranteed security, security, SECURITY. (Meaning I’ll probably never use such a program since the thought of my personal finance information on the Web in any form makes me cringe. There is ALWAYS a way to break through any kind of security system if you know enough.)
I manage my money on my personal computer through Quicken . . . even there I don’t like the thought of it being on something people can hack into, but I have a firewall up, and I like the ability to run various reports to see where my money is going. In the past I’ve used simple Excel spreadsheets to track debt repayments.
Top three things in a personal finance service? I’d say ease of use (in terms of both a clear, user-friendly graphic interface and time efficiency in using), the ability to run many different types of reports, and the ability to set up and customize many different accounts for different purposes (cash, bank accounts, credit card accounts, retirement plans, loan tracking, etc.) I have no interest whatsoever in the social aspect of money management—that’s what sites like GRS are for!
My biggest personal finance challenge right now is finding enough money to save. I have recently (and finally!) become debt-free, but I’m already living a fairly frugal lifestyle, to the limits of what I’m comfortable with. There just don’t seem to be any more places where I can shave off expenses, though I’m still trying.
I have tried both MS Money and Quicken and found both to be too big a pain to set up. I was integrated with the automatic syncing to bank and checking accounts but was always worried about putting all that information our there in an electronic form. I tried making an Excel worksheet tailor made to what I was looking for and really liked it. The only problem was, I use multiple computers throughout the day (work, school, home, g/f’s house). So if I kept the file on my home PC, and wanted to work on some budget stuff at work I was SOL. Or I had to make sure that I always had the latest version saved on a thumb drive. Now what I do, and love, is using Google Docs. It allows me the freedom to access my data from any computer. In addition, Google’s version of Excel is actually much easier to set up functions with. Plus I never have to worry about my computer crashing and having to start over from scratch.
People get paranoid about Google accessing their information, so I just make sure I never put account numbers, pins, ect on there.
Its exactly what I want. Simple to set up, easily accessible anywhere, and safe.
I’m using a combination of Yodlee and an Excel spreadsheet I use for reports and such. Yodlee’s great for pulling all the data from one spot.
I do my budgeting in Excel. Discussing finance? I’ll reserve that for my blog postings.
Wells Fargo “Spending Reports” section.
https://www.wellsfargo.com/wfonline/spending
Wells Fargo might not be the only bank that does this, but this is a life saver.
It is like quicken that tracks your debit card purchases then puts it in catagories automatically.
As it tallys up for the months and years, it can give you valuable information:
-gives you an averge number of money spent for past 3 months
-at tax time print out your year end summary
-keeps all your “bill statements” in one place.
-At a glance information where i can see that i’ve been eating out too much, buying too many clothes. This gives me a reminder to curb my spending for the current month and/or change my game plan for next month.
-download any month or full YEAR report excel format or nicely designed PDF format
My budget plan does not require me to hard-stick to a number i have to spend in a month but there is an average number i know i should stick by a month (including home/work/play/food/ent). I have a savings account in a money market account and keep a nice chunk in checkings account. If it need to be i “pay myself” to have that chunk always in checkings.
For those who are responsible with their money but just need data all laid out for you to see where your money is actually going and DONT want to spend time tracking it in quicken or whatever, find a bank like Wells Fargo that has Spending Report and log into it everyday!
Im not arguing the quicken/excel idea. All im saying is don’t spend time in excel if you know you wont keep track of it for every purchase.
(probably some errors in this message, dont have much time to write!)
To: Steve
I use Quicken like an envelope system. Categoize my paycheck (+) and expense items (usually CC items) (-) out of the categories. My old Mac version worked great. The new PC version lists un categorized entries so its not as clean. I only want to track expenses in an envelope system. Savings is long term and is only tracked to see that progree is being made. Does the latest Quicken version have a envelope system that works well?
Also, I can’t grasp how the investment side works. End up using all as brokerage money market account. 401k tracking is hard for me. Any ideas out there?
Thanks for your time!!
I don’t use any “extra” program. What do I need to keep track of that I can’t look up in my bank and credit card accounts? I get regular alerts about balances, cleared checks, etc, plus I log in fairly often. My boyfriend does use GnuCash to keep track of which of us paid which joint expense though.
Second comment in this thread. I will NOT move to online finance management because of security issues. Too risky. I have DSL, a cable router with limited IP addresses and MAC address confirmation for access, Zonealarm, and a Quicken password standing between my financial data and the internet. I have lots of security under my own control.
I admire everyone using spreadsheets, and I use Excel to do some forward-looking investment stuff, but keep all actual account management in Quicken for one critical reason: I MIGHT DIE.
My wife is aware of all I am doing to manage our finances, and supportive, but is not into the details. I am writing her a guide to provide greater guidance if God forbid, something happens to me. My master passwords to Quicken are based around memories that we both share for this reason.
If I had a proprietary system in Excel I created, and I was killed in a car accident, I am not confident my wife would be able to understand our finances.
At least with Quicken, I know that she has a reasonably easy-to-understand user interface, and the ability to get lots of help from trusted others who may be familiar with it if anything happens to me. Just something else to be aware of.
So Excel users, keep cranking, but make sure you’ve got an easy-to-read summary page somewhere, and share it with your spouse!
I’m an Excel freak so I prefer it for simple number crunching and Pivot tables. PearBudget Excel is a nice tool, though I’ve only begun regular use in the past month. The analysis worksheet is a nice feature. Long ago, I tried MS Money and Quicken but found these feature-rich apps got in the way of the simpler tasks. However, I do want to import by card and bank transaction (csv or qif format) into the worksheet. Manual entry may be only a few minutes a week but why not automate? Thinking about developing a utility to bring this into Excel (thankfully we have Apache POI HSSF for this).
“What are the top three things you want out of a personal finance tool or service?” Budgeting is the top one. Decent reporting and analysis (slice-n-dice) would be good. I want to know where I’ve been and where I’m headed all with a click of a button.
I use mint and gnu cash. I am really wary of using proprietary software for any of my documents (quicken/microsoft money/word/excel/../…anything).
I like the fact that mint exports transactions into csv format only(no vendor lock-down..so no issues for me). I would hate if I had to spend money to see how I spend money.
similarly i use open documents (open office spreadsheet and google spreadsheet) for any spreadsheet related budgeting.
The best items that I’ve found are yodlee.com and the excel spreadsheets I create for myself to track networth. I also just started to copy/paste my bank statements into excel, labeling the transactions (i.e. phone bill, rent, groceries, etc) so that I could determine what % of my income I spend in each category - the first step to creating a budget that you can stick to.
As a Mac guy, I used to use an AppleWorks spreadsheet, and later switched to Quicken for Mac.
Quicken does give me a nice way to track and balance all my accounts. It works beautifully for that purpose. I use it for budgeting as well, and wish it had a better way to check how I’m doing on the budget front without running custom reports.
I simply use an Excel worksheet. I like it because it is very customizable to what I would like to see. All I have to do is a bit a copying & pasting, edit a few numbers and I have all the charts, graphs, records, and updates that I need to view my progress and plan my future goals.
An alternative I would use is Quicken. I received it for free, but never could get into the hang of it. Maybe one day I’ll revert back, but for now I am very happy with my Excel Workbook.
I have all my bills set up to auto-pay, mostly with my Visa but my charitable donations and retirement savings are done via bank transfer. I put almost everything on my Visa and track purchases in an Excel spreadsheet. I’ve recently started breaking purchases down into expenses and discretionary spending, but that’s as far as I go toward budgeting. I write so few cheques that I just keep track of them in my head or with post-its.
I check my various bank and investment balances online a couple times a week (and recently used JD’s trick of locking some money away in a 180 day GIC in between a Bank of Canada rate cut and ING’s rate cut). Towards the end of the month when I pay my Visa I transfer whatever’s left over into my savings account. I have another spreadsheet for tracking my net worth that I update a few times a year.
This is really long. I have tried MS Money, and Quicken. I use Quickbooks at work so I KNOW I don’t want to use that. I am uncomfortable putting my financial info online. So I just stick with my good old Excel spreadsheet that is password protected and lives on my flash drive. I created it from scratch, mostly copying a paper checkbook register to get started. (One thing that I really find helpful is on my CC sheet, I have a box for whether or not I paid for something. This helps me keep track of reimbursements, and what I owe and where I planned for that money to come from.) I find that I am more likely to keep up on it when it is on the computer. I actually rather like that it isn’t automated. I am terrible at collecting receipts. I can transfer all of the information over from my online account access, and I have to think about it as I am doing it.
My excel spreadsheet is extensive. I have one sheet for every account I have (7- not including retirement or my husband’s), and our joint account. I am the keeper of the money in our hosue. I also have the “front page” as my budget/checklist. All of the expenses that my income is directly responsible for is on it, along with when the bills are due and how much they should be, as well as a reminder list of other bills that my husband is responsible for. I do all of the “check-writing” but he gives me money to accomplish this.
I do things a little strangely to some people. My income used to only cover my mortgage payment every month. I got paid twice a month, so I would just not cash the middle of the month check until I got the end of the month check. This prevented me from spending my mortgage payment. As my income has increased, and my expenses, I have continued to do this. I am now on a biweekly payment schedule, but since I only count on two checks a month, I get two “extra” checks, which can go directly to debt, without affecting the budget. I did this in February and finally paid off my CC! I am also on direct deposit now, which goes into my online savings account so that it is difficult to access. I do one big monthly budget/planning session at the beginning of the month. I “pay” the bills (on the spreadsheet), allocate my paycheck into the necessary accounts to pay said bills, figure out how much extra I have, allocate the extra to either extra debt payments, extra food money, or whatever else is needed at the time. Then I initiate all of the money movement and payments for the bills. I can tell my bank what day to pay things, so I am not too early, but not late on any payment. If this seems complicated, it is, but I have gotten it down to 15 minutes per session. I also update the spreadsheet once or twice a month as things go through. I currently bank with 3 separate banks. (It used to be 5! I am working on it!) I have my “original” bank, which used to also have my CC and my savings account. I got fed up with their AWFUL interest rates on both and switched both to a local credit union. I also had an online savings account (ING- thanks mom) to keep my long-term savings safe from my grubby little hands. I didn’t want to use this for my short-term savings, because of the turn-around time. Lately, I have also opened a second savings sub-account, and an electric orange account. I don’t get completely rid of the “evil” bank (as I call them) because we just don’t know if we are going to stay here or not. It’s national, and honestly, I only hate the branch near my house. Every other branch seems to be better than mine (I try to do my banking on a lunch break to avoid the awful branch). We don’t want to go to the credit union only because we might move within a few years, and going totally electric also intimidates me a little. I just worry about not being able to cash a check. Some day I will probably get down to two banks- one online, one brick-and-mortar, but that day has not arrived yet.
I would love a personal finance tool that is completely customizable. I wouldn’t mind a graphic interface with a button for each of my accounts. I don’t need any investment tracking yet. I wouldn’t want to discuss money management through the program. That seems unsafe. I guess an electronic check register would be the best option for me, based on how I deal with my money. Whether or not it talks to my banks is immaterial.
My biggest challenges are becoming debt-free, finding money to save, and resisting the temptation to spend the money I do have. If I know that I have money, I will spend it. Cash is even worse than plastic. Cash really likes fast-food. I have to hide money from myself so that I don’t spend it inadvertently. This is why “paying” the bills all at once helps me out. If I see that I have $10 left in my bank account on the spreadsheet, even if I have $1000 at the bank, I won’t spend it because I know that it is earmarked. That is my long complicated system in a nutshell. Hope it helps.
Minimal recurring time management system:
First, create budget of needs. Round up or add a small percentage for breathing room. Then look at other purchasing history and determine what is reasonable but frugal for a catch all spending account. For me this includes both food and entertainment as well as others. I felt like the categories of food and entertainment blur into a spectrum to easily, so I budget one amount and rely on self control to moderate. Everything else is savings.
Now, to automate. Paycheck is direct deposited into Checking Account A. Automatic payments pull savings amount into ING Checking (for the moment, when emergency fund is finished, most will move to an ING Savings, with a small amount to offset the occasional emergency purchase), and spending money into Checking Account B. Remainder in Checking Account A is equal to bills budget.
On a daily basis, the only account I let myself touch is Checking Account B. I automate as many bills as possible to come out of Account A and periodically check that things are smooth, usually when I have to manually pay a bill out of that account. Bills are paid for immediately and regularly, savings is deposited immediately and regularly, and I have a single account I can manage without guilt.
I also keep a monthly net worth calculator updated to keep myself abreast of my progress.
Add another for Moneydance. I like the fact that it is cross-platform (win/mac/linux). Most of the time I am using linux, and then windows everynow and then.
Moneydance has the ability to setup budgets, and can generate reports. I find the reports very useful in tracking my spending.
We’ve used Quicken for Macs for eons. Though there’s much I like (so does our tax person), it is high maintainance, and gets screwed up easily. The investment portfolio end of it is particularly annoying.
Online would be nice, though for me, its somewhat mitigated by having Pocket Quicken.
I use several spreedsheets as tracking/budgeting tools, but its annoying to have to manually enter data.
I’ve also started using Mint to track expenses (just credit cards, for now).
Dream program:
I would want a decent portfolio tool. I also wish I could simply download scheduled payments from my billpay service, Paytrust (why not? Intuit owns both….). A *MUCH* better budgeting tool. As you suggested, a way to scan, sort important documents/household inventory, as well as keeping a database of important websites, businesses, etc.
Better tools for analyzing our various financial events (even, say, changes in utilities use, groceries–Quicken’s are messy). Email notifications of balances, due dates, payments made–all integrated on one platform.
Sadly, it should be relatively easy–proof being how many of us have jerry-rigged a system.
Good Luck with the brainstorming.
I use 3 tools - gnucash, Mint, and an excel spreadsheet. I used to be a loyal Quicken user, but when it became important to me to have cross platform tools, I switched to gnucash rather than shelling out money for another copy of Quicken. It took me a little bit to adjust to the double accounting, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way. It forces me to account for purchases for everything, including cash in my pocket, which is exactly what I need/want.
I use Mint as an aggregator to quickly see what has cleared from my banks, and update in gnucash.
I haven’t found a better tool for budgeting than excel, that I can customize exactly the way I want. I found envelope based budgeting works best for me, and I can customize it to work the way I want in excel pretty easily.
So, gnucash for ledger, mint for fast snapshots of all my accounts, and excel for budgeting.
I only use an excel spreadsheet. My finances are pretty simple to manage.
I’ve used my Palm Pilot for a long time, and it really works well for me. My ideal electronic budgeting tool would be one that syncs between a portable device and my computer. It would also be important to me to track my goals and to have a record of my spending.
I use “You Need a Budget Pro” for budgeting (soon to be available for mac, currently Windows only) and Moneydance on the mac for account reconciliation, and tracking net worth, liabilities and retirement and 529 accounts. I’ve recently been putting all my transactions from my 401k statements into Moneydance and have been very pleased with it. Bills are either paid from my ING Electric Orange, or I have a few items that directly bill my credit card.
Yodlee for sure! Been using it for almost 2 years now. It is by far the best I’ve seen, and most convenient. I can get to it wherever I have internet access obviously.
The main thing I do is budgeting. We looked at different types of budgeting software, but nothing really fit what we needed. We had different categories and different ways of managing our money and categories than any of the software or websites we looked at. So we made up an excel file and my husband wrote a bunch of macros to be able to transfer money, enter paychecks, keep track of tax deductible items, etc. We essentially have an electronic envelope system. Each paycheck goes into the checking tab and then gets transfered out to the various categories for expenses to be recorded as we use the money. We still use real cash envelopes for things where it makes sense, but for all our check, online and debit card based transactions, we use the excel sheet. It’s easy to add or change categories as we need, depending on what our current expenses or goals are.
Each month when we balance the checkbook, we balance “the books” in the excel sheet to make sure everything matches up right. We also use this to set aside money monthly for annual expenses such as insurance, and saving for specific things. It makes it VERY easy to keep track of the designated purpose of every penny and not be tempted to spend money on something based on the checkbook balance, since much of that money already has a name on it.
I’m currently using Microsoft Money and an excel spreadsheet. Money is for scheduled transactions and check-register-type functionality, as well as tracking all of my accounts. I really dislike their budgeting stuff though, so that’s what’s on the Excel spreadsheet. Each month has a column that lists our net income and mandatory spending. Then I have several rows below into which I allocate the extra money into. I’ll let there be ~$150 non-planned every month, so the surplus all gets portioned into savings/debt accounts depending on the yearly goal I have for each.
The spreadsheet is my favorite, though I wish I could have one copy on the web that I could interact with instead of uploading it and downloading it as a make changes at work and at home.
I’ll reiterate what a few others have said.
SECURITY of my data would be my top priority. Speaking as an IT professional, I would not use any service that stored my aggregated personal account information on a server outside of my control. End of story. I don’t want to make it that easy for somebody else to get hold of all my data.
I have no problem with people who use software like Quicken and download individual account data down onto their own hard drive. This is much more secure, although there are ways an intrepid hacker could get access to your personal system (like if you have DSL without a proper firewall), but you have control over your hard drive whereas you have no control over somebody’s server.
Although, the time required to set up and maintain Quicken, etc. is a turn off to me.
Personally, I use my credit union’s bill pay service to push payments to my creditors, except that I have automated bill pay for my phone service and my rent.
I reconcile my receipts against my online accounts and download backups of statements. Otherwise I track my budget on a simple paper ledger.
I do zero sum budgeting on a rolling two-week basis, and have a simple budget that projects normal expenses on a paycheck-by-paycheck level through the whole year.
I work off a list of dates when my expense billing periods start, and schedule my payment to occur the day the billing period starts over. This method ensures I am never late with a payment. [It's also enabled me to pay ahead in my student loan payments. I'm currently paid three months in advance on my student loan payment and thus am able to pay on the day I get my paycheck rather than according to their schedule (which keeps advancing my due date further). This has also boosted the amount of my payment going to principal.]
I also keep a list of dates for irregular expenses (car insurance, renters insurance, car tags) and work that into my budget.
And of course, the first thing I account for in my budget is the money I put into savings.
I keep things really simple because I really don’t enjoy the financial paperwork task. I don’t want to juggle multiple accounts or earmarked accounts. I do it all based on one checking, one savings, and one special account where I’m building my emergency funds. Plus one credit card.
I spend way too much time with computers at work to fiddle around with financial software at home.
db
P.S. — OH, to reiterate somebody else’s point, I’d also dismiss anything that required a subscription fee. I have a simple rule not to purchase any sort of subscription service that is delivered online.
I have tried many tools over the years. Spreedsheats, Quicken, Money, etc. What I am useing now is Wesabe.com, which I started trying in December. It has worked very well. I would like better budgeting built into the Wesabe site, but it provides a nice simple taging mechanism, security, easy to use and setup, privacy, and there is an API and a thrid party script that allows you to download information to an excel spreadsheat for creating a comprehensive budget.
Within Wesabe, you can set spending targets for each of your tags.
There tech support is very responsive, too!
So far I have been pretty satisfied with Wesabe for managing personal finances, and MS Accounting Express for business purposes.
After reading ALL these great posts, I had to second the observation about making your financial information accessible to your SO (whoever will have to clean up after you’ve been “abducted by aliens” as its been euphimized). THAT’s actually my biggest concern, and one I haven’t been able to feel comfortable about. I know what I’m doing, but my spouse literally yawns as I try to explain…..Right now the best I can do is an electronic letter of instruction, in Appleworks, with links to the various spreedsheets and websites. Doesn’t make me happy, though. Still not enough of a “no brainer” or automatic enough to allow this family to continue functioning financially should I not be around.
This is REALLY, REALLY important, as anyone who, in an emergency, has had to take care of the affairs of a loved one knows
I’ve noticed that a lot of people (including me) use Excel templates that they’ve built themselves to track their finances. I’d be interested to see what some of these templates look like.
JD, I’m not sure if this is possible, but it would be very interesting if some people were to submit screenshots or blank templates or something like that for you to post. I know I’d love to see them. I’m sure that I’d see some fantastic ideas that I’ve just never thought of putting into my Excel sheet.
You could even make it a contest. Just a thought…
To balance our checkbook (yes, we all still need to do that even if we only use EFT and ATM), we use Quicken. For our budget, we use PearBudget http://www.pearbudget.com. Easily customizable to our own, unique budget categories/needs and is very accurate. It helps keep us on track.
I recently started using Moneydance. I have been using Quicken for the past three or four years, since I hit my financial “rock bottom” and turned over a new leaf. In the last month or so, though, I purchased a new laptop and couldn’t find my Quicken disc to re-load the software. I decided to look around for other options and tried the free trial of Moneydance — it seems to do pretty much all the same things, but it’s a bit cheaper, it’s cross-platform (so when I build that linux box in the future, I’ll be able to use it on there too), and I like the budgeting tool a bit better. The file is saved locally and automatically backed up to my USB thumb drive every time I save the file.
I (usually) only write two checks per month — rent, and electric company. Everything else is paid online, and most everything is set to auto-pay. I know my own weaknesses, and if I don’t use auto-pay, the bill very likely won’t get paid. I use the calendar in Outlook to remind me when I have bills due for everything that is not auto-paid.
When I pay with a debit card (for gas or at the drugstore, etc), I keep the receipt in my wallet. At least once a week, I take out the receipts and mark them down in the register in Moneydance.
I set up an e-mail address specifically for receiving billing statements and receipts for online purchases, and filter all of those into a mail folder called “Receipts.” When a new e-mail arrives in that folder, I crack open Moneydance and mark it in the register. I used to constantly forget to enter online purchases in my register, because I wasn’t carrying around a little paper receipt for them. So far, using this new method, I haven’t forgotten any.
Although it does have the feature, I don’t connect to my bank and download my transactions into Moneydance. I prefer to get my statement in the mail and do an old-fashioned reconciling. It allows me to see the mistakes I make (and I make one or two a month), and also keep an eye out for any mistake the bank might have made. Banks are not infallible! I feel like I have more control and am more accountable for my finances this way.
I do mostly use Excel to write my budget, and tend to fool around with different templates every few months or so. I have found that my budget is a very dynamic thing, maybe too dynamic.
Financial goal: Reach $0.00 debt.
Biggest financial personal challenge: I have all but eliminated all of my credit card debt in the last couple of years, but the big one looming on the horizon is my student loan debt, which I keep putting into forbearance — so I’m just racking up more and more interest and never getting it any smaller. I usually try not to think about it, and when I think about it, it overwhelms me. My goal for 2008 is to start making a dent in that.
1. Budget - I use the old Pearbudget excel spreadsheeet (not the on-line version). I track every penny on an almost daily basis - I like to do this manually, rather than using one of those automatic download programs, because it makes me very conscious of all of my spending.
2. Account Management - Fidelity (where my 401(k) is) has something called “Full View” which allows you to enter all of your on-line accounts (checking, saving, credit card, investment, loans, CDs, etc.) and displays your balances and recent activity on one page. then you can click on the links to go to that particular account (the account names and passwords are pre-programmed so you don’t have to enter them each time). This makes it so much easier for me to get to all of my accounts and check balances, activity, make payments, transfers, etc. All my bill payments are done on-line.
3. Net-Worth tracking - Excel spreadsheet. Each month I fill in the information from all of my accounts and keep a running tally of my net worth.
4. Savings Goals - Excel spreadsheet, which tracks several categories of savings goals (house, vacation, gifts, etc.)
That’s pretty much it.
I have Quicken on the Mac. I, too, sometimes get frustrated with it. But I recently looked into Voyant (www.planwithvoyant.com) and really liked it. It’s online (completely free), but you do have to download some software.
I do most of my bill pay online, via automatic charge to my rewards credit card. Which I pay off each month. It means that every year, when we visit my husband’s parents on the other side of the country, airfare is free.
I have probably the most customized solution so far: I have an internal web site which I use to enter expenses (from receipts/bills), which go into a database. Given the data I have, I can generate whatever reports I want with all the flexibility and power of SQL and/or scripts (e.g. the page reports running 30/60/90 day, yearly, and overall expense totals and averages) and I recently wrote a program to reconcile bank statements (downloaded from my bank in Quicken .qfx format) with my database. I use Fidelity’s NetBenefits to keep track of my investments.
I’m rather lucky because I have plenty of money. I used to track every penny in MS Money on a PC but when I switched to Mac, I found no equivalent software (although there is a good discussion here: http://www.timandkathy.co.uk/journal/2005/02/05/looking-for-mac-os-x-personal-finance-software/ )
So now I use Moneydance, which is fine. To simplify things, and because I no longer care where my money goes, I don’t use many categories, I just aggregate most spending as “expense” and only really use the software to keep an eye on upcoming bills and to track account balances.
I also use a spreadsheet (in Numbers, the Apple version of Excel) to look at monthly cashflows to try to foresee any unusual amounts.
I wouldn’t use an online service but anyway they don’t seem to exist in continental Europe where I live.
In summary, basic software and a spreadsheet, just like everyone else here. Seems like it doesn’t matter how much money you have, the tools to manage it are the same.
I started using Mint.com about 3 weeks ago, and absolutely love it so far. It lets me see all my accounts at once (checking, savings, even my investments). It’s one big shortcoming is that it doesn’t let me track my investments, but this really isn’t a big deal to me. Also, Mint’s budgeting system is extremely easy to use and set up. All in all, Mint is great!
I used to use Wesabe, but stopped because it’s uploader rarely worked on a few of my financial institutions.
The only check I write monthly is for rent- I pay ALL of my other bills online. This includes credit cards, utilities, Internet, etc. My savings accounts are also all online, and I have automatic transfers between my checking and savings accounts on every payday, so I automatically save. I’ve also stopped just about all of my paper statements, and instead just download and save the PDF files that my financial institutions send me.
My top desire for an online personal finance management tool is security, which I feel Mint.com has. Second, the ability to make a budget (Mint has this too!). Thirdly, the ability to see all my accounts in one place, at a glance (Mint=check!). Lastly, I would love to be able to track my investments. Like I said before, Mint doesn’t have this yet.
I would be open to using a Excel spreadsheet, or something local on my computer, but at the same time, it’s fun to check my Mint from wherever I am, be it work, school, or home.
Finally, I think my biggest personal finance challenge is resisting the temptation to spend, particularly on eating out. I really need to learn how to pack lunches!
I use what I call the envelope system– it’s a system that puts limits while still budgeting for fun.
Then I learn everything I can in order to stay within my boundaries, lower my costs, increase my savings. It becomes a game to me. It’s fun!
zach
pennywise-poundfoolish.typepad.com
For all of you that have posted apprehension at using online budgeting software for fear of identity theft or fraud, here is some useful information; identity theft is much more prevalent through offline means such as stolen mail, acquaintance theft, and lost/stolen wallet/checkbook. All online fraud and identity theft accounts for less than 7% of total theft/fraud annually, according to the Better Business Bureau (http://www.bbb.org/alerts/article.asp?ID=565). Your money is generally much safer managed online, as in addition to tight security practices, financial institutions and money management sites generally retain responsibility for theft/fraud that occurs due to security violations.
I track my investments on an excel spreadsheet that I update once a month, my spending at spendingprofile.com (basic, free) and my net worth at networthIQ that I update once a quarter.
I track my expenses by want / need / save… ring a bell?
I’m surprised that I’m in such a minority — I use “The Budget Kit” by Judy Lawrence. It’s a book with spaces for everything — daily expenses in every category, investments, and anything else you’d need. It’s simple, it’s intuitive, you don’t need to change it over when you change computers, there’s no security risk, and I buy my annual copy (they’re the same for every year) on Half.com for around $6.00.
Yodlee Money Center is the best system I have used. Love the expenses pie charts!
@Mark:
I don’t think you are reading the security concerns posts very well. At least not mine. You’ll see that I state that I DO use my credit union’s bill pay service as well as automated bill pay.
That is not the issue. The issue is that technically speaking, there is a huge security risk in posting all of your account information for multiple accounts inside one, third-party system where the data resides on a server that they host, because:
–You have only their word that they are exercising proper security practices on their servers.
–You have no way to know whether they really are a bona fide company or if they are a couple of servers jacked together in some entrepreneurial programmer’s basement somewhere.
–You have no way to know if they will sell your information to another third party. Or if they do, you don’t have a way to guarantee that you will be notified they have done so. Or if THEY get hacked, that they’ll tell you your data was compromised.
–You are placing a rather comprehensive picture of your financial accounts — including the accounts where you hold your money — in one place that you don’t have control over.
These financial tracking services are not banks. I don’t hesitate to use my credit union’s services because I can push a payment from my bank to my creditor. My bank retains my account number at my creditor, but my creditor does not retain any knowledge of my bank account numbers in their database (my bank issues an electronic check, it’s not a direct EFT). It would be pretty difficult for my creditor to access my account without me knowing it, or for a third party to steal that information from the creditor’s system.
I trust my bank with my creditors’ account data more than I trust a third-party internet service with my banking account data.
I also get privacy statements repeatedly from my bank, I know they have staff to deal with transaction disputes, and I can actually walk into a physical office here in my home town and discuss any problems I might be having with somebody. Not to mention that they have several layers of authentication to get into my account, and another layer to get into my bill pay — so much authentication it’s slightly annoying. So I know they take data privacy seriously even if they can’t 100% guarantee it is safe with them.
P.S. — I highly doubt that Mint.com or any of those other services is going to take responsibility for your losses if your data gets hacked on their server.
I’d also like to note for everyone that is concerned with the online services’ security model…with the way that most of the online services are designed (such as Wesabe, etc.) your account credentials aren’t actually stored by them on their servers, only the transaction data. You usually have a client running on your local machine that stores the information and will download your financial data and then subsequently upload it to your Wesabe account so it remains separated and secure.
It’s no less secure than running Quicken or any other software on your local machine where you input your account information since none of that ever permanently leaves your computer either. If you dig in to how they are designed, the online systems are pretty well thought out.
And if you’re really security conscious, then open source software and a lot of reading code is the only way to really be SURE your information isn’t being used by someone inappropriately…that includes Microsoft or Intuit or any of the other big players.
I must be the only one here who doesn’t have a formal budget or use any of the money managing programs mentioned here…I do the majority of my banking online. I work in sales, so my weekly income varies. My paycheck is direct deposited into my interest earning checking account every Friday. Sundays, I sit down and pay whatever bills I have for the week through electronic bill pay and transfer what’s left into my savings account~whether it’s $50 or $500~leaving enough in the checking account to cover weekly expenses. I don’t carry a lot of cash, using my debt card for most purchases. I have one credit card that I use for gas and payoff monthly. It’s not very high-tech, but it works for me!
I use a sweet little Excel app called Budget Planner from simpleplanning.com. I think it cost me $10, but you can get a package of all their planners for about $30 or $40, including investment planners, retirement planners, 401k calculators, etc.
Because Mr. C. and I married late in life and have our own day-to-day financial quirks, we keep separate personal finances with split bills, but plan and allocate our investments together. He enjoys the Quicken tracking of the heavy duty stuff, so I like the quick and easy budget app from simpleplanning.com.
The rave reviews have convinced me that I need to try Yodlee Moneycenter. And soon!
I am a Yodlee.com fan. It’s Quicken on the Web. With Quicken, you have to be at your own computer. With Yodlee, you can be anywhere, on any computer, and check your financial situation.
I never use my debit card for purchases. I use my Chase Freedom credit card as often as I can. You would be stupid not to. It’s FREE MONEY! Chase wants to give you 3% back! Wow! (I always pay the statement balance in full every month.)
I actually use QuickBooks Pro
I have the software to run my six businesses from home, and so I started another company called “Personal.” It’s really the best system I could ask for and I love it. I have records of all my money for all my businesses and for myself, carefully documented by GL code and so forth. I wouldn’t recommend that someone go out and BUY QB for their personal finances alone, but since I know the system inside and out, it is natural for me to use it. I like that QB has a load of powerful tools that I never use for my personal finances, but the option is always there 
Speaking of QB Pro, it’s only available for Windows. I run Windows on my Mac using Parallels III, which works marvelously. I run a dual system that way - on my Mac laptop with a virtual machine inside of it for the PC.
@ db
Please read post #154 posted by Aaron Shaefer. It will address most of what you said in response to me. Further, I was indeed referring to the folks that had posted concerns about using online money management tools in general, and as a matter of fact I do not even recollect reading your original post to begin with. I appreciate your response, but as I posted information strictly as an aid to many folks’ concerns over internet security, I do not think your attempt to incite an argument or to denounce what I had posted is with cause. In the future please keep responses limited to useful information rather than argumentative rhetoric.
On a Mac you might want to check out Cha-Ching I’ve been using it for a few months and it got enough features for my uses and has a very Mac UI.
http://midnightapps.com/
I use OpenOffice.org Calc - like Excel, but free and non-proprietary. I break it up into one worksheet for each month, with extra sheets for salary, savings, etc. This has worked quite well and accurately for several years, but now I’m trying to get into using GnuCash (like Quicken, but free).
MONEY MANAGEMENT – I keep track of spending as I go by collecting receipts and recording check and credit card transactions in a modified check register that I created using a free spreadsheet program. I also sewed a checkbook/register holder that also holds my credit cards and pen so I only have to pull one thing out at the cash register.
I keep track of my budget, net worth, etc. using a spreadsheet on my computer. I check my work by checking my accounts online. It’s somewhat time consuming, but I enjoy it and it helps keep my on my toes, reminding me my priorities.
I store my paper receipts in envelopes (one for each month)–this has come in surprisingly handy–and my online receipts in an online folder.
TOP THREE THINGS I’d want out of a personal finance tool are: 1) it’s free, 2) it’s completely flexible (i.e., does exactly what I want), 3) it’s worthy of my complete trust. Automatic downloading of figures from my account is enticing, but you can see it’s not in the top three. I like not relying on some service that could raise rates or “improve” in some way I hate or go out of business or lose my data, etc. And if my computer breaks, I can do it all with pencil and paper. (Why, yes, I am middle aged.)
BIGGEST CHALLENGE – I don’t much like my job these days, but I can’t live on my investments yet. And I seem to be already doing all the things I’m willing to do to keep expenses down. For example, I’m willing to live in a small house near an iffy part of town, but I’m not willing to house sit or live out of my car or even a van, etc. So I keep coming to my job, where at least I am respected and beyond competent and really shouldn’t complain, and which has an amazing pension plan for which I will qualify in 6 years, 9.5 months, and I’m job hunting.
I recently started using Mvelopes - an online service. I like being able to connect to all my accounts in one place, and when my check is deposited I can disburse it into the necessary envelopes. I’ve been using it for a month - so far I really like it.
I’ve tried Quicken and MS Money in the past but they were much too labor-intensive to keep up with. Before that I used a simple pad of yellow-lined paper that I gridded and listed each expense by month.
Another endorsement here for Mvelopes.com which I’ve been using for almost two years no. I really like it because it automatically shows me all of the purchases so I don’t have to harass my significant other about purchases he made so I can manually enter them in. It also allows me to see the bigger picture so I’ve been able to cut back in places where I didn’t even realize I was overspending as much as I was. It’s a really great budgeting tool that has helped me immensely.
Right now, my biggest personal finance challenges is finding money to save. It’s there - but not in a large amount. I can look at my budget and see I’m not overspending in any areas. Living at a very low spending level and I feel as if it will be years before I get a proper 6 month expense emergency fund going. Then, I have no idea how and where to invest (I’m scared!) once I do have money to do that with.
I’ve been a longtime Excel budgeter. At the prompting of so many posters here, I tried Yodlee last night and it looks like a great solution to save time. Over the past several years I’ve toggled from using cash for most transactions to using a rewards credit card and electronic bill pay. The software appears to make it much easier to code transactions to a category and track the results against a budget.
I understand the security concerns, which is why I only uploaded my credit cards and checking account information (no savings/investments).
Yodlee Money Center is great! I tried all the other online personal finance apps, and all of them fell short.
Yodlee is the only one that meets all my needs. It can keep track of 401k, mortgages (even current home value), budget, custom categorization, and it automatically pulls info from all your accounts.
I have been using it for about 3 months now, and I am extremely happy.
I actually have a really nice budget sheet made in Excel, with figures that automatically roll out when I update the root figure, and a pie chart that automatically updates as well. Even still…I find it cumbersome and, frankly, ugly. I mean, you can only give a bunch of cells on a spread sheet so much pizazz. It’s like my daddy used to say, “son, you can polish a turd all you like, but at the end of the day it’s still just a turd.” I know aesthetics should mean diddly squat when you’re talking about your budget. I know many of you could care less what it looks like as long as it has the functionality you want. I’m a designer, so I do care. Put spreadsheets, long text lists, tabular data, or anything like that in front of me and you can count the seconds on one hand before I loose interest. I need it to be simple and shiny or I won’t use it.
I’ve been using Mint for a few months. It gives you your balances for all checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, and even Paypal. It also provides a budgeting tool that generates a simple bar graph to show you where you stand, expense-wise, for each category in your monthly budget. Mint is pretty handy, but I wouldn’t call it a power user’s tool. It’s more for the average Joe that wants something easy to set up, doesn’t involve much maintenance, and provides an aesthetically pleasing summary of your banking finances.
Currently I’m using an Excel spreadsheet for a ledger on all of my finances- bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, 401K, and tracking of major or recurring spending such as payments and premiums.
I am using mint.com to compare different categories of spending and am currently using a notebook as a spending journal to write down not only what I spent money on but WHY I spent money. This is a 2 month project to discover any psychological habits that lead to spending that can be curbed.
Great questions, JD. I’ll answer a few here:
1) How do you manage your money?
a) Mvelopes is our primary tool - we use to track spending, stay on budget, pay down debt and save for future
(Mvelopes dashboard/ homepage includes visual “envelopes” for at-a-glance info on money left to spend for specific category of expense.)
b) Bank of America - for bill payment weekly (PUSH only)
c) TD Ameritrade & The Standard websites - for investment performance tracking (monitored quarterly)
d) Excel spreadsheet - for annual Net Worth tracking
2) What tools have you tried?
For tracking spending, my wife and I have tried: a customized Excel spreadsheet (~6 months); Quicken (~2 yrs); MS Money (~5 yrs); Mvelopes (~2.5 yrs)
3) What are you currently using?
Mvelopes.
It saved our marriage, as Mvelopes (an online program) autoloads records of transactions from our bank and credit card accounts (no manual entry!) and we can each assign transactions to appropriate spending categories (aka “envelopes” which are customizable) when it is convenient (usually once a week) -AND- my wife can see at-a-glance (on any particular day of the month) how much money might be (still) available to spend (so we can avoid the “why did you overspend on clothing/ food/ furniture/ etc. this month?!” arguments)
4) What are the top three things you want out of a personal finance tool or service?
a) track spending to stay on budget, pay off debt and save for family financial goals
b) ease & speed of use for a busy Mom (my wife) and
c) detailed enough reporting for the analytical spouse (me)
In sum, Mvelopes is the best tool we’ve found to accomplish these three primary goals. (And for us it is well worth $10 per month to help us save money, time and frustration.)
Best wishes!
I’m still low tech as it seems to work for now. I use a steno notebook and a pen to plan monthly and weekly expenses pretty much to the dollar. I then write down whatever other unplanned expenses come up or if I underbudgeted or overspent on a line item. If I’m not writing this down as I go along then I sit down once a week to catch up and rebalance my spending. Most months I do a snapshot of spending categories-especially dicretionary spending. Last year was the first year I did this consistently and adjusted this year’s spending accordingly. I use online bill pay and automate savings as much as possible.
I’d love to use an online progam but I have a history of abandoning them after a few months. I tend to put off entering information.
I currently have an online-only savings account, a checking account and a credit card account. All monthly payments are push paid through the credit card account. I have bookmarks in my internet browser for each place I have to make monthly payments. All deposits and savings transfers are done through my checking account. I buy things using my credit card or debit card.
Essentially, I just check my checking account statements to track my expenses. I keep records by downloading my statements from each account every month.
Regarding budgeting, I use a notepad file to allocate percentages of my monthly income to different things such as groceries, eating out, rent, utilities, student loan payments, savings, etc.
On the topic of finance applications, my firm uses Quickbooks 2008 to take of their accounting. It’s very comprehensive but probably has too many features for personal finance purposes.
My husband and I have a very simple method. I created a set of business-sized cards that I store in a small card-carrier type of thing. Each month, I add money to each card (groceries, books, fun, etc), and then throughout the month, as we spend money, we record it on its card. I’ve actually recently separated the cards into 2 groups: cards that get used regularly are carried with me every day, and cards that are for longer-term savings stay at home. We’re still getting the hang of following the budget, but I learned this idea from my mom. She said that if you keep a budget, then if you want something, but there’s not enough money, you can get upset at the budget, instead of getting upset at your spouse. that seems like a good thing to me
I use Quicken for checkbook & savings account registers, tax reports, and for tracking my monthly credit card expenditures, and Excel for net worth, weekly budgeting, long-term planning, and month-to-month tracking of investment savings.
Agreed that Quicken for Mac is a little backward. It still has some features I loved that dropped out of Quicken for PC, but the trade-off is some real 24-carat pains in the tuchus.
Trouble w/ Quicken is they force you to keep buying new versions (even though you have no use for the bells and whistles they dream up) by changing the code so that after a couple years your records can’t be read by a current version. I really, really hate that, and in fact resent it so much I tried to put all my records in Excel (it’s not hard to build a checkbook register in Excel, for example). Unfortunately, the whole arithmetic concept is a bit too much of a challenge for me to pull that off, so I’m back to Quicken.
I used to use Microsoft Money to track my spending until it started crashing my computer.
I have OpenOffice Calc but don’t know enough about how to use it to not be frustrated at setting it up.
Currently I’m using GnuCash to track stuff, and other than the fact I keep having to start accounts because it’s a double-entry system, I like it a lot.
I recently won a copy of Quicken Starter Edition 2008 and would like to play around with that and see what I think of it. I might use it for my personal finances and save GnuCash for running a home business.
Just about every money issue you could think of, I have to deal with in some way, except I don’t have a mortgage. Although I may inherit a house in several more years, and it needs upkeep and up*dating* between now and then. But I have debt, I have student loans (also debt, of course), I have nothing saved for retirement, and so on…
Excel all the way. It’s such a powerful tool that you can adjust to anything you want it to do - rather than having to cope with someone else’s account/tracking/budgeting arrangements. My current spreadsheet is so powerful that it doesn’t just warn me if a regular payment is missing but immediately calculates my left-over budget whenever I enter a transaction. Plus, it automatically updates some graphs I use to visualise how my budgeting and saving is going. I haven’t found anything else so far that is even remotely capable of doing all this while at the same time being easy to set up and use!
I just use a good old fashion notebook. Every month I sit down and write down all my expenses. I adjust it depending on special occasions that might happen during the month. After that, I add a $100 for miscellaneous expenses. I’ve been using this system for the last three years and it has been working like a charm. Although I would like to get a little fancy and use my computer to keep track of my budget, It really isn’t necessary.
I also use automatic bill payment with Wamu and I’m good to go
I recently started using ClearCheckbook (clearcheckbook.com) — it’s still in it’s infancy but it allows me to manually enter the information (I don’t like auto downloads) and, most importantly, I can add transactions via GTalk, AIM, SMS, etc — as soon as I think about what I spent on lunch, I can add it before I forget! And, it’s free, although I’ve donated.
I used to use Microsoft Money. Then I bought a MacBook.
Now I use GnuCash. The double-entry system takes some getting used to, but once you do, you will wonder how you ever did without it. If you don’t track every penny, you’ll know quickly. The best feature is the price - free.
GnuCash was designed primarily for Linux, but will work on a Mac as an X11 app. (Install via Fink. The MacPorts version is broken, at least on Leopard) There is a Windows version available too.
I use Microsoft Excel. I only need a simple tool customizable to my own needs. I only track my budget, expenses, income and investments.
I check my online banking (for my credit union checking and savings accounts and 2 credit cards) every few days to make sure everything is in order, and every few months I download all our statements so we have a backup copy on our external hard drive.
I use Open Office Calc (an open source alternative for Excel) for our business accounting - sales figures, expenses, taxes, etc.
I use quicken for windows. I run parallels for that specific purpose. I found th mac version to be frustrating, and the windows side to be quite useful. Thus, I run parallels for two apps - quicken and onenote.
I just wanted to put in another vote for Gnucash. My girlfriend and I both find it very useful, it is easy to maintain, and I now don’t know what I did without it. Being able to quickly make variations of different spending/income graphs is a great way to figure out what it going on.
For planning or playing with ideas we use a spreadsheet (OpenOffice Calc).
Quicken 2007 (PC)
I’ve used Quicken for years. I haven’t written a check by hand in a very long time. I try to tweak everything I can out of the software and I have every financial aspect of my life on it.
This may be a little OT. I couldn’t get through all the comments so I apologize if I am repeating some one else’s advise……..
BACKUP YOUR DATA. I can’t stress this enough. I had a computer crash and backing up to other hard drives saved me a ton of trouble. A computer crash is never an “if” it is a “when”.
Grab a book.
Get rid of previous page marker (see below).
Grab a 5-10-20$ bill.
Use bill as page marker.
Finish book.
Deposit bill.
I’ve been using Microsoft Money since the mid 1990’s, and am completely dependent on it. I’d gladly not pay to upgrade again (I’m using 2008 Deluxe) if I could find another resource that will do everything I need it to do.
I just signed up for Yodlee today and will test it out.
I use BoA’s website to do all my BillPay stuff. MSMoney tracks my cash, investments, savings, checking, credit cards, student loan, and other non bank related loan accounts. If Yodlee can do all of that, and help with categorization and budgeting, I’m all for it. MSMoney has gotten too bloated these past few years and I’m tired of it.
Quicken for Windows.
Watch for rebates on upgrades. I just got 2008 Deluxe on amazon.com for $8 after a manufacturer’s rebate.
I wish the budgeting feature worked better.
I have tried many different methods of money management. From just limiting spending and periodically checking my balance - to management software. I have used GnuCash, Quicken, etc. but I have finally settled on MoneyWell from NoThirst.com.
I use a envelope based budget (MoneyWell), and schedule as many transactions as possible through my credit unions Bill Pay feature. Finally I am applying Dave Ramsey’s principles to manage my student debt.
A friend told me about this little free online personal budgeting utility, and I have been using it for 2 month now, it is nothing short of amazing, a dream for those who like to be in control of their cash. Totally anonymous, safe, simple and easy to use and very functional.
It’s called “Out Of The Dark” and it is available at:
http://www.myexp.org/OOTD_gate.php
Enjoy.
I agree with Jaime’s comment(#140) - it would be great to see examples (file downloads or screenshots) of some of the excel templates that people use to manage their personal finances. I’m sure we have some pretty sassy ones out there!
This post got me started using Yodlee. I like it so far; I’ll have to see if it stays long term.
Before that I used Microsoft Money 2004 and then Mint. Mint just isn’t powerful enough.
I’m a bit late joining this conversation. I teach money management to employees at my company, and have test driven at least a dozen different tools, both on-line and not. I’ve used Quicken for at least 15 years, and no matter what products I use, I always prefer Quicken. For one thing, I am of course used to it–a major bonus. But more practically, it’s inexpensive and it’s constantly upgraded. Some of the cool products I tried in the past do not exist anymore.
Curiously, we do not use the automatic download of transactions from our credit card and bank accounts. And there is one word why: Walmart. Quicken forces automatic matching, which might be fine for Exxon, but at Walmart, I never, absolutely never, 100% of the time in history, make the same categories twice. This week it’s groceries and shoes, next week it’s change the oil. This happens at all grocery stores and general merchandizers, because we track clothes separate from cleaning supplies separate from food–just because it came from Albertson’s doesn’t mean it’s “food”.
My only other monstrous beef with Quicken is it’s Microsoft-like oppression: When you load your latest version, like it or not Quicken will post several frustrating and useless icons on your desktop. If I wanted a Quicken MasterCard, I would have got one 10 years ago.
Those two small issues aside, I love the power and flexibility of Quicken. I’m surprised when I’m teaching my co-workers that they complain that Quicken can’t do X or Y; then I show them how it can.
I enjoyed the varied comments. I would love to see some of the Excel spreadsheets people have made (w/o the data, of course). Could really save others from having to re-invent the wheel.