Personal Finance Software

[basballguy]

Looking to acquire a new personal finance software.  What do you use and why?  Do you like it?

If you came here to say Excel, please keep on trucking.

[barbaralee]

I use You Need a Budget. I love it, although I have to say it is not for everyone. With YNAB there is an expectation of inputting all of your purchases, be it credit or debit. The whole idea is to build a buffer and stop the paycheck to paycheck cycle. Since my husband and I have no debt it was easy for us to get into, but I could see where it would be extremely beneficial for those who are trying to get out of debt. It costs $60 but I got it on sale on Steam for $15. I also really like the tutorials, methodology, and the forum community.

Besides YNAB I keep a paper register. I use to use Moneydance, but I grew out of it. 

[SCF]

I use YNAB in conjunction with Mint.  I really like the YNAB philosophy - budget only what you have and everything you have, plan ahead, be flexible, build a buffer.  It's very solid budget advice and the software is tailor-made for their system.  My previous system involved using Mint to make sure the cash flowed the proper directions and floating most of my spending on credit cards in case my income went down or expenses went up.  I paid no overdraft fees and very little credit card interest, but I was still spending more than I earned many months (and that in spite of socking money away into my savings account, which I would later raid to pay the CC).

YNAB keeps you honest - if you overspend it directs you to either find money elsewhere in your budget, reduce how much you spend each month, or increase your debt.  Put in that framework, spending decisions are pretty-straightforward - you know exactly what you have to give up in order to get something that's outside your budget.

I log into Mint every day and input the transactions into YNAB.  I really value Mint for the granular tracking of my spending over several years, plus the fact that any fradulent charges are easy to catch in my daily glance, but in terms of actually helping me spend conciously, YNAB takes the cake.

[Repo-ed]

I use Mint.

[lg8302ch]

YNAB  has a 50% discount on MacUpdate. ...short promo and key works for Windows

[otter69]

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@Repo-ed wrote:

I use Mint.

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I used to use Mint, but personalcapital.com is a lot better at tracking spending vs. income and definitely better at tracking investments. Even better is that Personal Capital doesn't have the ads like mint.com (mint will steer you in the wrong direction if it will make them a buck!) I find any software which doesn't use account aggregation to be too much work which is why I would never use YNAB. It's the 21st century, what good is computer software in which you have to manually enter every transaction in to get your balances. You might as well go back to writing checks, mailing in your credit card payments, and buying things at the Oleson's Mercantile with the basket of eggs you brought in.

[Jishosan]

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otter69 wrote:

I used to use Mint, but personalcapital.com is a lot better at tracking spending vs. income and definitely better at tracking investments. Even better is that Personal Capital doesn't have the ads like mint.com (mint will steer you in the wrong direction if it will make them a buck!) I find any software which doesn't use account aggregation to be too much work which is why I would never use YNAB. It's the 21st century, what good is computer software in which you have to manually enter every transaction in to get your balances. You might as well go back to writing checks, mailing in your credit card payments, and buying things at the Oleson's Mercantile with the basket of eggs you brought in.

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YNAB isn't necessarily for people who already have a great and successful way of managing their money. We've found that it helps us a lot in terms of getting out of debt and understanding how to use our money better, because we are generally terrible at saving and spending responsibly. YNAB is helping us change that, but like someone said earlier, it's certainly not for everyone.

As for account aggregation, I assume you mean integrating with your bank? The issue with that, in my opinion, is that not all transactions show up in a prompt manner in your online accounts, which means that your balances don't always accurately reflect the actual amount of money you have available. This is certainly not an issue if you have even moderate padding in your checking account, but can be devastating to someone working in (or working their way out of) a paycheck to paycheck cycle. Going negative can be costly, so manual inputs can be helpful to those folks both in forcing you to acknowledge your spending at that momen as well avoiding accidental overage fees that can eat into your budget. 

[otter69]

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@Jishosan wrote:

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@otter69 wrote:

I used to use Mint, but personalcapital.com is a lot better at tracking spending vs. income and definitely better at tracking investments. Even better is that Personal Capital doesn't have the ads like mint.com (mint will steer you in the wrong direction if it will make them a buck!) I find any software which doesn't use account aggregation to be too much work which is why I would never use YNAB. It's the 21st century, what good is computer software in which you have to manually enter every transaction in to get your balances. You might as well go back to writing checks, mailing in your credit card payments, and buying things at the Oleson's Mercantile with the basket of eggs you brought in.

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YNAB isn't necessarily for people who already have a great and successful way of managing their money. We've found that it helps us a lot in terms of getting out of debt and understanding how to use our money better, because we are generally terrible at saving and spending responsibly. YNAB is helping us change that, but like someone said earlier, it's certainly not for everyone.

As for account aggregation, I assume you mean integrating with your bank? The issue with that, in my opinion, is that not all transactions show up in a prompt manner in your online accounts, which means that your balances don't always accurately reflect the actual amount of money you have available. This is certainly not an issue if you have even moderate padding in your checking account, but can be devastating to someone working in (or working their way out of) a paycheck to paycheck cycle. Going negative can be costly, so manual inputs can be helpful to those folks both in forcing you to acknowledge your spending at that momen as well avoiding accidental overage fees that can eat into your budget. 

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Account aggregation typically involves multiple financial institutions. As far as all transactions not showing up in a prompt manner, I've never had any problem with that. Typically, they all have a different way of showing available vs. posted balance, but if I run my credit card, open the personal capital app on my phone and refresh my accounts, the pending transaction is there within minutes.

I can see the point of YNAB, but it's just not me...

[alyssamarie]

I use mint.com

I don't have any investments yet so it works well for what I need. 

[baller4life]

Manilla rocks!