topic Re: Budgeting suggestions? in Personal Finance

Budgeting suggestions?

disdreamin — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 20:16:59 GMT

I tried searching and all the posts I could find were well over a year old, so I thought I'd chance asking for suggestions.

Do any of you have budgeting software you like? I'm not sure my SO will be on board with a formal budget, but I feel like I need a way of seeing where our spend goes each month, even if it's a post-mortem lol. I'm looking into YNAB and Mint, but I'm not yet sold on either but I'm leaning YNAB for the month-long free trial since that would give me a few weeks to see if it'll work for our situation.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

tcbofade — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 21:01:52 GMT

I'm too low tech for those, and just use a Word document as a budget... it's imperfect, but it works!

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

disdreamin — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 21:05:07 GMT

Yeah, I could do that or a spread sheet but holy heck it feels like a lot to track that way. I was hoping for something formatted but flexible I guess?

Just sitting down and trying to write out monthly obligations, I know I'm going to forget a bunch. So much of our monthly spend goes straight to a CC and I just do payments on those instead of pushing or pulling bank payments. I guess those will be easy to track though? Maybe I'll give it a try...

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

pinkandgrey — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 21:40:00 GMT

https://www.thebalance.com/top-budget-software-apps-1293609

Also,

https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/best-budgeting-software

Hopefully these links work lol

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

disdreamin — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 23:06:38 GMT

@pinkandgrey wrote:
https://www.thebalance.com/top-budget-software-apps-1293609

Also,

https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/best-budgeting-software

Hopefully these links work lol

Thank you, the links do work! I'd actually browsed those prior to posting. I guess I'll give YNAB a try since it's shown up on every list I've perused and it's no obligation for a month. Thanks again

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

summerterrace — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 23:19:23 GMT

I use YNAB (youneedabudget.com) and I LOVE it! It's zero based budgeting, similar to envelope type system but all electronic and I love how they handle credit cards. The customer service and support is top notch. They have getting started videos, boot camps, webinars and a youtube channel to teach you all about budgeting, money management, saving, using the software, etc. You can even track your net worth if you want to. They give a free 34 trial. It has truly changed our finanical life. I made my adult kids go on it. LOL

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

pinkandgrey — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 23:33:12 GMT

@disdreamin wrote:
@pinkandgrey wrote:
https://www.thebalance.com/top-budget-software-apps-1293609

Also,

https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/best-budgeting-software

Hopefully these links work lol

Thank you, the links do work! I'd actually browsed those prior to posting. I guess I'll give YNAB a try since it's shown up on every list I've perused and it's no obligation for a month. Thanks again

Oh, sorry! Well at least you already have a direction lol

Good luck!

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

summerterrace — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 23:46:17 GMT

@disdreamin wrote:
@pinkandgrey wrote:
https://www.thebalance.com/top-budget-software-apps-1293609

Also,

https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/best-budgeting-software

Hopefully these links work lol

Thank you, the links do work! I'd actually browsed those prior to posting. I guess I'll give YNAB a try since it's shown up on every list I've perused and it's no obligation for a month. Thanks again

YNAB is worth it.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

disdreamin — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 01:13:36 GMT

@summerterrace wrote:
@disdreamin wrote:
@pinkandgrey wrote:
https://www.thebalance.com/top-budget-software-apps-1293609

Also,

https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/best-budgeting-software

Hopefully these links work lol

Thank you, the links do work! I'd actually browsed those prior to posting. I guess I'll give YNAB a try since it's shown up on every list I've perused and it's no obligation for a month. Thanks again
YNAB is worth it.

I'm trying it now and I'm hating it lol. I'm sure it will be great once I get the hang of it, but I put in expenses for last month and now I realized I need to backtrack to pay for March, etc. Once I get it set up I'm sure it'll be worth it. This is painful though

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

summerterrace — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 02:01:10 GMT

@disdreamin wrote:
@summerterrace wrote:
@disdreamin wrote:
@pinkandgrey wrote:
https://www.thebalance.com/top-budget-software-apps-1293609

Also,

https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/best-budgeting-software

Hopefully these links work lol

Thank you, the links do work! I'd actually browsed those prior to posting. I guess I'll give YNAB a try since it's shown up on every list I've perused and it's no obligation for a month. Thanks again
YNAB is worth it.
I'm trying it now and I'm hating it lol. I'm sure it will be great once I get the hang of it, but I put in expenses for last month and now I realized I need to backtrack to pay for March, etc. Once I get it set up I'm sure it'll be worth it. This is painful though

Do not back track. Start from today and move forward. They have great videos on the website that walk you through it. Helped me a lot. Took me two weeks to get the hang of it now I can't imagine being without it.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 02:41:23 GMT

I use this app. It's been a godsend for me.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spending-tracker/id548615579

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mhriley.spendingtracker&hl=en_US&gl=US

I don't like budgeting apps because they always want access to my bank accounts and such. Way too intrusive for me. I create manual budgets this way and it works great and even has backup and sync (don't use the automatic carryover feature with these, it doesn't work right, make a manual carryover entry at the beginning of the month with your previous ending balance as the starting balance of the new month if you want to utilize a rolling budget but everything else works fine) along with a Windows app.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

tnhomestead — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 04:24:53 GMT

I use expense manager on my phone, free simple and easy.

@disdreamin wrote:
I tried searching and all the posts I could find were well over a year old, so I thought I'd chance asking for suggestions.

Do any of you have budgeting software you like? I'm not sure my SO will be on board with a formal budget, but I feel like I need a way of seeing where our spend goes each month, even if it's a post-mortem lol. I'm looking into YNAB and Mint, but I'm not yet sold on either but I'm leaning YNAB for the month-long free trial since that would give me a few weeks to see if it'll work for our situation.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

TJHOFF — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:52:53 GMT

With YNAB you can do manual entry, you don't have to give them access to your accounts. Many, many people love YNAB.

I actually use my own spreadsheets, I'm not going to pay a monthly fee for something I can do myself, part of good budgeting IMHO.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

disdreamin — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 16:16:41 GMT

I am starting to think I might just use Excel for this instead. We are paid biweekly and our mortgage is biweekly too, so it would be easiest to just be able to budget for two week periods I think? I'll play with YNAB for a bit and see, but in the end I'm thinking I might just customize something using spreadsheets. Thanks again for the suggestions!

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

Kidcat — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 02:43:06 GMT

YNAB

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 03:14:49 GMT

@TJHOFF wrote:
With YNAB you can do manual entry, you don't have to give them access to your accounts. Many, many people love YNAB.
I actually use my own spreadsheets, I'm not going to pay a monthly fee for something I can do myself, part of good budgeting IMHO.

YNAB's subscription model is not for me. I also don't like that it's just a web app. The devs got greedy and got rid of YNAB4 in favor of software as a service so could generate endless cash for themselves. There are lots of complaints about new YNAB because they changed a lot of the core functionality at the basic philosophy level as well as the feature level.

The app I posted was like $5 in the App Store. Been using it like a year now and have no serious complaints.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 18:20:08 GMT

I'm old school I just write it down on the back of an envelope, though it's more of a bill checklist to keep tack of what's been paid than an actual "budget". I don't really subscribe to budgeting myself in the sense I need to keep track of where every penny is going. Then again I'm not really a big spender anyways.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

StarraeAday1 — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 19:11:12 GMT

YNAB, all day every day for the rest of my life. We've been using it since 2014 and I will never be without it again. Yes, it's a subscription model. But I guarantee that the $84 you pay PER YEAR is worth the thousands it can save you. On average, it can save the a new user around $600 in the FIRST MONTH. We used to be paycheck-to-paycheck with close to zero left on paydayow we regularly carry balances of $5k or more because it's all divvied up and I know all of my upcoming bills are taken care of.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

minski — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 04:04:39 GMT

Another vote for YNAB. Been with them since 2013-2014 with YNAB 4. It's fun. When I fell off the wagon and went into debt, YNAB helped me get out of debt. I finally managed to persuade my sister to use YNAB (sort of), and she was so surprised when she got to the point of not having to worry about what the balance is in her bank account before she pays for anything because she knows that her expenses are all covered.

If you are having trouble with YNAB, look up Youtube videos by Nick True (I think is the person). I hear that his videos are excellent. I myself was able to make the transition from YNAB 4 to new YNAB with just the YNAB video offerings.

Re: Budgeting suggestions?

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 19:05:38 GMT

Nice to know that the back of an envelope is saving me $84 per year!

It's intersting all the things people make Money off of, in the old day this would be the job of an accountant. Though I guess they're still utilized today by the richer folks, I never really trusted a person with my finances after hearing seeral instance where said accountant ran off with people's savings as well as them owing taxes for several years.

I simply never understood why people needed or paid someone/something else to tell them how to save Money, it's called not buying stuff you don't need. Though like I said I only have average 10 CC's,1 car payment and 3 utility bills per month to pay so I'm not swamped in paperwork that someone else might be with double or triple that. So they may not realize that drinking a $4 cup of coffee every day is costing them about $960 annually, or that eating out too often costs them double or triple that.

So that is why I don't understand how an app is going to show me that I'm overspending and where it is I need to make cuts. I only wish that I knew there was a need for this type of thing and I could have profited off telling someone how to spend their Money! lol