@Anonymous, thanks for the perspective and feedback. 
@Kforce wrote:
@Horseshoez wrote:I have to applaud everybody who budgets and tracks their expenses against said budgets; that is something I've never had neither time nor patience to do, and probably never will.
Question for y'all; have you seen a benefit from a tight control of budget and expenses compared to before you tracked it all? If so, what benefits do you realize from your tracking?
When I was young, money was tight and I kept track of my expenses every day.
It helped me not overspend and was extremely worthwhile.
50+ years later, I add the numbers up at end of each month and look at all the money that I wasted. It is info to enter into credit card calculator to check rewards on my overspending. Serves no worthwhile purpose at this time, just a habit from many years of keeping numbers.
LOL, even that is well beyond anything I've ever done; my hat's off to you.
In my case I typically get into what I call a "spending rhythm" whenever my financial picture changes. Case in point, back in 2015 when my Chapter 13 was approved, I lived off of my debit card and initially I checked my bank balances regularly. Over the next five years I just got used to what I could or could not buy and only looked at my accounts with my wife or daughter needed some money. Since my discharge, I've followed the same basic pattern, errr, except instead of paying the Trustee my usual monthly chunk, I paid my savings account and have managed to save a fairly nice amount toward a new home in the next year or two. That said, everything for me is about to change yet again; I start a new job the week after next, and given I'll be traveling upwards of 26 weeks per year, my spending will, by definition change. Should be interesting.
@Horseshoez wrote:I have to applaud everybody who budgets and tracks their expenses against said budgets; that is something I've never had neither time nor patience to do, and probably never will.
Question for y'all; have you seen a benefit from a tight control of budget and expenses compared to before you tracked it all? If so, what benefits do you realize from your tracking?
Personally after going through a brutal divorce and BK, I found YNAB and as a result I was able to buy a house in LA, put two kids through college (paying tuition)and generally live life. It really just helps you live within your means (if you use it correctly) because it is zero based budgeting so you only budget money you actually have, not anticipated money.
With that said it is not a panacea and I still have more credit card debt then I care for, but since the kiddos have graduated my cash flow has improved significantly and the balances are going down at a nice clip.
@wantitgone wrote:"It's an automatic delete for me when a developer tricks you into downloading and installing an app just to be greeted with a screen that forces you to sign up an account for a 30 day trial with undisclosed terms after it's over. I had to go look in the App Store to see that $4.99 a month price tag."
@Anonymous interesting. I've been using it for 3+ years now, so I had no idea what it was like to sign up through the app. That's too bad; I don't like trickery either!
Yes @wantitgone this is what it looks like. First screen when you open the app, next screen when you hit "New User?"
If there was a screen in the middle that explained the trial and the pricing, I probably would have signed up and tried it, but I had to go look at the listing on the App Store to see the prices and most people don't even know that you can do that.
I use Personal Capital and I do link Chase to it which is where basically where all my financial transactions go in one form or another and also Fidelity as my 401K and Rollover IRA are there. Free as they make their money on their wealth management side and admittedly they do generate leads from it but they aren't that pushy when I tell them I'm not interested every year or so.
I can't imagine trying to do it in a spreadsheet, that's a lot of work to recreate the analysis you can get with a better tool.
It isn't a strict budgetting tool like YNAB (I bailed when it switched to subscription personally) but I didn't really need that, I needed to know where I was spending stupid... and PC does that in spades for me, but then I also get a bunch of investment performance tools in the same app and getting everything I need in a single app on both sides of my financial house: yes please.
@Revelate wrote:I use Personal Capital and I do link Chase to it which is where basically where all my financial transactions go in one form or another. Free as they make their money on their wealth management side and admittedly they do generate leads from it but they aren't that pushy when I tell them I'm not interested every half year or so.
I can't imagine trying to do it in a spreadsheet, that's a lot of work to recreate the analysis you can get with a better tool.
It isn't a strict budgetting tool like YNAB (I bailed when it switched to subscription personally) but I didn't really need that, I needed to know where I was spending stupid... and PC does that in spades for me.
My manager just told me about PC. He said he uses it for personal finance because it also keeps track of his investments. I'll look into it more. It's the first time I heard of it.
@bdebtfree215 wrote:
@Revelate wrote:I use Personal Capital and I do link Chase to it which is where basically where all my financial transactions go in one form or another. Free as they make their money on their wealth management side and admittedly they do generate leads from it but they aren't that pushy when I tell them I'm not interested every half year or so.
I can't imagine trying to do it in a spreadsheet, that's a lot of work to recreate the analysis you can get with a better tool.
It isn't a strict budgetting tool like YNAB (I bailed when it switched to subscription personally) but I didn't really need that, I needed to know where I was spending stupid... and PC does that in spades for me.
My manager just told me about PC. He said he uses it for personal finance because it also keeps track of his investments. I'll look into it more. It's the first time I heard of it.
Grin, yeah you ninja quoted before I could add in the investment component as well. It really does a lot well and I highly recommend it. If I'm honest it's become the only thing I really look at on a regular basis as it summarizes my entire financial life so adroitly, and then I can open up the Fidelity app if a stock had an outsized gain or loss for news, or Chase if the balances are unexpected. All the annoying things I used to do on a spreadsheet or YNAB to try to calculate where the money was going and net worth and what not, PC just does for me now. It is really fantastic for me anyway.