My wife and I are looking for this. We liked the old Mint budgeting app, but Mint shut down a year ago. So far we have looked at Every Dollar (Dave Ramsey product), Credit Karma, Quicken, Rocket Money (only a little bit), and it is shocking that there isn’t a good basic budgeting application that tracks and presents our spending data in a useful format — e.g., a daily view showing my spending progress by category for the month in an easily-digestible, visual graphic format.
You’d think these are basic functions and would be readily available software, but apparently it’s not? We can’t find it, anyway.
We use our Visa CC for almost all of our spending, and some bills we pay with the checkbook, and we also bank with B of A. Is there anything out there for us to track our spending? Do you use budgeting software that you like that tracks your spending and presents your status and progress in an easily-viewed and mostly automated way?
Honestly, all I use is an Excel spreadsheet. I’ve done it for a decade. At the end of every day, I input my expenses. And it tracks it for the entire year. If I need it to make a chart or pie graph or whatnot, I have it do it.
For me, getting a specialized budget software to track such things would be more hassle than benefit.
I used to use a South Africa-specific app that I allowed read-only access to my bank account (the app makers must have been pretty creative when arranging that with the banks!) . It used the card receipt information to generate expense reports (in Excel format). Unfortunately for some reason, it stopped being updated and died, probably not making enough money on its subscription model.
There may be a similar app for ypu, if you can trust it.
Another vote for You Need A Budget. I’ve never used it personally (I track all my finances in an Excel spreadsheet) but both of my children use it and highly recommend it to all their friends.
Answered in one. I did this in college on Lotus 123. Just a matter of setting up the spreadsheet correctly (which I am proud to say I teach my math student although not for budgeting)
I started using it as @Spice_Weasel recommended it so highly. I do not have it synced with my accounts, which means I enter everything by hand. I find it easy to use, and as it’s on my phone and computer, I can enter and review data fairly easily.
I did the Excel thing. And I ended up doing a bunch of entries at a time, which meant keeping track of them some place else, and then copying them later. With YNAB, I enter the costs immediately. All recurring costs are in there already, and I just confirm them when YNAB tells me I should do something.
From what I understand, this is on purpose… it’s easy to automate this part of it away (most of the other software can do it), but then you just end up having a bunch of synced accounts that you look at every few weeks, and by then it’s too late.
The YNAB philosophy is all about training you to go through the manual effort every time you spend money so that you internalize and evaluate it immediately and not make a habit of spending money you don’t have.
Of course, that’s easier said than done I tried it for a few weeks and got really overwhelmed and gave up. I hope you have better financial discipline than I do, lol (it doesn’t take much, just more than I have).
That YNAB philosophy sounds good, in the sense that logging and tracking may at first be a difficulty but if you eventually make it a habit then you’ll be able to track all of your spending accurately, and it’ll be less of a difficulty.
For me it’s like a total gamification of budgeting. It’s deeply satisfying to me, like, neurologically, to see all my categories in the green. I have transactions set to auto-import but I review and approve them as they come in, usually have to go through and categorize all the Amazon transactions using Amazon’s Byzantine transaction record, and then I reconcile to my bank/credit card statement. All of which is to say, thanks to YNAB, I am so on top of my money now that if someone lifted my credit card today to pay for gas in Iowa I’d know about it within hours. It would hit YNAB as pending and I’d get a notification to review it.
Once you get it set up and are using the system regularly, the whole process feels very automatic and easy. They also have very helpful free support and lots of webinars that explain various functions. I do understand why some people find it a steep learning curve. But at this point, for me, the most labor intensive it gets is reconciling everything to my credit card statement, which a lot of users don’t do, and that’s 1-2 hours every three months. I probably spend less than five minutes a day on it, and then when we get our paycheck I am all too happy to spend that 15-20 minutes budgeting it out, that’s my favorite day.
The only thing I’ll add is that, in part because I’ve been using YNAB for so long, it’s been years since overspending in any category has really been a problem. I’ve always been able to find the money somewhere. Which means I am fairly lax with my spending in some budget categories. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, it’s probably not as fun, especially at first. Although they do have a webinar just for people starting out that way.
I used mint and really liked it. I did not care for Rocket Money. I’ve been trying EveryDollar, Dave Ramsey’s Budgeting App, and so far it is working well for me.
I tried it for a few weeks and got really overwhelmed and gave up. I hope you have better financial discipline than I do, lol (it doesn’t take much, just more than I have).