Budget / finance programs

Talka

So I'm trying to find a good program for keeping track of my finances and for setting a budget. I've tried Mint.com and Quicken and have been disappointed with both (there have been lots of small errors on both, like seeing my savings accounts as loans and not having the option to correct it, or just poor design in how charges are categorized).

So, are there any alternatives to Mint.com or Quicken? What do you use to set a budget? Am I best off just using Excel and calculating it out myself every month?

SkyCaptain

I use a spreadsheet I made for myself in OpenOffice. Each day, I enter any receipts or bills paid online into the spreadsheet and it automatically adjusts how much I should have in my account. I check online frequently as well to make sure it's up to date. I also have a sheet for entering my paychecks and tracking that.

I've been doing this since late 2008. I could tell you where I ate for lunch in June of 2009.

adytum

Mint.com and Quicken are the same company now.

I love mint, and have not had any problems. Have you considered posting your problems with their help site?

I also tried doing the spreadsheet thing, but I have complicated finances across multiple banks and other financial institutions. If you have simple finances that might work out for you.

2868

Weird right as I clicked this thread, my phone buzzed, It was my budget update from Mint.com.

I love Mint.

Talka

I guess I'll explain the problems I've had with Mint.com. They're not huge problems, and I bet there is a solution to them, but the problems were annoying enough and the solutions to those problems (if they do exist) weren't intuitive enough to keep me from getting frustrated.

First off, it's reading my Bank of America savings account as a loan. So where my net worth should be +$XXX after adding the account it's actually -$XXX. That's frustrating, and I couldn't find the field to change how Mint.com sees that account.

Second, the budget page (which is all I'm really using it for) is pretty frustrating. For instance, I have things categorized (basically by default) into several main categories (Home, Auto & Transport, etc), and then I set up budgets for each of those. Then there's the "Everything else" category at the bottom for unsorted charges. Those list how much I spent in each category total, rather than the uncategorized amount. Frustrating.

I also haven't figured out how to deal with credit cards. This may be easy enough to do, but I was frustrated enough at this point not to investigate too deeply. Basically I'm getting double charged for when I spend on my credit card and then again when I pay off the credit from my checking account. Frustrating.

Is the consensus here that Mint.com is actually a viable finances / budget utility? I can look into working out my kinks. I just gave up on it after the few walls I hit, hoping there was something more intuitive out there.

adytum

Yeah you just need to figure out how it works

FOR INSTANCE

With credit cards, the expenses should only show up when you buy the thing, but MINT might not know what's a payment and what's an expense, so you have to change it to "transfer" or "credit card payment"

Example

CC Charge 1 - $10 - Expense
CC Charge 2 - $20 - Expense
CC Charge 3 - $30 - Expense

CC Total - $60

CC Payment - $60 - Transfer
Bank Withdrawal - -$60 - Transfer

Transfers don't show up as incomes or expenses.

Nostregar

I don't know what you have for a phone, but I use a program called Financisto on my Android phone. It works pretty well, as long as you keep up with it (you have to log expenses manually, it doesn't link to a bank account - I find that a plus for security reasons, but you may not).

Talka

adytum wrote: »

Yeah you just need to figure out how it works

FOR INSTANCE

With credit cards, the expenses should only show up when you buy the thing, but MINT might not know what's a payment and what's an expense, so you have to change it to "transfer" or "credit card payment"

Example

CC Charge 1 - $10 - Expense
CC Charge 2 - $20 - Expense
CC Charge 3 - $30 - Expense

CC Total - $60

CC Payment - $60 - Transfer
Bank Withdrawal - -$60 - Transfer

Transfers don't show up as incomes or expenses.

That makes sense. Maybe Mint.com and Bank of America don't get along very well until you clean some stuff up manually. I'll play with it and see what I can sort out.

Still open for other suggestions though.

Orogogus

I'm getting fed up with Quicken, not helped at all by the overall scumminess of Intuit -- they're like the DeBeers of accounting software -- and my brother recommended GnuCash (http://www.gnucash.org/). I haven't had a chance to migrate over yet so I can't give any first hand impressions, but my brother says he's pretty happy with it.