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Budgeting software
ceres
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
I imagine this is a pretty simple question, but I'm in the market for some budgeting software, specifically with paying down debt and savings in mind, rather than monthly bills. What I will be working with is already surplus. The software doesn't need to be free, but I really can't spend a fortune either. It might be nice to be able to use my android device for this, but it's not required.
Ideally it would keep track of balances, payments made, interest rates and interest as it accrues, things like that, so something with interest calculators. I looked at Mint.com, but I really don't want to put my bank account info into a third-party site or app and it seems to want that. And don't say Excel unless you feel like making me a template, because I really really suck at Excel. I've heard of YNAB, but I don't know if it would serve my purpose.
Thoughts?
Ideally it would keep track of balances, payments made, interest rates and interest as it accrues, things like that, so something with interest calculators. I looked at Mint.com, but I really don't want to put my bank account info into a third-party site or app and it seems to want that. And don't say Excel unless you feel like making me a template, because I really really suck at Excel. I've heard of YNAB, but I don't know if it would serve my purpose.
Thoughts?
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
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I tried using Mint but couldn't. It felt unwieldy and with less options than Quicken.
Mint is an advertising platform for creditors to get you to refinance. You put in your credit card info, and they sniff out your interest rate and let people try to sell you a lower interest rate
All the stuff they actually give you in return is stuff you already know from looking at your creditors account portals. Balances, finance charges, etc
A sucky answer but the best tool is still excel in my opinion if you're really interesting in trying to figure out which accounts need to be paid in what order
Or maybe Quicken but I don't know much about it and Quicken tends to be a much more hands-on tool in terms of the work you have to do to get your stuffs set up in it
Other ones that are a waste of time so you can avoid them
Pageonce (now named Check): like Mint but worse
HelloWallet: you have to pay before they even show you the goods. they might be alright but all online budgeting software is guilty until proven innocent for me
I do 100% of my budgeting in Google Spreadsheets
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
But you don't need fancy software to sort out paying down debt and savings with your surplus after minimum repayments on everything you owe. It's a simple flow chart.
1) Get an 'Oh Shit!' fund saved somewhere with the best interest available for instant access. 6 months mortgage/rent is a good guide.
2) Find out the highest savings interest rate you can get.
3) Start overpaying all debts that have an interest rate higher than your max savings rate (usually all of them), starting with the highest rate and working down.
4) If your debts are at a lower rate than savings can offer you, then stick to minimum payments until they're done and save the rest. Overpaying is not gaining you anything.
Modelling interest on loans is going to be way more complex than simply updating your figures each time you get a statement.
I'd rather pay off 300 grand at 4% than $1,000 at 20%
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
How does your example make any sense? One is you paying off 300 times more than the other!
Exactly what most people use it for.
In this situation you should still use whatever surplus of money you have to pay off the $1,000 first.
The total interest from the 300k is going to be larger, yes, but you're paying interest on both. Not either or. Which means that if you add up both interest payments you're better off paying down the 1k first.
In maths assuming you have $1,000 to put towards debt:
299,000 x .04 + 1,000 x .20 = 12,160
300,000 x .04 = 12,000
Edit: I also agree with Jam, Ceres. If all you're doing is looking at paying off debt and saving, software isn't really necessary as it's pretty straightforward. If you really wanted to use something Mint would probably be the way to go since you aren't doing anything especially complicated.
If you want something for budgeting then Quicken is pretty much where it's at.
And I know you mentioned you hated Excel, but if you already have Excel, then that's probably the easiest and cheapest way to get what you want... I mean, you can just ask people how to get exactly what it is that you want in Excel on this forum. =P
YNAB unfortunately won't handle interest for you (but you can enter it manually), but YNAB really excels at helping you pay down debt. The entire design philosophy of the software is focused on helping people dig their way out of holes, so much that I almost find it a little difficult to track being out of debt.
It has a free supplemental Android app, but the app is just a way to do quick data entry or balance checks while on the road. It syncs to big boy YNAB on a real computer via Dropbox and you're meant to do the more complex stuff there.
YNAB has a month free trial, too. Each software package has its ups and downs, but since you mentioned a dislike for Excel, I think there's a good chance whatever you hate about Excel you will also hate about Quicken. Oh, and I share your fear of linking a real bank account to a web-based thing like Mint.com, and that was another thing that led me to choose YNAB.
The more I ramble, the more I think YNAB is perfect for your situation, despite its lack of interest calculators. If you haven't already watched the "Four Rules" videos on the YNAB site, I highly recommend you do to get an idea of how YNAB will try and help you with your goals of paying down debt and getting more savings going.
and if really all you want is to just keep track and aren't looking for any strategic advice, then Mint is fine
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
A little bit of googling brought this up @ceres take a look maybe that'll work?
That being said he spent a really long time with his partner developing Wiser Wallet and I think they did a really good job. It's free and doesn't need you to link your bank account but you can export financial statements from your account and import data into your account.
It also allows me flexibility. I vaguely recall Mint.com allowing you to set savings goals or something? But if I'm saving $1200 for a vacation, I'd rather just plop -$400 across 3 months of budgets. That way I never even knew the money was there to spend on something else.
Plus over 5 years I've slowly tweaked the formulas and the layouts I use in my spreadsheet to better suite my needs. It beats the custom reports I've attempted to generate with just about any other service.
Mint is still a very useful tool for this type of setup. Between my wife and I, we have like 6 credit cards, 2 checking accounts, a savings account, a trading/stock market account, and 3 or 4 loan accounts. Having a program that can instantly show you your balance in every account as well as conglomerate all transactions into 1 spreadsheet with the click of a button is invaluable. I use mint as my front end for checking my current status, and then use it's export transactions feature to get all of the transactions info into my custom spreadsheet for actually tracking my spending and setting up budgets. Works great.
I've used Mint for a couple years now, and have nothing but good things to say about it...mostly because of what you said...it's an easy way to pull in and show balances/transactions across many accounts/sites easily. For reference, I have 4 bank accounts, 3 brokerage accounts, HSA accounts, and some loans (auto and student).
The budgeting tools are pretty great, easy to set up something very granular (which I do because I like to specify exactly how much money I get for each and every little category), set up rollover budgets (to save for christmas presents, trips, etc). I used to to set goals around saving for a wedding and a house downpayment too.
It's free, and yes they try and sell stuff to you, but I've hardly even noticed. It's never intrusive with your day-to-day uses.
Not sure if I can do all that with Excel.. especially the date thing. And if I can, I have even less idea how. Maybe there's a decent template out there?
If you're just looking to get some projection data on your current loans (Credit Card, or others), setting up a spreadsheet is probably the cheapest method that you can use on your android device. If you're uncomfortable using that tool, then yes, buying a copy of Quicken (requires Windows for the main application, and registration - and thus uploading of data to their servers - to use the android app) will get you what you need (but a whole lot of other financial tools too, depending on the "level" you buy).
I think this can be closed!
oh wait that's me!