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Monthly Budgeting Tools?

Hamster_styleHamster_style Registered User regular
edited June 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
What do you guys use for budgets and stuff, if anything? I've heard good things about www.mint.com from reading reviews and whatnot in the WSJ, but I'm curious what you people do. Are there other tools people use? Is mint.com the good one, or is there better stuff?

I ask because I've been just kind of living, and while I've been saving money and stuff, I'd like to get a pretty solid handle on where my cash goes, how much I spend on rent, food, investments, insurances, etc. I'm pretty lazy on keeping track of things in places that are not my head, and we all know how well that works :P

Thanks in advance for the help!

Hamster_style on

Posts

  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    The best I've found is Excel (or the OpenOffice equivalent).

    Thanatos on
  • DrakmathusDrakmathus Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    I use google docs. If you know your general income then you can just keep a running tally through a month and find out where it all goes. Give each spending item a category like "food - restaurant", "food - grocery", "entertainment - video game", "entertainment - movie theater" etc. etc.

    Then you can make wonderful pie charts based on the percentages from each category!

    Drakmathus on
  • UsagiUsagi Nah Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Mint.com, a thousand times Mint.com!

    I've been using it for a while and it is fantastic and not intimidating at all, and it makes keeping track of all of your financial things very simple.

    Usagi on
  • Mr BlondeMr Blonde Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    I use Mint. Don't check it as often as I should though. But I like that it auto updates and I don't have to enter anything in after some initial username/passes

    Mr Blonde on
  • PeregrineFalconPeregrineFalcon Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Thanatos wrote: »
    The best I've found is Excel (or the OpenOffice equivalent).

    Yep.

    Excel - New Document from Template - Search Templates - Personal Monthly Budget (or Family Monthly Budget, whatever you need)

    Pretty damned good.

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  • WeretacoWeretaco Cubicle Gangster Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    I use quicken but that might be more involved than you want. It is pretty nice though.

    Weretaco on
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  • ImprovoloneImprovolone Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    The best thing about your own spreadsheet is that you can make as many categories as possible.

    Improvolone on
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  • WeretacoWeretaco Cubicle Gangster Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Improvolone wrote: »
    The best thing about your own spreadsheet is that you can make as many categories as possible.

    That's one of the things I like about Quicken. Got a dog a few months ago and after some medical stuff wanted to see how much he's cost me so far. I put all pet related stuff in a category. Just hit spending by category + year to date and bam there is the info.

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  • DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
    edited June 2009
    I use mint.

    It has as many categories as I want, sets up budgets and lets me see awesome charts of my spending habits as well as opportunity areas for saving cash.

    Plus it keeps track of everything for me so I don't need to make sure I remember to document every single purchase I make.

    Unknown User on
  • SeptusSeptus Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Improvolone wrote: »
    The best thing about your own spreadsheet is that you can make as many categories as possible.

    In my case, I needed something like Mint at least on the front end. It would take me sooo long to copy and paste the poorly formatted document that is available on my bank's website. Mint is great because it pulls the transaction data into a nice format that can be exported easily.

    It does have its unfortunate inflexibilities though. Can't pull all your old transaction from the bank, and you can't edit dates from a split transaction.

    Septus on
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  • HeirHeir Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Usagi wrote: »
    Mint.com, a thousand times Mint.com!

    I've been using it for a while and it is fantastic and not intimidating at all, and it makes keeping track of all of your financial things very simple.

    This. It has a few quirks, but overall I love it.

    Heir on
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  • saint2esaint2e Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Mint intrigues me, however I'm Canadian so I can't sign up. :(

    Guess I'll just stick to Microsoft Money.

    saint2e on
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  • Cyd CycloneCyd Cyclone Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    gnuCash. It's free, cross platform, and imports every major financial software format.

    Cyd Cyclone on
  • ShadowrunnerShadowrunner Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    The easiest thing I've found is to use my credit card for all discretionary spending. At the end of the month, I get a bill for all the crap that I didn't really need to spend money on :) That plus an excel spreadsheet (for a high-level budget) and online banking seems to work pretty well.

    Shadowrunner on
  • ImprovoloneImprovolone Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Because of the ridiculous break downs I wanted, I saved receipts in a jar and updated weekly.

    Improvolone on
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  • KyouguKyougu Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Quickenonline worked excellently for me, once I discovered that it was counting my credit card purchases AND my payment to my credit card. As I only use one credit card, and pay it off at the end of the month, that was throwing off my spending totals.

    Once I fixed that to the transfer out category, I had no complaints.

    Kyougu on
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