How Do You All Keep Track of your Budget and Spending?

[Andrew W]

I read radi8's Budgeting 101 post, specifically the Envelopes method. Curious to see how other people (or rather, how many) people are employing this method, or what alternative methods they may be using.

 

Myself, I use a finance app on my phone. Each time I make a purchase, I deduct it from the relevant category, whether it be gas, discretionary, groceries, etc. I like this because similar to the envelopes method, it lets me keep track of my remaining budget funds in real-time as the month progresses.

 

I can see the down-side of this versus the envelope method though. It is far too easy to forget to enter in a purchase on the phone's app. To counter this, I've just been auditing my monthly credit card statements and cross-checking it with the purchases I've entered in my phone's app. If something is missing, I just deduct it from the current month budget to account for the prior month omission.

 

I use a credit card to pay for the majority of my purchases, so the envelope method wouldn't work for me as I'd be missing out on the rewards. However, I have to think that there has to be an easier way than entering every purchase + doing a monthly audit.

 

Thoughts?

 

ETA: the monthly audit takes me about 1-1.5 hours once per month.I suppose in retrospect it's not that bad, but still curious to see what others think, thanks.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Andrew W

[saladdin69]

Excel. No need to get complicated.

[ZeroDebt]

In my case it's really simple. I know roughly what I have in my checking account, and can mentally do a rough deduction every time I use my debit card, or pay for something out of my checking account online or by phone. When the balance gets "blurry", I just send a text mesage to my bank to get the latest balance. I only have 2 monthly bills to worry about(everything else is either yearly or every 6 months), and am the only one accessing this account, so my "system" works for me.

[jolla]

I use mint.com.

[jmf8756]

I use mint.com.

 

+1

 

It has really brought our spending under control since we started using it.

[JapanExpress]

I use mint.com.

 

Same here. The only downside currently is that they do not connect to any of my Barclay's cards. They did in the past, so hopefully they work it out again so I can track everything in one spot.

[HoldenMcGroin]

I just use a spreadsheet. I tried mint but it seemed to never work with all my cards, so it wasn't really accurate so it didn't work for me.

[Cactus Flower]

I use a inexpensive version of QUICKEN... you don't have to "pay" for all of those extra services that Quicken/Intuit try to cram down your throat. You can just use the database portion of it. I have the program pre-fill in all of my fixed bills 2 months in advance - so I can keep on track.

 

I have MINT also, but never seem to use it....... like some have mentioned it doesn't work with all cards or all accounts, so fairly worthless..

[sb913594]

I use mvelopes.com. Still getting the hang of it, but its been pretty helpful so far.

[frozengrapes]

I just got the mint.com app on my iPad. I am still playing around with it, but so far , I love it!

[honeybadger]

I also use mint.com but if they don't start getting permission to support all cards, I'll have to switch to quicken or something that can access all my data..

[deserk]

I keep it simple with an online spreadsheet (Google Docs).

 

Each row represents a bill or income. Each column represents a month. There are also columns where I list the day of the month the bill is typically duet, the amount due, and a link to pay the bill online. When a bill is paid each month I record the amount I paid in that month's column.

 

I use colors to indicate if I paid the bill on time or not that month. Green means yes, yellow means no. Red means I skipped it that month for whatever reason. The spreadsheet goes back a full year now and there's a lot less yellow/red now!

 

At the top of the spreadsheet I have an area where I record pending transactions. I also enter my current checking account balance and subtract the pending transactions. This lets me know if I'm at risk of bouncing a check before it actually happens!

 

Very basic stuff, but sometimes that's better than trying to use a more complex system that may just get ignored or used improperly.

Edited September 16, 2012 by deserk

[loanuniverse]

I pay everything with credit cards.... With the exception of a couple of utilities that charge $3 to $5 fee to take credit card payments.

 

Tracking expenses is not a problem as I live way beneath my means. I guess I could squeeze a few hundred by limiting some of my more wasteful habits {eating out every day at work}, getting a more fuel efficient car..... But I am happy with the way my savings are growing so I see no reason.

[tamo42]

I use full blown bookkeeping software. I like gnucash because it works and its free.

[Gwennie]

I spend less than I earn. No tools, programs, methods, or hooha needed.

[luckydriver]

I spend less than I earn. No tools, programs, methods, or hooha needed.

 

or get a companion...when i was married and had 2 incomes i never even balanced my checkbook...there was always money there. i did keep tabs on statements etc for fraud, but there was no reason to ever worry about money..but sometimes you gotta choose money or happiness.....

 

as soon as i got divorced, i balanced the checkbook to the penny

 

and excel is a nice way to budget things and easily change them year by year for expected increases (things always increase!)

[prudent]

Have used Quicken for 20 years to track expenses and savings. I don't use it for budgeting - I can look at my past spending and calculate budgets myself. It takes a little time to master it but you can buy year old versions cheap on ebay. I prefer Quicken over Mint because all my data is on MY computer and I don't have to provide any information on my finances to another website.

[inmytree2003]

I use Mint.com to track spending. I like that you can view trends, such as my girlfriend spending $80.00 a month on bagels at Panera Bread (LOL).

 

I use a spreadsheet to model my budget and project future spending/savings. I set the functions up to account for income, subtract recurring payments and estimate remaining funds, which become snowballed into savings.

[Sharah]

I use spreadsheets. I have a couple of different ones that I use.

 

- A "Debts" Spreadsheet: I use one sheet for myself, one sheet for my fiance, and one sheet for combined. This is where I track our open balances and payments per month. It is an easy way of tracking when things are going to be paid off, or when balances are getting low so we can decide if we want to go ahead and pay them off.

 

- A Yearly Budget Spreadsheet: This is where I do a month by month budget on all of our expenses and income to see how much we are saving per month. It give me a nice way to plan ahead.

 

- A Monthly Budget Spreadsheet: This one I take my budget numbers and do a weekly tracker on our spending so I can see where we are compared to the budget numbers so that we don't run over our budgeted spending. My fiance is responsible for not overspending his weekly lunch budget and I take care of everything else.

 

I just started really working on the budgeting aspect since we are looking to buy a house, so I am sure I'll find more things to track.

[ceemee]

Mint, Pageonce (to pay bills), and 2 spreadsheets (monthyl and yearly budgets) on Google Drive.

[glitterqueen]

I just use a basic spreadsheet in Excell - it's very simple and it's set up for a year. Keeps me and my husband on track for debt reduction and helps curb frivolous spending.