Budgeting software

[Necronic]

So apparently there's all sorts of great budgeting software out there. I'm getting married in October and trying to buy a house at the same time, so budgeting is sort of important to me right now. Any suggestions?

 

[Gared]

I use Mint.com for all my budgeting needs. It does pretty well, but there are some bank accounts that it can't get access to yet (like GE's finance arm that runs Amazon's store cards), but other than that I have it tracking all of my outgoing payments and incoming deposits, and it dutifully tells me when I'm spending too much on food and cigarettes.

 

[GasBandit]

Huh. I gave that mint.com thing a try, and it was really easy to set up and go with. Within 10 minutes I had all my accounts added in, and within an hour I had a monthly budget worked up. Very cool.

My only gripe with it is that it's not very good at setting up a savings goal that doesn't get its own account. For example, if I had planned to save $5000 to make an IRA payment at the end of the year, but I had planned to make it just out of my regular bank account, if I put in "$5000" as my goal it acts like I've already met the goal since it is less than the account balance, but if I make my goal my current balance plus $5k, it treats the existing balance as "you're ahead of schedule!"

 

[Necronic]

Yeah, ironically its actually not very good as accounting software. It doesn't handle category hierarchies very well either, but nonetheless as a free software its not half bad. I had no idea how much I was spending on groceries of all things, especially considering that the fridge is always empty....

My guess is that its booze.

 

[PatrThom]

We've tried a variety of budgeting software, and at the end of the day a few excel spreadsheets just works better and is easier.

IF you know how to properly run a check register, AND you can keep track of your upcoming bills, THEN you probably don't need budgeting software.

My only gripe with it is that it's not very good at setting up a savings goal that doesn't get its own account.

If your bank/CU allows for virtual accounts, this may be easier to manage (by fooling your software into thinking you really do have another account somewhere)

My guess is that its booze.

Booze isn't groceries. Ask any State's aid program. They'll tell you.

--Patrick