what app to manage finaces?

[petemurphy]

I'm rubbish with finances and dont look at my bank account until its too late - what do you use to manage your own or your familys finances? any good "household" or personal apps?

thanks

[putonghua73]

In all honesty, I don't use any apps other than Excel to record:
- income
- expenditure

On a separate tab, I record expected income with dates [salary] and expected expenditure [bills] with dates.

I have done this for approx 15/16 years, so much so that I really do not use Excel anymore because I automatically know what is going in on what dates and what is going out on what dates. All of my non-DD expenditure i.e. non-bill living costs (food, diesel, etc) all go on credit card (paid in full every month). I already have a mental chart of my expenditure in my head!

Given that not everyone is like this, here's a Lifehack article on best 15 Money Manager apps that you might find useful.

Apps will help up to a point. You really need to sit down and understand:
- monthly income
- monthly expendture

However you do it, record non-discretionary expenditure e.g. mortgage, council tax, etc that you absolutely have to pay each and every month - amounts and dates - and then add items such as food, travel. What you are left with is your discretionary expenditure. No more, no less. It may be worthwhile to actually move your discretionary expenditure into a completely separate account until you are much more comfortable budgeting each and every month.

[mike9009]

I have always used Excel in these situations - I have not used Apps but I find building a spreadsheet myself gives me a greater realisation/ understanding of each line of expenditure.

Luckily I have learnt to be pretty good at paying down debts and recognising unnecessary monthly expenditure, when I put my mind to it. Even small regular stuff can make a difference to the overall impact.

[KTF]

A Google sheet spreadsheet.

[Zigster]

I use an app called MoneyWiz. I have it on my iPhone (and my wife’s) and my Mac. It automatically pulls down bank account info, credit card info, etc.

I don’t think it does anything that you couldn’t do on a spreadsheet, but it has a nice front end on it which has helped with some short/medium term cash flow planning.

[red_slr]

In these situations its incidental spending that usually does the damage. One thing that can help is not having access to all your money. So set up a standing order to a different account which you put a set deposit in per month and use that and that only for your incidental spending. Leave your current account card at home. This way you can only spend what you have allocated for incidentals.

Another thing is if you do a lot of online shopping like amazon or ebay is to link it to that account too so you can again only spend a set number each month.

This then makes excel tracking much easier too as you can just note the balance on that account rather than having to detail every payment.

[Mr Pointy]

I use a 2004 version of Quicken & I find it to be very good. It's a real shame Intuit dropped the UK versions of Quicken & all we have access to is Quickbooks, which is overkill & expensive for personal use. I'd really like to find some modern software which does the same as Quicken but most of the offerings are just lightweight budget planners.

[bullitinhead]

Mr Pointy said:

I use a 2004 version of Quicken & I find it to be very good. It's a real shame Intuit dropped the UK versions of Quicken & all we have access to is Quickbooks, which is overkill & expensive for personal use. I'd really like to find some modern software which does the same as Quicken but most of the offerings are just lightweight budget planners.

I too use to use Quicken (given to me by my father as a moving out present 25+ years ago)... but that was replaced with Microsoft money Sunset
available for free from here Ms money sunset it does most simple things one would expect and is fairly easy to use.



bullit

[Mr Pointy]

bullitinhead said:

Mr Pointy said:

I use a 2004 version of Quicken & I find it to be very good. It's a real shame Intuit dropped the UK versions of Quicken & all we have access to is Quickbooks, which is overkill & expensive for personal use. I'd really like to find some modern software which does the same as Quicken but most of the offerings are just lightweight budget planners.

I too use to use Quicken (given to me by my father as a moving out present 25+ years ago)... but that was replaced with Microsoft money Sunset
available for free from here Ms money sunset it does most simple things one would expect and is fairly easy to use.

Is there any particular reason to change? What did you find better abour MS Money?

[petemurphy]

thanks all - reason for an app is it would be nice to have something that nudges me to look / presents the data well. I have tried excel a few times and I start off great then end up not looking at it or updating it.

[JaredVannett]

petemurphy said:

thanks all - reason for an app is it would be nice to have something that nudges me to look / presents the data well. I have tried excel a few times and I start off great then end up not looking at it or updating it.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/

[outnumbered]

JaredVannett said:

http://www.youneedabudget.com/

I also use this, but just for tracking spending rather than planning.

[supercommuter]

Zigster said:

I use an app called MoneyWiz. I have it on my iPhone (and my wife’s) and my Mac. It automatically pulls down bank account info, credit card info, etc.

I don’t think it does anything that you couldn’t do on a spreadsheet, but it has a nice front end on it which has helped with some short/medium term cash flow planning.

I am guessing you give them your bank account login details? If so, are you covered for fraud?

[Drew106]

outnumbered said:

JaredVannett said:

http://www.youneedabudget.com/

I also use this, but just for tracking spending rather than planning.

I also use YNAB. Having previously used Excel for everything.

Can't recommend it highly enough, it's a great tool. I started using it just to track finances, but have moved towards using it's 'Budgeting' ideals which it pushes you towards.

I'm a convert, it is a great tool to make you consider what your money/savings is actually for. Rather than just accumulating wealth.

You can also track your assets - cars/houses/investments to give you a full picture of your 'worth'.

[theaxe]

I was just about to post about YNAB too. It took me a couple of false starts to 'get' it and obviously unlike a home-grown Excel solution you need to adapt to how it works rather than the other way around.

I find it essential for managing finances, putting cash aside for annual expenses like car insurance is a great habit to get into and YNAB really helps. You don't have to be super detailed about inputting things either, if I take out cash for miscellaneous items I just put it all as 'Cash' from the 'Spending Money' bucket and not worry about it. Others will attempt to record every small transaction.

[mikeiow]

supercommuter said:

Zigster said:

I use an app called MoneyWiz. I have it on my iPhone (and my wife’s) and my Mac. It automatically pulls down bank account info, credit card info, etc.

I don’t think it does anything that you couldn’t do on a spreadsheet, but it has a nice front end on it which has helped with some short/medium term cash flow planning.

I am guessing you give them your bank account login details? If so, are you covered for fraud?

Must admit, that has put me off a few I’ve looked at over the years (Mint and others)

Mr Pointy said:

I use a 2004 version of Quicken & I find it to be very good. It's a real shame Intuit dropped the UK versions of Quicken & all we have access to is Quickbooks, which is overkill & expensive for personal use. I'd really like to find some modern software which does the same as Quicken but most of the offerings are just lightweight budget planners.

I’ve used Quicken 2000 for many years....far too many.....& yes, I wish they hadn’t packed it in over here too!
Also a big spreadsheet fan.
Dabbled with YNAB, but perhaps not enough.

[Derek Chevalier]

petemurphy said:

I'm rubbish with finances and dont look at my bank account until its too late - what do you use to manage your own or your familys finances? any good "household" or personal apps?

thanks

I use Moneyhub - £10 p/a.

[durbster]

I didn't like the ones that require you to give them your online banking login details (very dodgy grey area of accountability). I also got fed up of the time it was taking to keep my spreadsheet updated, so I made my own app instead to make it easier and quicker to keep on top of it.

It compiles bank statements into categories then works out what everything costs per month. Happy to share it with anyone if it might be of use.

[750turbo]

MS Money - Used it for years and the latest (last) version is free.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-GB/download/details.a...

[kriswilson]

durbster said:

I didn't like the ones that require you to give them your online banking login details (very dodgy grey area of accountability). I also got fed up of the time it was taking to keep my spreadsheet updated, so I made my own app instead to make it easier and quicker to keep on top of it.

It compiles bank statements into categories then works out what everything costs per month. Happy to share it with anyone if it might be of use.

Interested, how does it access your statements? Do you load them all in individually?