Budget/Financial Software?

[mscatra]

What do you use? I use an ANCIENT version of MSMoney (sidenote: my phone changed that to MAN Obey, lmao) and it works fine, but it would be nice to have access to my current budget info from my phone. And it would give me more ammo/h less excuses in our money "discussions".

[jfh]

Like a lot of people, I use Mint. I don't feel like I use it to it's fullest potential, so someone else can probably tell you more. But it's great for monitoring all your accounts in one place. I download all my transactions from there and then put them in a spreadsheet. What exactly do you want to do with the information?

[mscatra]

jfh - I just remembered I made this topic, lol. Basically I'd like to do the same things I do on Money currently - set up a budget, set up my accounts (which would suck to start all over on, now that I think of it) for banking & bill paying, and be able to enter all bank and credit card transactions and have them autocalculate towards the budget. The additional functionality of being able to see the current status of my budget from my and my H's phones (either online or app, I guess) is what I'd like to add. But, security is a concern as well, so maybe that's not the best thing to do.

[devotchka]

i love mint!!! its awesome.

[eav2c]

I use mint. I like it but it seems to miscatergorize stuff a lot. Overall for free it's a really good site and it serves it's purpose but I also do my own budgeting and all on good ole paper too.

[mscatra]

Does mint auto categorize everything? I have control issues and don't know that I'd like that. I manually input and categorize now. eav2c, does mint have a bill pay schedule? Like "upcoming bills and deposits" in Money?

[shevacc]

Aug 27, 2014 4:23:29 GMT -5 mscatra said:

Does mint auto categorize everything? I have control issues and don't know that I'd like that. I manually input and categorize now. eav2c, does mint have a bill pay schedule? Like "upcoming bills and deposits" in Money?

Mint automatically categorizes everything but you can go through and review/correct the categories. It doesn't really do what you're describing as far as budgeting/protecting bills into the future, though. Mint primarily answers the question of where did you spend your money in the last month/year/etc. If you're looking for more budgeting tools, Quicken is good, but a new interface to learn. It also is software that runs on your desktop so maybe less security concerns for you? I dislike that they make you buy Quicken again every few years by disabling auto-downloading of your transactions. But otherwise it's a great tool for budgeting.

[mscatra]

Aug 27, 2014 4:38:32 GMT -5 shevacc said:

Aug 27, 2014 4:23:29 GMT -5 mscatra said:

Does mint auto categorize everything? I have control issues and don't know that I'd like that. I manually input and categorize now. eav2c, does mint have a bill pay schedule? Like "upcoming bills and deposits" in Money?

Mint automatically categorizes everything but you can go through and review/correct the categories. It doesn't really do what you're describing as far as budgeting/protecting bills into the future, though. Mint primarily answers the question of where did you spend your money in the last month/year/etc. If you're looking for more budgeting tools, Quicken is good, but a new interface to learn. It also is software that runs on your desktop so maybe less security concerns for you? I dislike that they make you buy Quicken again every few years by disabling auto-downloading of your transactions. But otherwise it's a great tool for budgeting.

Yeah, I've been wondering if I'd have to go the Quicken route.  My useless and never used degree is in computer science "application specialist", so new software actually sounds fun to me, lol.  I just hate spending money, hence the ancient version of MSMoney

Thanks for the info!

[shevacc]

Aug 27, 2014 5:02:17 GMT -5 mscatra said:

Aug 27, 2014 4:38:32 GMT -5 shevacc said:

Mint automatically categorizes everything but you can go through and review/correct the categories. It doesn't really do what you're describing as far as budgeting/protecting bills into the future, though. Mint primarily answers the question of where did you spend your money in the last month/year/etc. If you're looking for more budgeting tools, Quicken is good, but a new interface to learn. It also is software that runs on your desktop so maybe less security concerns for you? I dislike that they make you buy Quicken again every few years by disabling auto-downloading of your transactions. But otherwise it's a great tool for budgeting.

Yeah, I've been wondering if I'd have to go the Quicken route.  My useless and never used degree is in computer science "application specialist", so new software actually sounds fun to me, lol.  I just hate spending money, hence the ancient version of MSMoney

Thanks for the info!

I actually switched from Mint to Personal Capital (same idea, slightly different focus) earlier this year and have been happy with it, just to give you something else to compare. DH still loves Quicken, though. He likes to use it like it sounds like you use MS Money -- projecting forward with income and bills. I use the online program to categorize spending on a weekly-ish basis, then DH and I hash out a more long-term budget every year or so (on paper! gasp!) to make sure we're meeting our goals. That's worked fairly well for us, but admittedly our current system works now that there's a little wiggle room in our budget. It wouldn't have worked when we first bough our house and things were a lot tighter.

[mscatra]

Aug 27, 2014 18:30:08 GMT -5 shevacc said:

Aug 27, 2014 5:02:17 GMT -5 mscatra said:

Yeah, I've been wondering if I'd have to go the Quicken route.  My useless and never used degree is in computer science "application specialist", so new software actually sounds fun to me, lol.  I just hate spending money, hence the ancient version of MSMoney

Thanks for the info!

I actually switched from Mint to Personal Capital (same idea, slightly different focus) earlier this year and have been happy with it, just to give you something else to compare. DH still loves Quicken, though. He likes to use it like it sounds like you use MS Money -- projecting forward with income and bills. I use the online program to categorize spending on a weekly-ish basis, then DH and I hash out a more long-term budget every year or so (on paper! gasp!) to make sure we're meeting our goals. That's worked fairly well for us, but admittedly our current system works now that there's a little wiggle room in our budget. It wouldn't have worked when we first bough our house and things were a lot tighter.

LOL.  Up until a couple days ago when I created an Excel spreadsheet for it, ours was on paper, too.  I wish it was more about meeting goals and less about making sure bills are paid and savings isn't drained, but, it is what it is!