Anyone here use budgeting software?

[Drachen]

I am pretty good with controlling my finances, but I am always looking for ways to manage them better. When I did my taxes through turbotax, they said I can use quicken online for free. I wanted to know if anyone here uses/ has used Quicken, or Money, et al. I am interested in knowing if it helped you at all, or if there are examples of why they suck. Are they easy to learn/use? I appreciate your help. Thank you.

[S_A_Longhorn]

How about a simple Excel spreadsheet where you can list your income, fixed expenses, variable expenses, and additional expeditures? Same thing, and just as effective.

But if you prefer, I'll slap a "Quicken" or "Money" logo on it and charge you $200.

[Drachen]

How about a simple Excel spreadsheet where you can list your income, fixed expenses, variable expenses, and additional expeditures? Same thing, and just as effective.

But if you prefer, I'll slap a "Quicken" or "Money" logo on it and charge you $200.


Sarcastic comment aside, that is what I was asking about. I want to find out if it is useful or not. Do I want to set up an excel spreadsheet, figure out what functions I need to add to what cells, etc?? OR do I want to use one of those programs that has it already set up, that also downloads all of your account info from bank, credit cards, etc all in the same place, with 1 login, does your bill payments and so on. I could also keep doing it as I have been (successfully), by just being good with numbers and knowing my goals in my head. I am asking this, not because I need this stuff for budgeting, but I want to find out if it makes things easier, thus giving an extra edge, thus making me even more successful.

Oh, and the $200 comment makes no sense, since as I said in my first post, it is free.

[JoeChalupa]

I too have an excel budget sheet I use.

[Bender]

Quicken is great software, and you can get all sorts of info out of it. I don't currently use it, but I have used it for several years.

The hard part is forcing yourself to take the time to enter everything.....

[Drachen]

Quicken is great software, and you can get all sorts of info out of it. I don't currently use it, but I have used it for several years.

The hard part is forcing yourself to take the time to enter everything.....

When you say enter everything, do you mean the initial startup? Or do you have to regularly enter info into it? I guess I was under the impression that once you set it up, it downloads all pertinent info automatically. Sorry for the novice questions, but I have never even thought about using it and don't really feel like learning how to without it giving me some kind of benefit in time and ability.

[robino2001]

I use quicken at least once a day, if not a couple of times a day. I've used it for 7 years (25 yo now) and it's almost impossible to F up your finances once you have it set up. I've never come close to a late payment, etc... it keeps all of my shit straight - no doubt. Sure, you can use other programs, but just having a financial program in general is more helpful that I could ever say.

[Drachen]

I use quicken at least once a day, if not a couple of times a day. I've used it for 7 years (25 yo now) and it's almost impossible to F up your finances once you have it set up. I've never come close to a late payment, etc... it keeps all of my shit straight - no doubt. Sure, you can use other programs, but just having a financial program in general is more helpful that I could ever say.

Ok, I can imagine that it would take a long time to set up, but when you log on every day, is it just a quick look, or is there daily maintenance that needs to be done that takes up time???

[robino2001]

The initial set up could take from 30 minutes maybe to a couple of hours. It depends what all you want to have/use. The more indepth you set it up, the shorter your daily time is with it. There are tons of ways to use the program - I have everything done electronically.

Setting it up, you provide all of your log-in info for all of your accounts, etc... so Quicken (for me) can download all of your transactions. For that first month after you get the accounts set up, you'll want to add your monthly bills as they come in to the transactions list with their due dates, what accounts you pay them from, etc... so it'll remind you whats due, what's coming up soon, etc. It'll also notice trends to your spending and ask if it should schedule a transaction to recur monthly, weekly, whatever - if it starts to see repetition. I really don't worry about the budget stuff too much, but that can suck up tons of time playing with that if you want - I just find there is too much fluidity in my finances that there are always tons of things that were not/are not budgeted.

As for daily... I try to get on real quick at the end of every day and manually type in whatever transactions/purchases I made for the day. You don't have to do this at all, but I like to do it because your numbers are then at least somewhat reflective of accurate balances instead of online balances delayed by the few days transactions take to post sometimes. I always estimate the amount spent though - no need to get the exact values in. Then each morning, open the program, click update - you type in one master password that then will allow the computer to use all of the stored passwords for the online accounts, and it'll download everything from all of my accounts. I then go through whatever accounts downloaded transactions and accept them as being processed by the bank. The whole thing takes 2-5 minutes most of the time.

Assuming you have stock/401k's, etc... you need the Deluxe version for Quicken to download that information.

It all depends how anal and careful you want to be on how much time you spend on it. You can have it set up just to download whatever and it'll all keep track for you, but I like to kinda stay one step ahead of it. It made it VERY easy to catch when my credit card was skimmed at a restaurant a couple of years ago and sold to someone in Florida - I had caught it within a day of the first purchase on it because of my program and purchases coming up that didn't make sense.

[Kori Ellis]

http://mint.com is free and automated. You input your account information, etc and everything updates on its own. I haven't used it but people rave about it.

[BackStabber]

Thanks for the link.

[TwAnKiEs]

I have one....


It wears a ring and I call it babe.

[Das Texan]

I love Quicken. Its really nice when you have over 15 accounts to track of various things.

And I dont know where the 200 buck comment came from other than some wanting to just be a fucking jackass.

[TDMVPDPOY]

variable costs you can manipulated to decrease the costs on things you pay you dont need or opt for cheaper products and services....

fixed costs like bills and shit, shop around for better prices when ur not bound with ur contracts anymore