Hate Budgeting? 10 Tools to Simplify Your Monthly Budget

It’s impossible to live within your means, eliminate debt, and accumulate wealth if you don’t know where your money goes. That’s why a monthly budget is a crucial part of any financial plan. Budgeting the old fashioned way – with a stack of receipts and a calculator, was a time-consuming bore. But today, several powerful budgeting tools obliterate any excuse for spending without a budget.

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Premium Budgeting Tools

Mvelopes – For about between $7 and $13 a month (after a free one month trial), Mvelopes offers a unique, simple, online budgeting solution that allocates your income into “envelopes” for various expenses, then deducts funds from the appropriate envelope as you spend. Also see the full review of Mvelopes I wrote a while ago.

Shoeboxed – Dubbed the “Netflix” of Receipt Organization, Shoeboxed offers a suite of simple budgeting tools plus their unique mail-in receipt scanning service. For $9.95 a month, send them your receipts in a prepaid envelope and view and organize them online in a few days. Read my recent Shoeboxed review.

Quicken Online – Quicken, long the personal finance software standard, has recently released a totally online version called Quicken Online Edition, which is available for just $2.99 per month after a free trial. For more, read my Quicken Online review.

Microsoft Money – Have multiple sources of income and investments? Full featured personal finance software like Microsoft Money maybe your answer. For $50 Money gives you access to advanced reports many online budgeting solutions don’t yet offer.

Simple Planning Budget Worksheet – SimplePlanning.net offers an Excel-based budget planner for a one-time fee of $9.95. If you’re looking for more than what free worksheets can offer, but don’t want to pay a monthly fee, this might be the tool for you.

Free Budgeting Tools

Geezeo.com – Geezeo combines social networking with powerful, free budgeting tools. Geezeo securely aggregates all your online accounts (checking, savings, credit cards, etc) into one place, and even lets you check your finances from your mobile phone!

Mint.com – An elegantly simple budgeting platform with commanding tools, Mint provides secure account aggregation, the ability to create a budget in a few clicks, and email alerts when you exceed a budget area for the month.

My Free Spreadsheet – Don’t feel like logging on to get your budget? A ways back I wrote this simple monthly budget spreadsheet for Microsoft Excel that will allow you to tally up your expenses and see what percentage of your income you spend on debt, transportation, housing, saving, and other costs.

Other Free Templates – Not impressed with my little spreadsheet? No offense taken. You can find additional free budget templates for Excel and Word directly from Microsoft.

BillQ – Don’t feel like tracking all of your expenses, just the ones you need to pay on time? BillQ is for you. The free service sets reminders of all your bills and compiles monthly reports for what you paid and when. It’s also a great way to split the rent and utilities with roommates.

Do you use any of these to write your monthly budget? Or something else? How has it worked for you?

Next Wednesday, check out the budgeting topic for “Why Cash is Still the Best Way to Budget” Need a reminder? Subscribe to our RSS Feed.

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