Mar 12th, 2008
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. Some cost just a few dollars a month, others are 100% free. Check them out:
1. 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.
2. Quicken Online –- Quicken, long the personal finance software standard, has recently released a totally online version called Quicken Online Edition. Once costing about $3 a month, Quicken Online is now 100% free. For more, read my Quicken Online review.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Geezeo –- 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!
7. Mint –- 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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?
I'm David, an ex- financial journalist and recovering debtaholic. I'll help you get out of debt, get saving, and get on with life. Sound good? Please subscribe (RSS or e-mail) or follow me on Twitter.
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You should also link to YNAB (You Need A Budget)–a strength of this program is that it tracks accumulating sinking funds. –That’s where my system breaks down, but I’m fiddling around with a solution now. If it doesn’t work, I’m getting YNAB.
http://www.youneedabudget.com/index.php
Let it just be stated that I am concerned about privacy and do not like having my financial information stored on more servers than necessary. Partially because of these concerns, I’ve elected to use money management systems stored locally on my own computers.
For those who use Linux, a very popular program is GnuCash. GnuCash allows users to download transaction records directly from their credit and banking institutions (that is, if their online banking and account management supports the common protocol: e.g. Citi lets me download my credit card transactions, whereas my regional bank does not for “security reasons.”) I find that this tool allows me to organize and analyze my expenses intuitively for the nice price of $0.00. GnuCash also works for people outside of the US as well, something I’m not sure of for Microsoft Money or Quicken.