Comments on: Monthly Budget Tools: A Big List of Software, Spreadsheets, and More

By: Ty@Thriftability

Ty@Thriftability — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:48:24 +0000

Thought this was great good article for someone like me who has a hard time trying to budget.

By: Jerrica

Jerrica — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:25:46 +0000

Buxfer.com is great! And free! You can tag things, and it gives you pie charts and bar graphs to show you where your money is going! Its simple too!

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 21:19:23 +0000

My first foray into budgeting software took me to Mint. But I didn’t like the way the interface worked, it wasn’t intuitive back then. So I landed on a product called MoneyWell. I believe it may only be for Mac (and now iOS) but it worked and I managed it for more than a year! It completely changed the way I spent money. It also uses the envelope theory. They have a free trial and then you have to pay for it. You might want to check it out if you’re not loving Mint.

By: AG

AG — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 18:21:23 +0000

I use My Portfolio with Bank of America and it provides net worth figures and a budgeting option.

It allows you to assemble all your bank deposit accounts, investments, credit cards, and loans, into a dashboard net worth view. Get this, you can even include non-Bank of America accounts in your net worth presentation. In addition, you can even add Other Assets and Other Liabilities through the “Manual Accounts” feature. This is useful for items that have value, but do not have traditional log-on website such as — the fair market value of your car, art, jewelry, etc., personal loans you owe to family/friends, company reimbursements due you, etc.

To me, My Portfolio is just like mint.com but it is all embedded in the Bank of America website.

Catch: You must participate in Online Banking with Bank of America which means that you must have either an online checking or online savings account.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:01:37 +0000

Nate, I wasn’t able to get to the site you linked (insufficient privileges) I personally am a little weary of my info being out on someone else’s server, I mainly use a homemade spreadhsheet (like george’s but not as intense) to track my budget. whatever the tool, tracking a budget is so important!

By: Dave B

Dave B — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:18:49 +0000

Georges Budget is too restrictive, and the publisher does not address concerns, once he has sold you the goods. One example is that there is only room to post 4 accounts. I have more than 4 bank accounts, then I have a few credit cards. In this program there is no way to add more than 4 accounts.

I suspect I am not alone with my opinion of this template, but since the “blog” feature on georgesbudget.com does not post your comments, I will never know. Interesting that the owner has even gone to the extent of disabling the comment tab on his youtube videos regarding this product.

Dave

By: Ole

Ole — Sun, 16 May 2010 08:37:30 +0000

http://www.gnucash.org/ — available for Mac OSX and Windows — is certainly not limited to “… those who use Linux.”

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:05:14 +0000

http://sites.google.com/site/simpledbudget/

I know that there are a lot of impressive and robust budgeting solutions around, but since my needs are simple … I like things that ARE simple, and free.

I ran across a nifty little program called SimpleD Budget about a year ago when my finances were a mess and I desperately needed something I could use to figure out my spending.

The simplicity is it’s power, in that you can bend it’s functionality to your own needs. The only serious issue is that the print function doesn’t work.

It’s free, it’s easy and you can plan for months ahead if you wish. I’ve tried Quicken online and though I find it impressive, I still want more freedom than it allows. SimpleD lets you do whatever you want, and that’s what I want.

By: George

George — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:41:26 +0000

If you enjoy using Excel, you may want to consider a customized Excel file that includes registers (similar to a checkbook to track your accounts), the ability to create your own categories, create a monthly budget and view reports such as budget vs actual in a simple dashboard layout. See:

http://www.georgesbudget.com/

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:11:45 +0000

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.