How are you tracking your spending? (GnuCash has become too much work)

[cheaplynn]

Just to provide another perspective: I tried different programs for budgeting and tracking spending, and all ended up either not being responsive enough (Mint) or just had too much of a learning curve (Tiller, YNAB) or needed too much daily maintenance (YNAB). I really like the philosophy of YNAB, but I realized this could be done with a cash-based 'envelope' system on my own.

We were charging everything to a credit card and paying it off at the end of the month, but I always felt a step behind and that I couldn't really control how much we were spending. So we switched to a debit card, with everything on automation. First, I set up maximum deductions for pre-tax retirement accounts (for us, it's a 40lk, 403b, and 457), with the rest deposited to a central "do not touch" (DNT) account. Our monthly recurring expenses are pulled from there (mortgage, Roth IRA contributions, child support, etc) as well as deposits to different 'envelope' accounts. We have a separate checking account/debit card for daily spending. On the 1st and 15th, money gets moved from 'DNT' to accounts for daily spending, slush funds, and travel funds

So everything is allocated before we even get to the money we can spend. While using a debit card does cut down on credit card perks, it has made our 'budgeting' so much easier. Basically, we have X amount to live on for two weeks, and if we're spending too much money, we just  have to cut back. I found that I don't really need to track, say, how much we've spent on groceries -- when we have a set limit, we just adjust as needed.

If there's a major expense that our slush fund won't cover or we need to infuse more money for a short-term goal, I can always cut back on the pre-tax savings. For us, maxing contributions is $91,000, so cutting back 1 or 2k for a big summer trip isn't the end of the world. With this system, we are on track to put $87k into our savings this year...not bad for two public school teachers!

[GilesMM]

I've switched to Fidelity Fullview.  Works great with all accounts and nice automatic category setting.  I dump it all to Excel once per month for custom Excel plotting, tabulation, etc. Takes about 15 minutes/month.

[blurkraken22]

I've switched to Fidelity Fullview.  Works great with all accounts and nice automatic category setting.  I dump it all to Excel once per month for custom Excel plotting, tabulation, etc. Takes about 15 minutes/month.

I might give this a try before paying for a year of Tiller. I'm still in the 30 day free trial period with Tiller.

...We were charging everything to a credit card and paying it off at the end of the month, but I always felt a step behind and that I couldn't really control how much we were spending. So we switched to a debit card...

I definitely vibe with that feeling of being behind when looking at the credit card statements. The CC balance is hard to use for monitoring. I seriously thought about simplifying down to a single debit card. I still don't have a decent solution for storing money for specific future purchases, like saving up for the vacation. There are two things that pushed me away from this solution:

• We get enough CC reward money to pay for the accounting subscriptions and still come out way ahead.
• Debit card would be fine, but DW treats cash like Monopoly money. It's like a challenge to get rid of it as fast as possible.

I updated the summary post to add these 2 options.

[beee]

• We get enough CC reward money to pay for the accounting subscriptions and still come out way ahead.

I separate physical locations of money from their purpose with virtual envelopes. This way I can use credit cards as much as possible because I know that I have enough money reserved to pay them off in full. I can also use different places to store parts of my emergency fund (savings account, checking account, cash-like ETF).

[charis]

We also use credit cards whenever cash or debit is not required.  The bonus points and miles from cc hacking pay for 2+ family trips a year.  I deal with keep up with the balances by making weekly credit card payments so we are always caught up.  I could get away with not tracking now, but I like seeing the whole financial picture in one spot.

[kenner]

I've switched to Fidelity Fullview.  Works great with all accounts and nice automatic category setting.  I dump it all to Excel once per month for custom Excel plotting, tabulation, etc. Takes about 15 minutes/month.

Has Fidelity added the ability to manually add transactions?  After Mint closed I switched to Simplifi (Quicken, offered a year free when switching) since at the time Fidelity couldn't talk to a couple of my accounts (local credit union, cc I use for charitable donations), had no way to add those transactions manually, and did a very abrupt rollback on some of the capabilities it did have while I was in the middle of testing it out.  However, I'm a few months away from deciding whether I want to pay for another year of Simplifi and I'd much prefer to switch to Fidelity if they've actually got things working now.

[GilesMM]

I've switched to Fidelity Fullview.  Works great with all accounts and nice automatic category setting.  I dump it all to Excel once per month for custom Excel plotting, tabulation, etc. Takes about 15 minutes/month.

Has Fidelity added the ability to manually add transactions?  After Mint closed I switched to Simplifi (Quicken, offered a year free when switching) since at the time Fidelity couldn't talk to a couple of my accounts (local credit union, cc I use for charitable donations), had no way to add those transactions manually, and did a very abrupt rollback on some of the capabilities it did have while I was in the middle of testing it out.  However, I'm a few months away from deciding whether I want to pay for another year of Simplifi and I'd much prefer to switch to Fidelity if they've actually got things working now.

I don't know. It links fine with all my accounts - 19 of them.

[blurkraken22]

I separate physical locations of money from their purpose with virtual envelopes. This way I can use credit cards as much as possible because I know that I have enough money reserved to pay them off in full. I can also use different places to store parts of my emergency fund (savings account, checking account, cash-like ETF).

How do your virtual envelopes work? This sounds like what I need.

[charis]

I've switched to Fidelity Fullview.  Works great with all accounts and nice automatic category setting.  I dump it all to Excel once per month for custom Excel plotting, tabulation, etc. Takes about 15 minutes/month.

Has Fidelity added the ability to manually add transactions?  After Mint closed I switched to Simplifi (Quicken, offered a year free when switching) since at the time Fidelity couldn't talk to a couple of my accounts (local credit union, cc I use for charitable donations), had no way to add those transactions manually, and did a very abrupt rollback on some of the capabilities it did have while I was in the middle of testing it out.  However, I'm a few months away from deciding whether I want to pay for another year of Simplifi and I'd much prefer to switch to Fidelity if they've actually got things working now.

I don't know. It links fine with all my accounts - 19 of them.

I'm not finding anyway to manually add transactions, which is annoying because we have two accounts not communicating with Fidelity - our state 529 plans and Lowes credit card.  I have gotten around this because my bank transactions showing payments made to that credit card do appear in Fidelity, so I relabel those transactions to account for the pertinent spending.  Same for the 529s I'm sure, but we haven't made any contributions since making the switch from Mint to Fidelity. 

Another annoying deficiency is not being able to edit multiple transactions at once.  That particularly irritating to me since I used to "hide" my numerous credit card payments.  I've made my peace with that though.

So all in all, Fidelity has better communication with my accounts than Mint did, and the missing features are few and rather minor for my purposes.  I've complained about the manual transaction issue and was told that they are currently working on adding features like that.

[beee]

I separate physical locations of money from their purpose with virtual envelopes. This way I can use credit cards as much as possible because I know that I have enough money reserved to pay them off in full. I can also use different places to store parts of my emergency fund (savings account, checking account, cash-like ETF).

How do your virtual envelopes work? This sounds like what I need.

Here's how my system works. I do cashflow-based planning, not budget-based. I plan all recurring expenses and incomes, even if I don't know the exact numbers. The app calculates my cashflow and lets me know how much is safe to spend/save to have money for all planned expenses taking into account all planned incomes. This leftover I can either spend on unplanned expenses or transfer to financial Goals or Funds (like emergency fund).
This is how planning works.
Here's how the virtual envelopes work, it's pretty simple. The system sums up all the money from all physical accounts and this is the total amount of money available for all virtual envelopes. Which are then separated into:
- Reserves (money reserved for all future planned expenses taking into account all future planned incomes)
- HoneyMoney (money for unplanned expenses)
- Funds
- Goals

If your planned income is greater than planned expenses, then you'll constantly have a surplus in Reserves, which then can be transferred to HoneyMoney or Funds or Goals.