Author Topic: How do you track your finances?  (Read 26058 times)

MsLogica

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How do you track your finances?
« on: February 24, 2012, 12:11:40 PM »
I thought it might be fun if we all shared the methods we have for tracking our finances.  It seems like a lot of you might be using Mint, but that's not available to non-U.S folk, and so there are a lot of us doing our tracking "manually".

I keep spreadsheets of my Finances on my iPad (no secure details are recorded, so do not be afraid, tin hat people!).  I use the Numbers app, which allows for the files to be easily converted to Excel, PDF and emailed if needed.  I have five main spreadsheets (listed in order of importance):

1. Monthly accounts

This is where I record all my expenditure into categories, and all of my income for that month.  I include money moved into savings as an outgoing expense and it's listed as a category in this spreadsheet.  I don't have a budget, but sometimes I decide during a month not to spend something in a particular category, so I black out the row to try and encourage myself not to use it!  I have columns at the end of the spreadsheet that automatically calculate how much I've spent as I update the spreadsheet and tell me how much of my income is left.

2. Investment income

This title is kind of misleading, but I know what it means!  I use to see how much my savings are earning.  There isn't much investment action yet, but I have money in savings accounts which I like to watch.  I have two columns for each saving account.  The first column is where I write the updated balance each month (each month gets a new row), and the second month is set up to automatically calculate the interest on the new balance (assuming, of course, that the account pays interest monthly).

At the end of the spreadsheet, I have another two columns.  One calculates the total interest earned for that month, and the second calculates the total balance of my savings for that month.

3. Annual accounts

This is an annual version of my monthly accounts.  It's pretty much identical, except I update it monthly from the totals from my monthly spreadsheet.

4. Finances wall chart

This is a digital version of the chart that Joe recommends you keep in YMOYL.  It's a line graph with three lines: an expenses line, an income line and an investment income line.  It's updated monthly from my monthly spreadsheet and my investment spreadsheet.  When the investment income line overtakes the expenses line, you're financially independent!

5. Seller accounts income

This is just where I track sales through Amazon and eBay, to see how much profit I actually make after fees and P&P.  Since you're meant to pay taxes on this income, it's worth keeping a record of it (even if you have no plans to declare it.  You don't want to get caught out by the taxman and have loads of work to do!).  Don't forget you still need to include monthly sales income in your monthly income column, otherwise your income recorded will be wrong.

How do you track your money?  I don't have any debts so I don't track any payments, but I think my system could be much simpler!

AJ

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2012, 12:24:20 PM »
I've been struggling with this lately. I really want to track my expenditures on a VERY granular level, but I haven't found a good system. For example, if I spend $10 on a bottle of wine to take to a friend's house for dinner which category should it go in: food, alcohol, gifts, or entertainment? Technically, it is an alcohol product, but I wouldn't be buying it if I wasn't giving it to someone. I'll be entertained drinking it with my friend, and it will also provide part of my caloric intake for the evening, thus off-setting my food budget. I know that is way to anal, but since I don't feel like I can accurately track my out-go, I just don't track it at all at the moment. I just make sure my savings rate is a certain percentage of my gross income and call it good.

MsLogica

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2012, 12:56:51 PM »
I've been struggling with this lately. I really want to track my expenditures on a VERY granular level, but I haven't found a good system. For example, if I spend $10 on a bottle of wine to take to a friend's house for dinner which category should it go in: food, alcohol, gifts, or entertainment? Technically, it is an alcohol product, but I wouldn't be buying it if I wasn't giving it to someone. I'll be entertained drinking it with my friend, and it will also provide part of my caloric intake for the evening, thus off-setting my food budget. I know that is way to anal, but since I don't feel like I can accurately track my out-go, I just don't track it at all at the moment. I just make sure my savings rate is a certain percentage of my gross income and call it good.

I would class it as a present, so it would go in my "Presents" category :). I do have a Misc category, but I hate using it.  I bought an extension cable the other day and I had nowhere to put it (I was trying to convince myself that it counted as a stationery item, but it doesn't!) so I had to make a misc section.  Try not to have too many categories though otherwise it will be too complicated.

adam

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2012, 01:06:31 PM »
I use mint.  I am a little annoyed that cash from the ATM falls under the 'uncategorized' tag because we started using cash for weekly groceries.  I probably just need to start labeling it something other than 'cash and atm' to avoid this minor annoyance.

I used to keep very detailed color coded spreadsheets but when I found mint I realized I was doing it the hard way.

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2012, 01:42:26 PM »
Mint now offers you a way to manually enter cash transactions.

arebelspy

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2012, 02:37:19 PM »
Mint.com for tracking current spending, Excel for projecting future growth.
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HumanAfterAll

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2012, 02:43:51 PM »
Yodlee to aggregate my accounts (free), and a Google Docs spreadsheet with tabs for:
  • Checking account forecast
  • Quarterly account balances for net worth, investments, and debt tracking
  • Retirement calculator (current forecast: 12 years out)
  • Strategy reminders

fruplicity

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2012, 02:48:12 PM »
I use a combination of yodlee and a homemade excel spreadsheet. Not sure if/when it maybe worth it to switch to mint but I'm not opposed.

Every month I use yodlee to review the day-to-day expenses, then plug the totals into the spreadsheet along with net worth info. From this I created a chart to see the progress - I LOVE fiddling around with it, but I'm not that great with excel so I think it's a little unruly and not so easy to predict our future.

richinlondon

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2012, 06:54:39 PM »
I personally use Excel, and for anyone interested, my financial records are structured roughly as follows:

The main sheet contains a breakdown (monthly) of my income (in my case, separated into salary, dividend, and property rental income received) and my expenditure. For fixed costs expenses such as mortgage costs, insurance, utility payments, taxes, credit card minimum payments (0% balance transfers used to buy assets), etc I put in exact figures and revise them if the bills come in differently (and if massively differently then question why!).

I don't micro-manage my expenditure and instead have a lined called 'expenses'. This is a set amount each month that I arrived at through trial and error based on my comfort level and realistically looking at what I may need to spend money on. This expenses line covers my food, train travel, entertainment and shopping - clothes, electronics, books, trips, dining out, etc. Each day money from this line is automatically deducted by an Excel formula and added to a lined called 'expenses already paid'. This way I can keep track of (up to) how much I am allowed to have spent already which tells me quickly whether or not I am on track.

Next to all of the income/expenditure data, I have a list of all my assets (property, shares, bank balances, cash owed, etc). Once a week I updated balances from here, and calculate a predicted balance based on where these are at vs which incomes and expenditures have already come in or paid out.

This means that I can very quickly see if I am overspending or not. If I am overspending then I pull in the reigns, live simply and slow down or stop any discretionary spending. From this I can also quickly see my net worth, and because I have previous data, I can track the increase of my net worth each month. This can be very motivational, especially in some month when I work hard, and spend little - several months last year my savings rate reached 70% (although I average between 50-60%). If in a slow month this starts to drop it's gives me a boost to go and seek more work.
 
At the end of the month, I reconcile my accounts, take a snapshot of all of this and place it in an archive (income/expenditure as well as assets/liabilities), and then start afresh with the new month. I have data for this going back to around 2006, when I first started budgeting (why oh why I didn't start this before the age of 25 I have no idea!). It's become such a habit now that I automatically do it every week.

I have also predicted my budget several months in advance, which is helpful as it also shows me the minimum I need to earn to keep the wolf away from the door. Luckily as I get older this amount is becoming less and less (more passive income, more earnings and more efficient at controlling expenses).

The other main pages of my spreadsheet include a detailed monitor of all of the credit cards. This shows me when their 0% balance transfer rates are up and calculates roughly the minimum payments, balances, interest rates and interest costs. This is very handy if like me you make use of cheap borrowing to fund asset purchases (I have about 15 different credit card accounts to manage so keeping them organised is a must).

I also have other sheets showing me whether or not a property deal is cashflow positive, compound interest calculators, and various simulators, all to help me make sound financial decisions.

So, all in all I prefer using my own Excel sheets to some other online system. This is because I've found most of the online systems seem to cater for average people who lock their money away in pensions and want to micromanage to the nth degree each little expense. I personally find looking at the bigger picture is more helpful in financial planning. Of course, getting cashflow positive each month such that savings and investments always grow is the first step and for that you do need to micro manage until you are disciplined. What I've personally found is that once I was disciplined I no longer found it constructive to micro manage each expense. Too much effort for too little gain.

So, I'm interested to read more about how other people do this, and if anyone is interested in my setup or has questions about it I'd be happy to share more!

richinlondon

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2012, 06:59:46 PM »
4. Finances wall chart

This is a digital version of the chart that Joe recommends you keep in YMOYL.  It's a line graph with three lines: an expenses line, an income line and an investment income line.  It's updated monthly from my monthly spreadsheet and my investment spreadsheet.  When the investment income line overtakes the expenses line, you're financially independent!

This sounds really interesting - I'd love to see what one of those looks like!

arebelspy

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2012, 07:27:56 PM »
4. Finances wall chart

This is a digital version of the chart that Joe recommends you keep in YMOYL.  It's a line graph with three lines: an expenses line, an income line and an investment income line.  It's updated monthly from my monthly spreadsheet and my investment spreadsheet.  When the investment income line overtakes the expenses line, you're financially independent!

This sounds really interesting - I'd love to see what one of those looks like!

Like he mentioned, it comes from Your Money or Your Life, so check out a copy of that book from your local library if you want to learn more.

In the meantime, Get Rich Slowly actually mentioned that in an article today.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/02/24/ask-the-readers-how-to-retire-early/

It has a picture of the concept, here: http://www.getrichslowly.org/images/crossoverpoint.jpg
(Don't want to post image directly into thread, but figure linking to it as well as the article it comes from is okay.)
I am a former teacher who accumulated a bunch of real estate, retired at 29, spent some time traveling the world full time and am now settled with three kids.
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Guitarist

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2012, 08:27:48 PM »
MS Money for everything but my "401k." I have some excel sheets for that.

foodguy

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2012, 09:34:49 PM »
+1 for MS Money day to day transactions.  Excel spreadsheets for long-term planning.

kolorado

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2012, 07:56:53 AM »
In the case of the alcohol example above, since you partook in the drinking, it's not a gift. You could lump it under food since you didn't pay for your meal and it would help keep your monthly food cost numbers more predictable. In our house, all alcohol, purchased and home brewed, enjoyed at home or given away, comes from our own personal spending allowances of $50 a month. Alcohol is completely optional so it doesn't have a place in our regular budget.
To answer the OP, I track with good old pencil/pen and paper. I make my own budgeting sheets with simple Word printouts, lined notebook paper, and computer paper and a ruler to draw the lines for my yearly spreadsheet. I've been doing it this way with success for 16 years now so I don't see any need to change it.



Lars

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #14 on: February 26, 2012, 09:00:30 PM »
Mint for everything except investments - rather not be reminded every time market drops. Open Office/ Libre Office for long term planning.

Freedom2016

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #15 on: February 26, 2012, 09:47:05 PM »
I use Quicken but get frustrated with some of its report quirks, so I've taken to exporting my data to create Excel spreadsheets that show what I want to see.

I tried Mint a few years ago but it wouldn't link to some of my accounts so it was pretty useless to me.

Dave

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #16 on: February 27, 2012, 05:34:30 PM »
I'm using a spreadsheet (Numbers rather than Excel, but it doesn't make much difference).

I don't have a budget, partly since I've only recently started to record what we're spending, and partly since my goal is to reduce spending as much as possible and the existence of a budget implies that a given amount of money can be spent, which goes against the philosophy.

I have a worksheet for each month, with whimsical tables for each category and a couple of rollups, then a rollup 'year as a whole' sheet which aggregates figures like the proportion of joint/solo account spending and how much of that went on groceries/bills and how much on discretionary spending.

I strongly encourage everyone to at least record /what/ they're spending, even if it seems like a major headache and trying to categorise it seems like the straw that broke the camel's back.

It's pretty easy to identify large expense areas at least (who cares really whether a £10 bottle of wine is a gift, food, alcohol or social item if it stops you recording your £££ bad spending habits?). For instance, last month out of a total £953 expenditure, £240 was groceries and £355 was bills, plus £120 on a stag do / wedding gift. That's 75% of spending on three items, which means I can target my efforts on a couple of big-hitters rather than stress about spending 0.5% of my monthly income on fully itemised bike maintenance!

ajs

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #17 on: February 29, 2012, 12:04:14 PM »
I tried using quicken, but found it to be overkill.  I don't like the idea of Mint.com having access to all my finances (I don't care how secure they claim it to be). 

I ended up tracking my spending in a spreadsheet that I update once a month, broken down into different categories.

zinnie

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #18 on: February 29, 2012, 03:37:45 PM »
Mint.com for tracking current spending, Excel for projecting future growth.

This. Mint for a quick overview, I log into the individual accounts for more analysis, and use excel/ numbers for value averaging and projections.

Adventine

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #19 on: March 03, 2012, 09:21:14 PM »
I use good ol' Excel, as Mint doesn't cover my country yet. After two years of simply tracking my ATM withdrawals, this year I decided to bite the bullet and finally log all of my expenses. It seemed like one of those "oh, what a hassle" tasks that didn't seem necessary, especially as I stuck to my savings goals anyway, but after two months, I've realized how useful and illuminating it is to know exactly where my money goes.

MsLogica

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #20 on: March 04, 2012, 01:52:26 AM »
, I've realized how useful and illuminating it is to know exactly where my money goes.

I agree.  It wasn't until I started tracking each individual expense that I realised how much I was spending in certain categories.  For me, stationery purchases (pens and notebooks mainly) and iTunes are my two biggest fun categories, so now I target them in particular when reducing my outgoings!

Early FI

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #21 on: March 04, 2012, 06:07:35 PM »
I use Mint for the daily spending tracking.  I have an excel spreadsheet set up to track my investments and net worth over time.  It's quite cumbersome and probably only useful for my own specific circumstances, but it has all of the information I need in a single file.

Mrs MM

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #22 on: March 05, 2012, 10:39:20 AM »
We used to have a spreadsheet for net worth that was fairly simple, but needed to be filled in every month.  So, every month we had a fun little "meeting" and filled it out to see how it was going.  Then, for years we ignored it since every money everything was going down!  :)

For tracking expenses, we looked at everything annually using our credit card transactions.  We mostly just used one card, so it was pretty easy.

But now, we use Mint and it does everything for us!  We have issues linking in our line of credit, but that's pretty easy to look up compared to what we were doing before.  It tracks all expenses automatically and once you have it all set up, it works great.  As I mentioned in another thread, I am a bit addicted to Mint.  :)

orangeclocker

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #23 on: March 06, 2012, 08:16:59 AM »
I have been using a new service called Personal Capital (www.personalcapital.com). It's very similar to mint but I like it a bit better. They also offer an adviser service; I don't use it so not sure of the cost.

TLV

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #24 on: March 06, 2012, 10:35:36 AM »
I use Mint to aggregate my accounts, but a couple times a month I go through all the transactions and add them to an Access database, with my own categorization. (Mint has an annoying tendency to reclassify all of my groceries as gifts.) I have some views and scripts to organize the data more in Access, then I load it into Excel (where I run a few more scripts and filters), with an end result of over half a dozen graphs (and counting...)

drewstees

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #25 on: March 06, 2012, 03:17:51 PM »
4. Finances wall chart

This is a digital version of the chart that Joe recommends you keep in YMOYL.  It's a line graph with three lines: an expenses line, an income line and an investment income line.  It's updated monthly from my monthly spreadsheet and my investment spreadsheet.  When the investment income line overtakes the expenses line, you're financially independent!

I definitely recommend keeping a "crossover chart".  As time has gone by, it's been a great motivator to watch our expenses decrease as we learn to flex our Money Muscle.  One tip, is to report your expenses as a trailing twelve month (TTM) average.  That will help smooth out any big monthly hits (like property taxes).

To keep track of expenses and balances, I use Mint, but I've been cautious since they were acquired by Intuit.  Since then, updates to the site include the "Suggestions" area which just seems to try to sell me stuff, and the insertion of "Coupons" into my transaction history.  I still think it's the best free option at the moment (Yodlee lacks in the design department), but I'm wary of Intuit's influence...

For future projections, in addition to the crossover chart, I like to use FIREcalc (http://firecalc.com/).  It takes a bit of playing around to see how all the input tabs are used, but the result is a cool plot based on historical data (under default options).  Tweak your expenses lower and let the result punch you in the face as MMM would say...

Rich M

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #26 on: March 06, 2012, 09:19:33 PM »
I keep a mental track. it saves me a lot of time to do other fun things.  And it's cheap.








trammatic

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #27 on: March 07, 2012, 06:56:18 AM »
+1 for mint...and excel

wilk916

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #28 on: March 07, 2012, 12:21:21 PM »
I use mint.  I am a little annoyed that cash from the ATM falls under the 'uncategorized' tag because we started using cash for weekly groceries.  I probably just need to start labeling it something other than 'cash and atm' to avoid this minor annoyance.

I used to keep very detailed color coded spreadsheets but when I found mint I realized I was doing it the hard way.

I've found the best way to do this is to "Split" cash transactions.

I've also started defining and using custom tags for transactions.  The nice thing about tags is, while you can only put a transactions into one category, you can apply as many tags as you want.  You can then show/hide various tags from Trends/Budgets plots to customize things a little more.  I find this useful for dealing with an HSA (sort of a hybrid investment and spending account that shows up under cash accounts), and for hiding investment contributions from spending plots.

Hope this helps.

Kyle

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #29 on: March 07, 2012, 01:36:09 PM »
Mint.  Everything in Mint to budgeting, tracking, and goal management.  It's fantastic.  I try my damnedest to never use cash so tracking is easier (and rewards are always achieved).

sol

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #30 on: March 07, 2012, 03:37:46 PM »
I used mint for a while, but it was buggy for me so I stopped paying attention.  Even that was too much work, since every month I had to log in and categorize things it had done incorrectly.

I have an excel spreadsheet for long term planning, and another for my biweekly budget.  I update them each once a year on 12/31, or whenever I have a a change to income or recurring expenses.

Other than that, I just make sure that my total expenses on the credit card are under my budgeted amount when I pay it every two weeks, and I don't really worry too much about whether my entertainment costs are up while my wardrobe costs are down.  All of that stuff is so infrequent that on a biweekly scale it wouldn't track well anyway.

So the sum total of my regular financial planning is looking at my credit card bill when I pay it every two weeks, and then roughly semi-annual adjustments to my proposed budget and retirement calculations.

chrissyo

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #31 on: March 08, 2012, 10:38:16 AM »
We probably have more (Google docs) spreadsheets than necessary, just because I am a spreadsheet junkie and enjoy presenting different bits of information for modelling different scenarios and information :) Primarily, finances are tracked by:

- net worth spreadsheet, which is updated monthly. I like to keep the historic columns to compare and see how NW has changed compared to the last month and other time periods.
- monthly spending also tracked on a spreadsheet, which is updated and monitored throughout the week by exporting credit card transactions and manually entering cash withdrawals. Each month we try to decrease the total on this spreadsheet, and have a sheet which compares the monthly totals
- iBank, which is also updated/reconciled monthly (or sometimes every few months) with bank and credit card downloads to keep track of historic account activity. Mint isn't available for UK bank accounts, so once we move to the US and try out mint, we can probably eliminate this step (though I actually really enjoy downloading, reconciling and reviewing each transaction. It's also incentive to keep transactions to a minimum, as then there's less to categorise and reconcile).

DH and I also built a spreadsheet when we moved in together several years ago for our monthly budgeting, which includes all the relevant tax calculations to work out what our net salary should be; monthly bills, savings and investment expenditures; and the net amount leftover to spend freely. In the earlier days of our relationship, the spreadsheet was a good way of tracking the combined total of individual and shared savings accounts as well as ensuring after our individual contributions to bills and shared savings goals, we had roughly the same amount leftover each month (we initially used income weighted contributions for shared things). With all the information in one place, it also made for an easy transition when we merged finances, first giving ourselves allowances into 'his and hers' bank accounts/credit cards and then eventually just making everything shared with a single credit card and set of accounts.

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #32 on: March 08, 2012, 12:43:01 PM »
We use a spreadsheet for net worth and one for a monthly budget as well.

One thing that I really like about our monthly budget is that we pull out an estimated amount for annual expenses (like property taxes, homeowners insurance etc.). It's a flat amount every month for each category and we treat it as monthly expense. That way when a major property tax bill arrives (we live in NY state... sigh), it doesn't blow up our budget for that month. We also deduct the aggregate amount from our net worth to better reflect the liabilities we know are coming.

HeidiO

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #33 on: March 09, 2012, 01:02:22 AM »
You Need A Budget (YNAB) software.  It wasn't free ($56 I think) but it has really helped my wife to get onboard with saving, and for that it is worth every penny.   Because we both agreed to pay for it, that has helped convince her to actually use it.
Heidi

nondualie

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #34 on: March 12, 2012, 06:13:38 PM »
I used mint for a while, but it was buggy for me so I stopped paying attention.  Even that was too much work, since every month I had to log in and categorize things it had done incorrectly.

Agreed.  Mint.com was more hassle than it was worth to me.  I had a hard time splitting out reimbursed business expenses accurately and/or multiple purchases at a single checkout.

I use paper and pen during the month and save every receipt for variable expenses (everything that changes m-t-m).  I enter those into excel at the end of the month so I can track trends.

I split that spending into around 8-10 categories; with the most important being grocery, booze, restaurant, and toiletries.

I'm also using excel to forecast future savings/growth; but since I've been reading The Black Swan, I'm not getting too hot and bothered about expected rates of return in 2020..

palvar

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #35 on: March 13, 2012, 10:57:59 AM »
My problem with Mint.com when I last used it was two fold:
1) Splitting out business expenses; and
2) Tracking cash.

I use an iPhone app called AceBudget (as does my wife).  We set budgets for ourselves and enter every expense into it.  It's pretty great.

James

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #36 on: March 16, 2012, 09:54:47 AM »
I use Mint to keep track of accounts and credit card expenditures, and a google docs spreadsheet to keep track of the budget.  We aren't happy Quicken stopped supporting Mac, looking for something to replace that for checkbook management and bill pay.

the fixer

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #37 on: March 25, 2012, 01:47:30 PM »
Gnucash! I used to use Quicken for Mac before I got sick of Apple and switched to Ubuntu.

My top-level asset categories, within which are individual accounts, are: Emergency fund (includes HSA and some safe-ish securities), Personal Property, Retirement, Spending Money/Reserves (checking account and short term savings for estimated taxes, major trips), and Stash. There are a few other miscellaneous "fake" assets like security deposits and money lent to others. I'm a renter so there's no house.

I really like this system because I can see my net worth at a glance and get an idea of how much of my worth is actively working for me as opposed to stagnant or depreciating. I hate that "Personal Property" category and want to make it as small as possible!

smedleyb

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #38 on: March 25, 2012, 02:59:10 PM »
I'm beginning to feel that the "personal finance" industry has subtly forced many of us to become increasingly detailed about the process of budgeting in order to sell us products we don't need, or to herd us to sites which expose us to increased risk of identity theft/targeted advertisements.

I do a quick budget on a piece of paper to start the year, then we do a quick budget every month to smooth things out.   

Pen, paper and some real conversation with your spouse is all you really need, IMO.   
« Last Edit: March 25, 2012, 08:13:41 PM by smedleyb »

Mirwen

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #39 on: March 25, 2012, 10:24:47 PM »
I have a spreadsheet to keep track of the big things (bills, savings, projected balances, amortization tables, retirement projections).  It's quite detailed and has eight tabs.  It's slowly grown over the years as I've been working on it since 2004.  However I use mint to track daily spending.  I transfer money twice monthly into a separate checking account and I make all my purchases there.  I used to just log into the bank website to check on spending from time to time.  Mint is so much better though. 

I've been using mint for almost two years.  The way I categorize things has evolved over this time, but now I have everything pretty much organized the way I want it.  The more you put into mint, the more you get out of it.  I've gotten into the habit of logging in every couple of days to double check categorization of items, to split Costco trips into their appropriate categories and lately I've been using the notes section to mention what the actual items were (not groceries, but other stuff).  For example, if I have a purchase entry from Lowe's, I'll note that it was mortar, grout and tools for tiling.  It's surprisingly useful to be able to go over several months or years and find what you spend in each category.  I sometime wonder what I bought and that's when the notes are useful.  This data also exports nicely to my spreadsheet.  I really enjoy playing with my spreadsheets, but I understand this level of detail is not for everyone.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2012, 09:14:33 AM by Mirwen »

Physics

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #40 on: March 26, 2012, 06:35:27 AM »
Same here Mirwen, I've been using mint.com for 2+ years.  All my accounts thankfully work with it.  I've also noticed it does get more and more valuable the longer you use it.  I've also learned some creative ways to get it to behave the way I want it to as well.

For example, I have work expenses and travel etc...  I created a "Work Expense" category.  Simple enough, but the trick is to do it under the "Transfer" heading.  That way the work spending and reimbursements are tracked but they don't actually factor into "real" monthly spending.  Everything under the "Transfer" heading isn't included in the charts that it produces since it assumes it is a transfer and financially neutral.  Then under the budget section, I can see if there are pending work expenses that have not been reimbursed, becuase there is a net-negative transfer still pending.  If I've filed my expense reports accurately, it should even out to exactly zero in the long term.  Overview, Transactions, budgets, Trends etc... are all independent of "transfer" events.

There are many other tricks, but I'm mention I've still found the "Investment" section utterly useless, it has never shown me anything useful about my investments, even though the investment accounts are syncing properly.

HumanCalculator

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #41 on: April 01, 2012, 10:15:50 AM »
Both me and my girlfriend are using Gnucash and saving the file (in XML format) on a shared Dropbox folder so we can access it from any computer we currently use.

Sparky

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #42 on: April 02, 2012, 01:50:43 PM »
Honestly I just keep numbers floating in my head. Works well for me, I'm usually within a few bucks on all 5 of my accounts. I do however take a good over my bank statements weekly online and do the math from there.

I've tried using  money planning software, but all it tells me is what I already know.

HumanAfterAll

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #43 on: April 18, 2012, 11:00:56 AM »
Yodlee to aggregate my accounts (free), and a Google Docs spreadsheet with tabs for:
  • Checking account forecast
  • Quarterly account balances for net worth, investments, and debt tracking
  • Retirement calculator (current forecast: 12 8 years out)
  • Strategy reminders


I just added a new tab to my long-term tracking spreadsheet: Spending Pace.  I have a 2012 spending target (15% reduction from last year's actual spending), which is plugged into my Financial Independence / Early Retirement spreadsheet.  I don't keep a budget, but I was wondering how I'm doing this year, so I pulled up the data in Yodlee and made a graph.  Very informative!  It shows I'm 4% above my target spending pace so far.  I'll update this report every month and try to tame the curve. 

I hate budgets, but seeing this graph helps my mind push aside those desires for lighter backpacking gear...

See attachment for the graph: 
« Last Edit: April 18, 2012, 11:12:07 AM by El Beardo Numero Uno »

dorothyc

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #44 on: April 22, 2012, 07:57:50 PM »
You Need A Budget. I've been using it since the end of 2006, and can't imagine life without it now. I also use the supplemental app for iPod touch to enter transactions on the go, as well.
I also keep some off budget accounts in YNAB as well for brokerage accounts, retirement assets and a dummy account for payroll deductions for 401k savings, FSA contributions and health insurance premiums.

What I love about it is that your budget can change month to month depending on what is your highest priority at the moment, and the fact that it can keeping track of sinking fund balances for things like Christmas, vacation, insurance premiums and the like, so you don't have to keep a separate tally.

Emmers

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #45 on: April 30, 2012, 01:13:43 PM »
I've started taking our monthly credit card bill (paper) and highlighting different categories in different colors, then adding them up on the calculator.  Eventually I might graduate to something like Mint.com and online statements, but for now, just a simple "okay, what are we spending on" is a good sanity check. 

It's kind of shameful how much we spend on food and alcohol!  We are working to decrease that this year. 

gecko10x

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #46 on: April 30, 2012, 02:08:31 PM »
You Need A Budget.

Another YNAB user here. We've only been using it since October or something, but I REALLY like it.

atelierk

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #47 on: April 30, 2012, 06:29:25 PM »
I use Quicken to track every penny I spend and then on the last day of each month, I enter my category totals in a month by month spreadsheet. The purpose of the spreadsheet is to create a monthly average and project annual gross spending. So far for 2012 it's projecting $25,238, a decrease of just under $2000 from 2011. My goal is to eventually get my monthly average at or under $2000. April tallied at $1847. Woot!

Anytime I've slacked off on the tracking things start to feel a little out of control. Keeping up with tracking also makes tax time much simpler. The better I get at frugality, the more it feels like a game to find new places to shave expenses.

spi

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #48 on: May 12, 2012, 06:52:01 PM »
Another vote for Gnucash. It takes a little bit to get used to double-entry accounting but I like the flexibility and not having any fake transactions when I used wesabe(similar to mint but now shutdown). I wish I had used gnucash since I graduated college as I didn't save my bank statements so I have a few years of cash flow that I have little knowledge of.

I also keep a spreadsheet with account totals that is updated each month to be able to easily track net worth and other useful categories at a glance. I do use the gnucash networth and other charts but I like having an easy summary to look at in a spreadsheet.

elysianfields

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Re: How do you track your finances?
« Reply #49 on: May 15, 2012, 01:24:57 AM »
I've been using Quicken on Windows for almost 20 years now, and I haven't been archiving old transactions, so my Quicken database is huge (>130 MB).  But I like to look at our net worth longitudinally and see how far we've come.

I'm a Mac guy, so I run Windows on VirtualBox on my Mac.

I should probably switch to Gnucash since they now have a Mac version.  Maybe when I get a new laptop - I've been using this one for six years now.

What do you all use for your taxes?  I have my own Excel spreadsheet and use the fill-in forms, and it works fine for me.  I've never tried TurboTax or any other tax software.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2012, 05:58:29 AM by elysianfields »