How do you track your finances?

[James]

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 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.

I've been using Turbo Tax for over 10 years, it's great!  I have a pretty complex tax situation with a business and large deductions, but it's just a matter of putting in all the correct information.  The cost is more than paid for in simplicity, and I understand my taxes a lot more than if I had someone else doing it.  I could save $80 a year by doing it on paper, but then I'd take about 10 hours instead of 2.  More importantly it would drive me insane...  :)

[yosnowden]

I have a spreadsheet (LibreOffice) where I enter expenses as they occur (and which I have trained to sort things into categories, give me a monthly average, and compare my categorical spending with that of previous years) and a somewhat ancient version of Quicken (2006) to track my bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, etc.  I'd like to get everything into the spreadsheet, but haven't yet spent the time figuring out how to reproduce the investment graphing and tracking features that I like in Quicken (advice anyone?). 
It's probably a bit of overkill, but playing with my money spreadsheets is one my of ways to unwind. 

[Will]

You Need A Budget (YNAB) user here too.  It really is amazing the turnaround I've seen by using it; it isn't so much the software itself (which works incredibly well), but the methodology.  I'm still new to MMM, but I like what I have seen and look forward to combining what I am doing with YNAB with the ideas I get from here!

[MooreBonds]

I'm a Excel spreadsheet addict, so I just make a variety of columns with various categories each year (auto care, gas, utilities, groceries, fun, eating out, a few dating/relationship columns, home maintenance, etc.). Each month when the credit card bills post, I enter each charge in the appropriate column, with a running total at the top of each column category, so I can see what the running total is. If I felt motivated enough to do graphs and charts, I would...but I LBYM as it is, so I'm not too worried about tracking it to make sure I stick to a certain budget. It's more useful for the question of "If I were to retire today, about how much would I need for necessities/fun/total"?

[darkelenchus]

Mint for day to day stuff. GNU Cash for long term tracking. Open/LibreOffice Spreadsheet for tracking FI goals and projections.

[YK-Phil]

I use Mint to track all my bank accounts (checking, savings, credit card, RRSPs, line of credit) from 2 different banks, and to date, it is for me the best tool to keep my budget balanced and my spending under tight control. Since all my income is automatically deposited in my bank account, and because I only use one credit card for all my expenses, grocery, phone, utilities, taxes, gas, gifts, etc., even to pay for a $1 cup of coffee, I can see where I stand financially with one quick glance at my iPhone. Basically, Mint helps me track my budget to the nearest dollar, and I always know how I spent my money and whether I overspent in one area or another.

[Mr. Sharma]

I guess I'm the only one here who uses QuickBooks. 

I initially used Mint but then got fed up with the report options.  Part of my job is to maintain the books and records for small businesses using the QuickBooks software.  For my clients, the reports that I could generate were simple and informative enough to provide a meaningful analysis of the data.  So I decided to switch over to QuickBooks to maintain my personal finances and it has worked out great. 

One of the best reports (see attached, all numbers blanked out) is the monthly income/expense activity.  You could also generate a similar report for your personal balance sheet, or accounts that make up your net worth.     

Regarding accounts:  I try to keep that to a bare minimum so that you don't have a lot of line items that may not be comparable on a month to month basis and in fact overly complicates the analysis.  My catch all accounts are either shopping or entertainment.

   

[smalllife]

Another YNABer here, former Mint user.  Mint just didn't work with the way I think about my budget, YNAB does. YNAB is like Excel on steroids with a great interface, online support, and excellent methodology.  I get frustrated occasionally in the forums because I expect everyone to be a Mustachian, but it's been wonderful so far!

[carolinakaren]

I use Quicken for my checking account, but not to track retirement accounts or anything else.  This used to allow me to see detailed categorized reports, but I grew tired of inputing all the receipts.  Now I get a cash ATM and try to pay expenses from that, so the Quicken categories no longer have detailed information.  On the positive side, I have very few transactions to enter into the check register!  I have thought about using my credit card for everything like the MMM family.  I'm not sure if my card separates transactions into categories though....

This might be slightly off subject: When paying bills I like to have all the bills automatically drafted from my account.  Paychecks are also automatically deposited.  This way I'm never late paying anything, and I don't even have to think about it.  This has been my system for years and is left over from when I was in the military.  At that point in life I needed to know that when I was away for months at a time the bills would still be paid.  :)

[atelierk]

I posted elsewhere in this thread awhile back (I think!) that I'm a long-time Quicken user, but with the recent release of YNAB 4, it's bye-bye Quicken. I've had YNAB ever since Pro and wanted to love it except for the reports - so I kept going back to Quicken. More/better reports was apparently one of the top requests for upgrades and they finally have some good ones in the new release. Not as fancy as Quicken but they do the job. Quicken is overpriced (especially if you're only upgrading) and bloated with features that I never used; YNAB is simple but does everything I need it to. Plus it's just very well designed and attractive.

And YNAB is based on four rules, one of which is very different from anything I've ever seen recommended by financial gurus: learn to live on last month's income.

[Nords]

I posted elsewhere in this thread awhile back (I think!) that I'm a long-time Quicken user, but with the recent release of YNAB 4, it's bye-bye Quicken. I've had YNAB ever since Pro and wanted to love it except for the reports - so I kept going back to Quicken. More/better reports was apparently one of the top requests for upgrades and they finally have some good ones in the new release. Not as fancy as Quicken but they do the job. Quicken is overpriced (especially if you're only upgrading) and bloated with features that I never used; YNAB is simple but does everything I need it to. Plus it's just very well designed and attractive.

I've been using Quicken for over 20 years and have 150,000+ transactions.  While I don't necessarily need all that data in a new program, it'd be nice to convert it over.  Have you had any trouble converting your Quicken data?

Does YNAB do investments (stock trades, dividends, splits) or is it mainly a budgeting & reporting tool?

[smalllife]

I've been using Quicken for over 20 years and have 150,000+ transactions.  While I don't necessarily need all that data in a new program, it'd be nice to convert it over.  Have you had any trouble converting your Quicken data?

Does YNAB do investments (stock trades, dividends, splits) or is it mainly a budgeting & reporting tool?

With YNAB it's best to start fresh.  It's definitely a budgeting tool first, with a small but improving side of reports.  It doesn't do investments at all though, so it depends on your needs.   

[liquidbanana]

Damn, you people are badass. I can't even keep up with mint.

[Nords]

With YNAB it's best to start fresh.  It's definitely a budgeting tool first, with a small but improving side of reports.  It doesn't do investments at all though, so it depends on your needs.

Ah, thanks.

Our Quicken data has developed a number of annoying behaviors over the years, like insisting that $1 shares of a money-market fund are only worth 99.9996 cents.  I no longer remember which files I have to delete/rebuild to fix the problem, and I doubt any of Intuit's remaining employees are old enough to know that either.  But I still occasionally dive 5-10 years back into it to research the cost basis of a stock or when we last refinanced a mortgage.  I wonder if Intuit's engineers are even designing for users who build up that kind of an archive.

We've been ER'd for a decade so we don't really do much budgeting any more... just feed last year's averages into next year and nod our heads at the result every six months or so.

Damn, you people are badass. I can't even keep up with mint.

Well, there's a fine line between "badass" and "obsession".

[Daley]

Our Quicken data has developed a number of annoying behaviors over the years, like insisting that $1 shares of a money-market fund are only worth 99.9996 cents.  I no longer remember which files I have to delete/rebuild to fix the problem, and I doubt any of Intuit's remaining employees are old enough to know that either.  But I still occasionally dive 5-10 years back into it to research the cost basis of a stock or when we last refinanced a mortgage.  I wonder if Intuit's engineers are even designing for users who build up that kind of an archive.

Don't know if you've ever tried it before, but have you given GnuCash a go? It can actually import QIF files rather competently, and given it's open source (so it's free as in both beer and speech to use), it won't cost you any more than a bit of time to try it out with file copies of the databases and see if the problems persist under another application. It also manages investment accounts like you're wanting as well, so it might turn out to be a win-win situation for you if you like it.

[Nords]

Don't know if you've ever tried it before, but have you given GnuCash a go?

Thanks, let me give it a look.   

[oldtoyota]

Was anyone else as particular as I was recently? I went back through all of 2012 and downloaded and added up expenses for every category.

Doing the above is not the YNAB way that many here use. However, I was able to make some rapid cuts. Immediately, I cut:

--newspaper
--land line
--clothing
--Amex yearly fee
--expensive hobby
--reduced groceries
--eating out (including lunch).

Our grocery bill was embarrassing.

[Joel]

YNAB

[davisgang90]

I'm in the "tried Mint, didn't like it" crowd.  I currently use several Excel spreadsheets but am considering YNAB.

Current spreadsheets are

1. Monthly budget with each month having it's own tab.  I track income, expenses and keep track of debt payoff, investment snapshots and current net worth.
2. What if budget for retirement - allows me to play around with different numbers based on when I retire from the Navy and what (if anything) I do for employment after.  I have a separate spreadsheet that has baseline pays for retirement based on which year I retire.  My wife and I are working on where to live post-Navy.
3. Debt reduction calculator from Vertex42 that I use to track my rapidly dwindling debt.

[jrhampt]

Mint + Excel for mortgage payoff schedule and net worth projections.

[aclarridge]

Excel for everything. Don't know if anybody mentioned pivot tables, but that's how I do it. You basically just store your expenses in database format, i.e. a big list of date, expense, amount, category, subcategory, then pivot table and bam, categorized table with subtotals and totals, a column for each month and a row for each subcategory.

I tied my net worth to a plot as well, so I can see the line go up over time and calculate a line of best fit for projection (works for now, but eventually I'll have to try fitting it to an exponential function ;)).

[frugalman]

I've been using YNAB for two weeks now and I love it. I've done quicken and spreadsheets. They are backward looking historical records of where you spent your money. With YNAB, it is forward looking in that you set a budget each month in your own categories. Instead of thinking "I have $1,500 in checking, I can buy that pair of shoes", you look at your clothing budget to see what's available to spend. $50 a month for me. Since I won't be buying anything in May, in June it will show a $50 budget plus a $50 carryover giving me $100 available for clothing. If I overspend in clothing, it's rule 3, roll with the punches. I can just tell it to subtract from next month's budget amount, or just transfer some money from some budget category that I am underspent for the month, like golf and hobbies, or gas, or groceries. I have sinking funds set up for everything, car insurance, home insurance, lawncare, homeowners association, property taxes etc. I have one budget category called Buffer that is $100 a month for stuff I haven't budgeted for. When income comes in, you give every dollar a job - maybe you put some in your fun money budget, increase your groceries budget, or add it to your investments budget. Again, you change your mindset to check your budget, not your checking account balance.

[arebelspy]

I tied my net worth to a plot as well, so I can see the line go up over time and calculate a line of best fit for projection (works for now, but eventually I'll have to try fitting it to an exponential function ;)).

I use to think that as well and try to do so, but the reality is that at high savings rates and short time to ER, the amount you save vastly overrides the short term interest gains.

I'm only a few years out from FIRE and I find my trend is still more linear (and if it grows, it's from me making/saving more).

YMMV, based on your savings rate and time to ER, obviously.

[Spork]

It's complicated.

The short answer: I use gnucash.

The long answer: there is a back end that parses out gnucash and feeds everything into cacti.  I track a ton of crap and do it for 30 day, 90 day, 1 year and 5 year periods -- to attempt to see trends.  Cacti will then make these into graphs that can zoom from 1 day views out to 10 year views. 

I also take this data and plug it into firecalc with a home-made web robot that runs various scenarios based on actual data.  It tries to calculate where I am ... and at what point I will hit FI.   [My 5 year data recently hit 100% on firecalc graphs.  WOOT!]

This started small.  Now it has grown into a bit of a monster.

[arebelspy]

It's complicated.

The short answer: I use gnucash.

The long answer: there is a back end that parses out gnucash and feeds everything into cacti.  I track a ton of crap and do it for 30 day, 90 day, 1 year and 5 year periods -- to attempt to see trends.  Cacti will then make these into graphs that can zoom from 1 day views out to 10 year views. 

I also take this data and plug it into firecalc with a home-made web robot that runs various scenarios based on actual data.  It tries to calculate where I am ... and at what point I will hit FI.   [My 5 year data recently hit 100% on firecalc graphs.  WOOT!]

This started small.  Now it has grown into a bit of a monster.

That's badass.  I want that.

[Spork]

It's complicated.

The short answer: I use gnucash.

The long answer: there is a back end that parses out gnucash and feeds everything into cacti.  I track a ton of crap and do it for 30 day, 90 day, 1 year and 5 year periods -- to attempt to see trends.  Cacti will then make these into graphs that can zoom from 1 day views out to 10 year views. 

I also take this data and plug it into firecalc with a home-made web robot that runs various scenarios based on actual data.  It tries to calculate where I am ... and at what point I will hit FI.   [My 5 year data recently hit 100% on firecalc graphs.  WOOT!]

This started small.  Now it has grown into a bit of a monster.

That's badass.  I want that.

I've looked at trying to make it generic to give it away....   I've coded things so much to my situation (never thinking about making it generic along the way) that ... it would be challenging. 

The framework isn't awful... scripts that spit data that cacti can take.  If you're familiar with cacti, it's do-able.  But I'm not sure I could export my graphs and have them be meaningful to anyone else.  People would have to build their own graphs, which is tedious.

Edit:  The whole thing also makes an assumption that there is a linux box running 24x7.  The mustacianism of that is debatable.  ;) 

[chicagomeg]

I have a bit of a messy system as some others seem to, but it works for me.

-I use Mint to aggregate everything as we have a bunch of different CC's for reward maximizing.
-I use PNC Virtual Wallet & the Reserve account/Wishlist function there for my sinking funds like car insurance, gifts, vacation, dogs, and car repairs.
-I keep a google doc w/tabs for "Budget" (Not tracking it, just actually writing out the amounts), a mortgage calculator that I can play with for our upcoming home purchase, a "Net Worth Over Time" that tracks debt, savings accounts, and investment accounts, an "Investments" tab that feeds the Net Worth Tab where I can change assumptions like income growth, earnings assumptions, employer match, etc. to track each individual investment account & project into the future, and a "Cash Flow" tab to keep an eye on our future checking account balance, which also helps me keep track of paying all of our CC bills in full each month.
-Finally, I keep an Excel spreadsheet in Dropbox that actually tracks our monthly spending. I have a tab for each month and a column for each category. It's not the prettiest thing, but I'm really happy with it.

[mobilisinmobili]

I used to have a big wall chart, but I never updated it.

I use Mint for the minutiae and a jar full of marbles for the big picture.

[MadisonStreet]

Recently signed up for Mint, however, I currently live in Spain and my salary is in Euros.  I still keep my US bank, have a mortgage back in the states, 403b, etc., so Mint tracks all that nicely.  For the Euros, I have a separate spread sheet where I convert each euro transaction to dollars using the rate for that particular day, and then plug that dollar amount into Mint.  It's probably not as accurate as it should be and it's a pain in the ass, so I'm open to suggestions.

Are there any personal finance services, ala Mint, that can plug into non-US banks?