Best (cheap or free) budget/money tracking app (not YNAB)?

[Vashy]

Hi all,

I'm just coming out of a trial with YNAB - and already deleted the app, because it seems so very focused on "breaking the paycheck to paycheck" (P2P) cycle, and I'm just no longer in that one. Plus, the learning curve seems very steep; considering its focus, investing the several hours to watch seminars that are all about the P2P stuff seems like a LOT, and then spending £80/year on it just kind of rubbed me wrong, despite all the bells and whistles and support and seminars you get with that.

That said, I did like that it would import my bank account transactions and I did like the ability to set budgets by category (and set my own/delete those I don't need), and also to track my net worth over time, so now I'm looking at an app that does that but is more general (ie not about the P2P cycle), and might even accept the fact that I get paid on the 25th every month. Ultimately, the aim is to track my spending down to the transaction so I can dial in my "landing zone" for my FI/RE amount better.

(I assume somebody will point me at a basic Excel sheet, and that remains an option, even though my Excel skills are weak.) Any ideas/input? What are you folks using and why?

Thank you!

[Daley]

Give HomeBank a look.

http://homebank.free.fr/

[RWD]

I've been using GnuCash for over a decade now.

[innkeeper77]

I've been using GnuCash for over a decade now.

This. It's on the surface "harder" but also very powerful, with custom reports, etc. Double data entry accounting makes tons of sense once you try it out!

[beee]

I've been running HoneyMoney (https://honeymoney.io) for 11 years.
It's my small side business, running it solo.

It's focused on manual tracking though, no automatic imports.
But I tried to simplify the process as much as I could: grouping transactions, planning recurring ahead of time, calendar view.

Comparison with YNAB (biased, of course):
https://honeymoney.io/en/compare

It takes around 15 minutes per week to enter transactions manually, most of the time you just confirm planned transactions with real amounts.

It's cheaper than YNAB, $50/year.
It has cashflow-based planning, when you plan your future incomes/expenses/savings, and see a forecast one year into the future. So, getting paid on the 25th of the month is not a problem.

Here's a demo: https://demo.honeymoney.io
It has my real expenses and fake incomes/account balances.

[bownyboy]

We use Money Hub (https://www.moneyhub.com/home)

It connects all our accounts into a single net worth view. You have to manually refresh some accounts that don't use open banking.

Best bit is you can run reports on your spending over x months by category.

Cost is £9.99 a year I think.

[NorCal]

I’ve been very happy with TillerHQ, but I naturally gravitate towards spreadsheets. It’s roughly $80/yr.

Tiller downloads all of your transactions and balances, and then pulls it into Excel or Google Sheets. They have some good starting templates, but you have the flexibility to do what you want.

I previously used Quicken, which is very functional, but dated. Not a bad solution.

[MisterA]

I use Well One Money. It's free and was provided by my pension company, but I think can be used for free. It links to all my accounts (including Vanguard etc), and tracks every transaction. It's really easy to use and it's a UK app, give it a try:
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/well-one-money/id1482640890
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moneyhub.wellonemoney.app&hl=en_GB&gl=US

[Shane]

Have been enjoying using AndroMoney app on our phones to manually track spending, for about the past 5 years. For iOS, Trail Wallet worked well, too, while we were traveling full time. Like that both apps sync household members' spending to the cloud. Every time one of us buys something, either in person or online, we just log it in the app on our phones. At the end of the week/month/year, we can easily look back and see exactly how much both of us spent, and on what. Both apps make it easy to switch between currencies, as you move from country to country.

[MisterA]

We use Money Hub (https://www.moneyhub.com/home)

It connects all our accounts into a single net worth view. You have to manually refresh some accounts that don't use open banking.

Best bit is you can run reports on your spending over x months by category.

Cost is £9.99 a year I think.

That's exactly the same app that I use, except that mine is branded 'Well one money". I got this through my work pension provider (AON), and it's free (to me).
Check the screenprints on these webpages:
https://www.moneyhub.com/home
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moneyhub.wellonemoney.app&hl=en_GB&gl=US

[UK Dancer]

We use Money Hub (https://www.moneyhub.com/home)

It connects all our accounts into a single net worth view. You have to manually refresh some accounts that don't use open banking.

Best bit is you can run reports on your spending over x months by category.

Cost is £9.99 a year I think.

That's exactly the same app that I use, except that mine is branded 'Well one money". I got this through my work pension provider (AON), and it's free (to me).
Check the screenprints on these webpages:
https://www.moneyhub.com/home
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moneyhub.wellonemoney.app&hl=en_GB&gl=US

Moneyhub collaborated with AON to create Well One Money, see the link below for details:
https://www.moneyhub.com/case-study/aon-financial-wellbeing-app-to-help-employers-support-employee-financial-wellbeing

The implication is that it's solely for AON, but I haven't downloaded and tried it in order to verify that.

[Vashy]

Thanks, all, I'll try them! While I'm playing with those, I've set up a spreadsheet for the moment. I've deleted YNAB and am still testing the free version of Emma, but I definitely do not like the judgy attitude of that app ("You spent £1,000 last week!" - yeah, it's all gone into the mortgage and my Vanguard ISA, so that's a good thing).

[Lomonossov]

Hey!

I use Bluecoins for Android. It has a free version, I paid for the premium because it had the possibility to have accounts in several currencies mostly.

Pros:
- Free, or supercheap (I think I paid like EUR 10 in a single payment)
- Double-entry accounting, you can customize it to your needs to a great extent. I use it to track my expenses and NW, it also incorporates budgeting, cash-flow vs NW.
- You can export everything to Excel and play around if you need more

Cons:
- If you don't like double-entry accounting you'll probably hate it. When I pay my mortgage I record a transfer from the cash account to the mortgage account for the principal part of the payment and a separate expense for the interests. I do love it, but it may not be for everybody
- Everything is entered manually, it does not have any automatic connection to any banks
- Only for your phone, not desktop. Although you can download everything in Excel

[Affable Bear]

(I assume somebody will point me at a basic Excel sheet, and that remains an option, even though my Excel skills are weak.) Any ideas/input? What are you folks using and why?

Thank you!

Probably not good for tracking every little expense but I find that the Money Savings Expert excel budget sheet to be quite handy to budget as an overview and if you are ready to loosen up the detail slightly. It also shows you easy percentages at the end of where your spent money is going, for example currently just over 40% of my spending is going into investments, 5% is going into savings, 29% on housing costs etc... Its never going to be as detailed as tracking every transaction but it is nowhere near the maintenance, a happy mix if you are already slightly disciplined.

I don’t track individual purchases instead I break it up into 4 simple categories, I have 2 current accounts and a bog standard savings account.

- All regular bills and direct debits (phone, utilities, mortgage, subscriptions, etc..) anything monthly goes here apart from investments and savings.
- Monthly investments
- Savings
- Spending money goes into my second current account and I use this amount for day to day living, if I feel i am spending too much I will reduce the overall budget, if I feel like I am struggling I might increase it. I find eating and drinking out affect this the most, if I want to save or invest more I reduce the budget and I automatically start reducing my luxury spending. If I am stressed or need more leisure/fun I might increase it again and becuase it is top level I find it easier to manage and change.

I will list all the monthly outgoings in detail as this is where I feel I can optimise the most, reduce my phone bill or get a better mortgage deal etc... But everything else will just get a top line figure and just adjust it monthly until I get an amount that feels like I have to be frugal but not too much that I am not living my life.

The link to the spreadsheet is here: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/#planner

[sea_saw]

What bank do you use? The challenger banks all have apps that categorise your transactions for you within the app. I use a challenger app for my day to day spending account and it's pretty good at it, and allows manual categorisation of transactions when it's wrong.

My main account that pays bills, savings etc is with an old school bank but as most of those are regular monthly transactions it's easy to copy and paste them in a spreadsheet or set up recurring transactions in other systems.

There are a few more options here: https://ukpersonal.finance/budgeting/#Budgeting_Tools_%F0%9F%A7%AE

[NorCal]

I’ve been very happy with TillerHQ, but I naturally gravitate towards spreadsheets. It’s roughly $80/yr.

Tiller downloads all of your transactions and balances, and then pulls it into Excel or Google Sheets. They have some good starting templates, but you have the flexibility to do what you want.

I previously used Quicken, which is very functional, but dated. Not a bad solution.

Also, if you happen to have an Office 365 subscription, there is a new Excel Money tool that will automatically download all of your bank transactions directly into your spreadsheet.

I tried it once, and it was great for tracking income and expenses.  It wasn't good at tracking net worth though.  This could be something good to match with Personal Capital.

[Minotaur]

Also, if you happen to have an Office 365 subscription, there is a new Excel Money tool that will automatically download all of your bank transactions directly into your spreadsheet.

I tried it once, and it was great for tracking income and expenses.  It wasn't good at tracking net worth though.  This could be something good to match with Personal Capital.

That looks fantastic... not available in the UK!