I’ve used a (LibreOffice) spreadsheet for the past 10 years to track everything I spend–yes, every single thing–it’s not that hard at all. Keep the receipt or make a note of it to enter when you get home. Mine is set up like this:

One tab for each year. Rows are transactions and columns are categories (after the date, payment type, and payee/description), so one transaction row could have amounts entered in multiple columns.

I use only about a dozen broad categories like Food, Utilities (I see no point in separating out each specific utility), Household supplies, Car, Entertainment, etc. Also sales tax and donations columns. Basically whatever you might want to see totals for. Start simple and general, and you can always add another column or two later if needed. Row totals in the final column, column totals at the top.

I also have tabs for: Credit card charges–for reconciling with the bill (and then record the payment on the yearly tab in the appropriate categories); Medical expenses–categories are type Rx/Tx/Ins and how paid HSA/Chkg Acct/Credit card; And finally a Notes tab for entering more detailed info about any unusual/extra costs like auto/house repairs or major purchases.

You could add Budgeting on another tab with budgeted amounts vs actual amounts (grabbed by using formulas pointing to the year tabs), but I don’t need that because my spending and expenses are pretty simple and consistent.

EXCEL

No one is mentioning gnucash and I think that’s beautiful.

My partner and I used a spreadsheet from Google docs “budget template” or something. Moved on to gnucash after we wanted more features. I love it now, but it was a struggle to learn. Also a clunky interface. Also way more complex than we need. But I did once track down a tiny error in one of our bills, saving us a fraction of a dollar after hours of cross-checking!!

(I do love it though; the tradeoff is that we don’t have to do repetitive manual entry and duplication of info. Instead, we have extensive notes on how to accomplish what we want!)

I don’t do budgeting, per-se. For personal expenses, the idea of pre-planning everything we’re going to spend just seems like overkill. Maybe that’s just cause we’re not close enough to the poverty line for real financial hardship. But I find a reactive approach works well, rather than proactive.

I keep an accounting ledger that I update every 1-2 weeks. The ledger is just a big Excel (actually LibreOffice Calc) file that I setup with some formulas and pie charts to make it easy to see when expenses are outpacing income, and what our biggest expenses are if we need to cut down for a while (spoilers: it’s utilities and food).

I’ve tried a handful of different free accounting applications in the past, but never found one I liked for the above purposes. I ended up starting a project to make my own, like a year ago, but I haven’t gotten around to finishing it. The spreadsheet approach has been working well enough. All the custom app would do is help automate the data entry.

After years of trying every budgeting app possible (including YNAB) the only app I’ve found that does everything well is Bluecoins. Split transactions, multiple accounts, handling of credit/debit, recurring transactions, bill reminders, automated reading of bank app notification (to parse transactions), easy reconciliation of accounts, cloud syncing, etc. Definitely well worth the single purchase price (fuck subscription pricing models).

I just use an Excel spreadsheet, but I use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office.

I use a spreadsheet, following the method outlined in this deck. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about it. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KWMaKKUYPGuuxnQa10Yfzryy5JQsplmvhVtGbajm9is/

A pretty large spreadsheet into which goes all the incomings and outgoings, logged and averaged over 12 months to give a pretty accurate idea of how much disposable income me and my partner will have after all the bills and savings have been calculated.

https://actualbudget.org/ with the envelope system.

I selfhost ezBookkeeping where I track all non-reoccurring transactions and a LibreOffice Calc sheet where I track all reoccurring transactions. The sheet I’ve been using for multiple years now and it works great because I can clearly see what amount of money I can spend every month on anything I want and still being able to pay everything I need. The selfhosted app I’ve only been using since the beginning of the year because I used to use ActualBudget which I had connected to my bank account to automatically fill it will all transactions I did but due to it being automatic and not manual like ezBookkeeping felt like I was loosing track of everything.

Google Sheets. I don’t do line item budgeting though. I create my overall plan in Sheets so I know what transfers to set up and that it doesn’t exceed my income and I just look at Monarch Money to see how my spending is going. It’s $100 a year and a pretty good app.

A piece of paper and guesswork to begin with many years ago.

My bank app has an automated thing that guesses (i can correct it but it’s right 90%) what every non cash transaction is and puts it in a category.

I can go back and look through how much things have cost me month by month.

I have a rough idea of my outgoings each month as compared to my income and I just make sure I don’t spend more than I earn at least most of the time.

My wife occasionally sits down and does a proper budget so we can move around recurring payments and make sure we keep things fair.

Method: Spend very little. Spend in few places. Use cash.
Results: Stellar. I don’t think about it much. I put money aside consistently.
Timeframe: 15 years? Something like that. I had IRS problems, and stripped my life down. Its all clean now, and I keep it that way.

I started using a spreadsheet in 2010. Expenses down the left ordered by due date. Paydays across the top. Months framed and colored.