What works for you and how does it work? How long have you been using it?
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).
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
I just use an Excel spreadsheet, but I use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office.
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.
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 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.
probably the wif’s methode is better, than guessing.
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/
Updated to add, I’ve been using this method for about 20 years at this point and it has worked well across a variety of employment and family situations, including when I was doing shift work that varied seasonally, unemployed, and in a multi-family household. Knowing what my monthly burn rate is and being able to easily experiment with different scenarios by copying my budget to a new tab is so useful.
None, I just do it in my head. Not that there is much to do in the first place.
It’s just logging into online banking and clicking “pay” on all the bills that aren’t automated.
https://actualbudget.org/ with the envelope system.
I started using a spreadsheet in 2010. Expenses down the left ordered by due date. Paydays across the top. Months framed and colored.
Not quite budgeting but I use(d) wallos to keep track of my subscriptions (when they are due, how much, who pays it, by what method and some more features).
Very neat.
