Staying on Top of Your Finances (Without Losing Your Mind)
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Even just five years ago, there were only a few options that you had when it came to keeping an eye out for your money.
Now, though, there are dozens of ways where you can track your finances without stressing out and sweating over the details.
We've tried a bunch of them, so I wanted to highlight a few of my favorites in case you're looking at making your finances simpler to manage.
Spreadsheets
I'm starting this off with the classic, low tech option – spreadsheets.
I love them. We’ve been using a Google Docs spreadsheet that we share with each other for our family budget.
There are plenty of fantastic and free templates that you can use with your finances.
Right now my favorite is J's family budget one – it can juggle two paychecks, bills, savings, and credit cards.
Tiller
As awesome as spreadsheets are, manually entering your transactions manually can be a headache.
The good news is that there is an easy solution to help you with that – Tiller.
Mint
One of my current favorites is Mint. I'm going to be honest – I think being free and easy are the biggest reasons we use it to keep tabs on our finances.
It took about 10, maybe 15 minutes to get all of our accounts imported and organized. Now I can log on and get a financial snapshot without any hassle.
With a few clicks we can check our month to month spending habits, getting an idea of where we may want to cut back on.
Two features that I love are goals and budget (no, not the boring kind!).
With goals, I can create a game plan on paying down a debt, building up savings, or investing more in less than 5 minutes.
Mint updates me on a monthly basis on how I'm doing. I can also use their budget feature to help me keep some of my non-essential spending in check (like coffee runs and eating out).
I just set the target and I'll get a text if I'm getting too close to my goal.
If you want to use Mint to manage your budget, I’d say it’s a handy tool to use.
Personal Capital
To me, Personal Capital is like Mint (easy to set up and use), but on steroids (more features).
I believe Mint is more suited for general purposes and Personal Capital is focused on investments and growing your portfolio.
While it does not have a budgeting feature like Mint has, Personal Capital does have cash flow report and there are some wonderfully useful ones that can help you optimize your investments (all free):
- 401(k) Fee Analyzer
- Asset Allocation Target
- Investment Check Up
The only cost is if you want Personal Capital to actually manage your investments (less than 1% of your portfolio).
I've used to it get a second opinion about my retirement accounts' asset allocation and to get a check-up.
I found the advice very timely and handy. If you are fairly comfortable with your finances and you're looking at optimizing your investments, you should definitely check out Personal Capital.
Thoughts on Managing Your Money
What do you use to keep and maintain your family’s budget? What do you find to be the easiest to use and what do you find to be the most effective for your family?
Besides the options I mentioned, what are your thoughts on other budgeting tools?
I use YNAB (You Need A Budget). I have yet to find anything better. I totally changed my finances and I have saved more money and planned for future purchases better than ever.
Thanks Stephen, I hadn’t tried them out myself, but I’ve heard good things.
I’m still a big fan of spreadsheets, probably because I work with them all day long. I can access them offline and I like looking at my old copies to see how far I’ve come over the years.
If you are tax audited, you are required to turn over ALL electronic files. Most people don’t know this, some don’t care but good to know either way.
Thanks for sharing that tax tidbit!
Do you not feel uncomfortable giving your banking passwords to Mint? I can’t get over it.
Actually many banks have special access codes for sites like mint, where they are allowed to simply. I used Mint before my banks have switched over and I admit I thought long and hard before choosing them as one of my financial go-to sites.
Nothing wrong with an old fashioned spreadsheet. My wife and I sat down at the end of last year and added up our investment performance – excel was useful enough for the basic tasks we had to do.