this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
22 points (95.8% liked)

Personal Finance

3802 readers
1 users here now

Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances!

Note: This community is not region centric, so if you are posting anything specific to a certain region, kindly specify that in the title (something like [USA], [EU], [AUS] etc.)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I have tried Mint, Personal Capital, GNUCash, and probably a few others, and I seem to have settled on Tiller. Basically, I like the convenience of automatically pulling in transactions and balances, but I like retaining control of the budgeting process.

I know there are a ton of others out there, so let's post our favorites and a short explanation of what makes them great.

top 21 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I feel like I've tried just about everything - YNAB is still the best.

It's frustrating to have to pay for a third-party service to pull in European bank transactions, though. YNAB is expensive enough on its own.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I love YNAB. I did not love the price hike they instituted here in the last couple of years.

Still worth it in my book though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I've been using YNAB since 2013 and I really enjoy the method, it fits with my lifestyle.

However, I went back to using the old YNAB4 when they announced the big price hike. I manually import the transaction files from my bank. It's easy and doesn't take a lot of time. I couldn't justify the new price, especially when taking exchange rates into account.

[–] PlutoniumAcid 8 points 1 year ago

Tracking is just looking backwards on what you DID spend your money on, my friend.

Look forward and start planning what you WANT to spend it on. Budgeting is so different from tracking.

I am personally a huge fan of YNAB (You Need A Budget) and I just found there's a (sub-lemmy?) for YNAB as well, here: https://lemmy.world/c/ynab

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been using YNAB (You Need A Budget) and simply love it. I like that it's zero based budgeting, imports transactions with my banks, and allows me to track every dollar coming in and assign it to its proper category. While not the most helpful, I also like the net worth tracker and reports while on desktop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Upvote for Ynab!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I wrote my own! https://budgetmyway.com

  • Really wanted weekly "reserve" based budgeting. If I am under budget one week, that amount will get added to the reserve. And if I am over budget another week, that will take money away from the reserve.
  • Privacy: no ads, tracking, etc
  • No actual banking connections/APIs. Manually enter expenses.
  • A project I can improve over time. Been using it for over 10 years now.
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nice! I love this idea!

[–] spookaddress 4 points 1 year ago

Monarch Money can get very granular and you can make your own rules as to what box a line item goes into. https://www.monarchmoney.com/

[–] pdlozano 4 points 1 year ago

Google Sheets. I have tried moving to a budgeting app on iOS but I realized I use my credit card most of the time so everything I do is almost always tracked already.

[–] sevan 4 points 1 year ago

I use YNAB throughout the month. At the end of the month I summarize my income and expenses in a spreadsheet so I can see how my spending trends over time.

[–] capital 3 points 1 year ago

I seem to have settled on Tiller.

As I read the title I had Tiller in mind. I've only ever tried YNAB and Mint (a long while ago) and Tiller is a good mix of automation but leaves me with control of the data as it's just in a spreadsheet that I own.

YNAB felt a little too restrictive. Maybe that works for those with issues regulating themselves with how they spend but Tiller felt right for me as I really just needed to track what I've spent so I could just keep that in mind as time progresses and I spend from day to day.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I just use Excel, but I also don't track my spending at a very detailed level. I have a budget for the month, and I sort of adjust my spending as I go to make sure I meet that budget.

[–] geobmx540 3 points 1 year ago

big fan of copilot (copilot.money)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

lunchmoney.app is really good

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm going to put in a third vote for YNAB.

[–] bloodsangre7 2 points 1 year ago

I tend not to strict budget but just use a tracking app to see my spending at the end of the month/year and make decisions from there. PersonalCapital is my favorite for this as it's more high-level and does decent keeping track of net worth and investments. It's not as good as Mint at learning transaction types, and for my friends that really budget YNAB is the prefered, but PC works best for my needs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] blueskycorporation 1 points 1 year ago

I use Money Manager EX. The GUI may not look appealing and looks like it's been made in the 90s. However, all data is completely local, it is closer to real double entry accounting than Mint and the likes, and the data is stored as SQLite, which is very useful for running scripts to get custom reports.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Been using Simplifi (by Quiken) for a few months now and it's not bad. Their web app is really good, and they just completely rewrote their mobile apps which work much better now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I like Firefly III (https://www.firefly-iii.org/) as a self hosted option. There are various importer tools, although the developer's general feeling is that you should do it manually. I personally imported a few months of transactions to seed it but have been doing it manually since.

load more comments
view more: next ›