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11:50 am
January 4, 2011
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everydaytips
| | Detroit Area | |
| Member | posts 455 | 
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Greetings! I am not sure if this was the right forum to post my question under, but I know the Lair gets a lot of visits, so I chose to post my question here.
I recently got an email from a reader that is looking for some good budgeting/spending methods or software. I am not familiar with mint at all, and I can't say I use any software to perform such tasks. (Especially reconciling of spending at the end of the month)
Does anyone have any great suggestions? I appreciate any input you can provide.
Thanks!
Kris
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11:52 am
January 4, 2011
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Little House
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I use Quickbooks, which is the upgrade to Quicken. If they are just looking to track their expenses and income, they can use Quicken OR mint.com does something similar, but online. There are a ton of programs out there, but these are two good choices to start with.
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12:33 pm
January 4, 2011
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Khaleef @ KNS Financial
| | Fat Guy, Skinny Wallet | |
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Little House said:
I use Quickbooks, which is the upgrade to Quicken. If they are just looking to track their expenses and income, they can use Quicken OR mint.com does something similar, but online. There are a ton of programs out there, but these are two good choices to start with.
Does Quickbooks handle personal finances/investments as well, or only business and non-profit?
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12:45 pm
January 4, 2011
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Eric – PersonalProfitability.com
| | Portland, OR | |
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Mint.com is the best I have used. I wrote a big review (my most visited post ever) at http://www.narrowbridge.net/20…..-mint-com/
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12:56 pm
January 4, 2011
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics
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Another vote for Mint. I have written about it before, I have an updated review of Mint actually scheduled for this Friday.
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1:20 pm
January 4, 2011
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Sustainable PF
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I will never use Mint or any other online tool. Companies are routinely hacked and in no shape or form do I want to expose our financial data to the unscrupulous.
That being said, I use a bunch of excel based calculators from here:
Budget: http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelT…..dgets.html
The full list is here: http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/
Retirement/Savings: http://www.vertex42.com/Calcul…..ators.html
PF: http://www.vertex42.com/Calcul…..ators.html
Financial Statements: http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelT…..ments.html
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1:53 pm
January 4, 2011
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics
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SPF, Companies do get hacked, I agree completely. Most of our accounts are now online anyway, but if one get hacked the others are safe. So I see your point. But my main defense is this – I have a lot of accounts. I feel it is "safer" to have everything consolidated in one place. If my identity get stolen or if I have some kind of fee hit me like an inactivity fee or something because I have not used that account in a long time, I will know right away. You can say that I should be logging in frequently and check everything, practically it is difficult for me. I check mint/yodlee once everyday, so if I see a fraudulent charge or any suspicious activity I can act on it right away. And finally, if you are someone who has the same username/password for all the accounts (a lot of us do this), it is pretty much the same as using mint/yodlee in my opinion. If I were a hacker and I got hold of username/pass from one account I will try that combination in every bank citi, paypal.. just in case. As with everything, it is just a personal preference. It took me a while to convert my husband :)
Having said that, vertex sheets are excellent resource for any type of PF calculations. Check out Office online templates as well. There are some pretty good ones over there.
Thanks for the discussion, Kris & SPF. I will add my reply to SPF in the mint review, might be useful for someone.
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2:14 pm
January 4, 2011
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uhnw
| | Australia | |
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I use Quicken for my personal stuff and Quickbooks for my professional and business. Quicken is geared towards personal finance and produces fantastic reports, especially if you have lots of investment income. Quickbooks is an accounting package, so a little understanding of double entry bookkeeping is helpful. I've never had the pleasure of using Mint as its not available here in Australia – but their website looks great.
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2:32 pm
January 4, 2011
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Sustainable PF
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@Suba – I just don't like all that data consolidated in one place – how much, specific acct numbers. Just makes it way too easy for a bad person to get at everything, immediately.
I check our accounts every couple days, and use different passwords at a lot of sites.
To each their own, but there will be a TON of ripped off people if … WHEN mint gets hacked. That data is going to draw the moths to the flame imo.
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2:35 pm
January 4, 2011
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moneycone
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Mint or FinanceWorks (both are oddly owned by the same company and might be merged in future). FinanceWorks is offered as a free service by many banks and credit unions.
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6:20 pm
January 4, 2011
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The College Investor
| | San Diego, CA | |
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Quicken or Mint. Mint is essentially a free online version of Quicken.
The more you use these tools, the more useful they become!
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6:57 pm
January 4, 2011
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Invest It Wisely
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Excel/Open Office, and I recently started using GnuCash which is accounting/budgeting software. Being free software it has a few kinks, but it's actually pretty decent. For what I need (which is to evaluate my accounts every month, and keep track of "globs" such as Car, Home, etc…), as well as keeping track of the blogging side business (that I hope will generate some real revenue soon), it works well!
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7:54 pm
January 4, 2011
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Cents To Save
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I am enjoying Mint! User friendly :)
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6:38 pm
January 8, 2011
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everydaytips
| | Detroit Area | |
| Member | posts 455 |
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Thanks so much for all the responses everyone!!!
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