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6:31 pm
January 17, 2012
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Daisy
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| Member | posts 271 | 
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I think tracking everything you spend is a GREAT idea. It can be shocking, knowing exactly what money is spent on. Scary, too!
I use my blog. Seriously though. And my credit card. I tried to use Mint.com, but found it easier to just record what I spent on my spending report draft on my blog every evening or morning. If I forgot what I spent, I'd look at my credit card statement online – I use my card for everything.
I know that's not helpful but good luck in the tracking!
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3:51 am
January 31, 2012
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cbhattarai
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Hi. I know y are you trackingit, but it would be betetr if you have choose the best one in the start.
Thank You
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12:38 pm
February 7, 2012
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Poor Student
| | Mount Forest, Ontario | |
| Member | posts 72 |
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I love Mint. It takes maybe 10 minutes to set up at first and then does everything on its own.
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8:50 pm
February 9, 2012
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AmericanDebtProject
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Quick update on this. I tracked everything I spent in January and it was very enlightening. Namely, I was buying so much junk food. In February I have bought zero candy, chocolate, or chips. I bought one $1 bag of Cheetos so far (I have a serious addiction).
And I am keeping up with the tracking. I just use an excel spreadsheet divided by Food, Gas and Other. It's really working! I realized that for it to be effective for me, I have to track manually, at least for a while. I also opened up my Quicken after 5 months (my net worth improved!) and that is a nice snapshot to look at every couple weeks.
Yodlee definitely looks promising for the future, but right now I just need to work on the basics. I think tracking spending is going to make me naturally cut at least $100 from my monthly expenses!
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4:41 am
February 10, 2012
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Smart Wealth
| | Michigan | |
| Member | posts 304 |
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Definitely helpful to track everything you spend money on and analyze it monthly. I made my own excel chart and have some code in there that can group items based on what I group them as. Definitely not the best way to do it but it works for me. I heard Mint.com is a good one. I try to use my credit card for points and pay it off at the end of the month, credit cards normally have a good way of tracking everything you buy as well.
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8:53 pm
February 12, 2012
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Shilpan
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| Member | posts 126 |
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Mint is the best free tool out there
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10:37 pm
February 12, 2012
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seedebtrun
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| Member | posts 327 |
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Mint is a great site..
Sometimes transactions can take 4-5 days to show up there, but most will show up instantly.
The longer you use it.. the more valuable it becomes from a budgeting perspective.
The fact that it will show you a graph of your grocery spending month by month is pretty darn sweet.
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7:19 am
February 13, 2012
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This That And The MBA
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| Member | posts 240 |
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I love excel. If you already have the office suite you have excel. Great tool and you can basically get it to do anything you like. 
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5:39 pm
March 16, 2012
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john1978
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i use a free software spending viewer http://spendingviewer.apphb.com. It is a windows application that is isolated to your local computer. It does not ask for your bank website credentials. You can track all of your accounts in single page. It allows you to upload transactions in a bulk or manually enter them as needed. It has various reports allowing you to track better. Report by category, by month, by year, by payees, by budget. You can choose various time periods for all of these reports. Setup budget by weekly/monthly, and track it.
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9:42 am
March 17, 2012
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Parenting and Money
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| Member | posts 27 |
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I used to use Excel. Now I use Mint.com. It took me a while to sign up for it because I was concerned with security. I created a read only account for our checking to limit our risk. We charge everything to our credit card and set that account up at Mint. It's been working well so far. Mint sends a weekly summary and alerts which is really useful. I can easily see outgoing vs. incoming $$.
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1:55 pm
March 19, 2012
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BrokeElizabeth
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| Member | posts 5 |
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I use a Google spreadsheet… it's incredibly easy to customize, and takes about 10 seconds to update :).
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4:11 pm
March 19, 2012
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Eric – PersonalProfitability.com
| | Portland, OR | |
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I wrote a big review of two top options, Mint.com vs. Adaptu
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6:45 pm
March 19, 2012
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Liquid
| | Vancouver BC, Canada | |
| Member | posts 59 |
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I keep all my receipts and add them all up once a month to enter into my spreadsheet. It doesn't take that long, and I like reviewing my expenses manually. Like mentioned earlier, mint.com is a great tool though.
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8:53 pm
March 23, 2012
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Earth and Money
| | Toronto | |
| Member | posts 35 |
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I'm gonna give another vote to doing things manually in Excel. I've been doing it for almost 4 years now. At the end of the day, the only limit to what you can do in Excel is your own Excel knowledge. Learning Excel for my tracking purposes actually helped me in other areas of my life such as work where I'm frequently required to use Excel.
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12:52 pm
March 26, 2012
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Jake@iHeartBudgets.net
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I use Excel to track spending, and Mint to get a full snapshot of all my accounts and net worth.
I love excel because you can customize it to your situation fully. I have some conditional formatting to turn all debits red and credits green. I also code all of my transactions by category, so I can easliy see the total of any given month.
And….since I'm a tax guy, I created a "Is it deductible?" column where I write in the deduction cetegory of the transaction, so I can filter and find all of my deductions at the end of the year. I also have an annual total page that adds up all my categories so I can input my utilities and others for my OIH (Office In Home) deduction.
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8:49 pm
March 27, 2012
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SavingMyToonies
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I've tried Mint, Microsoft Money and a few apps for android and I never stuck with them. I recently started using YNAB and I love it! It's changed my spending already. I also keep some excel spreadsheets to lay out different calculations and future budgets.
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8:06 am
March 28, 2012
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CBC
| | Liverpool | |
| Member | posts 62 |
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I've always used Mint.com for this type of thing. No need to say anything more, great tool, plus its free!
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CBC International are specialists in debt recovery, based in Liverpool who provide their services to businesses across the UK, Europe and Worldwide.
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10:44 pm
April 6, 2012
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belowhermeans
| | America! | |
| Member | posts 32 |
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Mint, Manilla, Excel, OCD.
My winning combo!
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8:10 pm
April 7, 2012
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Money and Risk
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| Member | posts 73 |
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I use an envelope system and spend the cash so I have no guilt or worries about what I spend personally. However, I do keep all the receipts and manually put it into Expensify. The free version. Then I print a report to see how much I spend in what.
We know that the majority of the spending is my husband's coffee habit and dinners out.
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11:36 am
April 12, 2012
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ShoppingtoSaving
| | San Diego, CA | |
| Member | posts 33 |
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I use Mint and I love it because I can see everything on my phone, any computer, ipad, etc. However I do want to do more stuff on it. I'm leaning towards YNAB but I am a visual person too so anything that looks nice and "pretty" always gets me.
I know Bridget highly recommends the Money app through iTunes. Does anyone else have any visually stimulating money tracking apps or programs?
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