I need to restart tracking where my money is going

[haapai]

and I don't want to pay much.  It's strictly to get a handle on my personal finance, specifically, what's coming in and where it is going.  I used to use a copy of Quickbooks that a former employer had allowed me to copy but the computer that it was on got landfilled a 10-12 years ago.  Then I built some spreadsheets in Excel that worked pretty well for me for a couple of years.  Then I fell off the wagon entirely. 

I am the daughter of a math major and an accountant and I studied accounting myself.  I'm very partial to to traditional bookkeeping methods and have figured out how to modify something designed for business use for personal finance.   I basically need a glorified check register and I would be happy (actually happier) to enter every transaction myself. 

Do any of you have any suggestions, other than YNB, or want to make a pitch for YNB to a highly resistant person? 

I really have no idea what is out there or what it costs. 

Currently, I do not have Microsoft Office, which I suspect may be a relevant little tidbit. 

[minnesotapaintlady]

I'm a YNAB groupie, but I never jumped to the subscription service years ago.  I still use the stand alone program and won't let it go until it just doesn't work anymore.

Something similar I've found is Buckets and I think they let you do an unlimited free trial.

www.budgetwithbuckets.com/

[haapai]

Well, I may have to check that out further.  I've already clicked on the link and recoiled in horror.  The price and terms are very tempting but either the product or its marketing repels me.  It's entirely possible that I am being a complete snob, but I just hate, hate, hate how that product is being marketed and have no idea what it can actually do for me. 

I want something that once existed, and was once free, albeit hard to find and in DOS, and I don't have a clue how to find it now.  I just want basic book-keeping software that can generate some basic reports in a format that makes sense to green-eye-shade-baby me.   

[MN-Investor]

When I got a new laptop this past winter, I ended up getting Quicken on a subscription basis. Personally, I don't care what I pay for software as long as it is the right software. I refuse to cheapen out and then have to deal with a program which is inadequate.

That said, I use Quicken as a check register and for recording all my credit card charges. I input everything myself so it's entered exactly the way I want it. When I pay my credit card bill, I post an expense (transfer) in my checking account and a payment (the other side of the transfer) in the credit card account. Everything always balances. I require that; I'm a former accountant. (I was also a math major in college.)

I do not use Quicken for budgeting. I do not use it to track investments. I use it to track expenses and it works perfectly for me. I can generate reports to see what I spend on utilities, subscriptions, etc. It does what I want.

[jerseygirl]

Tracking isn’t a problem for me, use CCs for most expenses and generate a spending report when needed
More problematic is setting a budget beforehand which I’ve never succeeded. At most I keep a monthly expected large expenses such as IRS estimated payments, property taxes, insurance etc

Never set a budget for food restaurants clothing etc

[azucena]

Google sheets is sort of equivalent to Excel and I think free. It's what my teen uses for some school projects as everything in her high school seems to be Google instead of office. I'm in excel all day and can jump in to help her pretty intuitively.

[Rukh O'Rorke]

create.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/budgets

[minnesotapaintlady]

Jun 7, 2023 19:06:55 GMT -5 haapai said:

 It's entirely possible that I am being a complete snob, but I just hate, hate, hate how that product is being marketed and have no idea what it can actually do for me.

Well, it's a free trial, so that would be the best way to find out what it could do for you.

It appears to work similar to YNAB in that you "bucket" your income into categories and then enter your transactions in a register and categorize them which comes out of the corresponding bucket.

[movingforward]

I tracked my expenses for 3 months maybe 4-5 years ago and used a pen and paper

[haapai]

Jun 7, 2023 19:41:53 GMT -5 MN-Investor said:

When I got a new laptop this past winter, I ended up getting Quicken on a subscription basis. Personally, I don't care what I pay for software as long as it is the right software. I refuse to cheapen out and then have to deal with a program which is inadequate.

That said, I use Quicken as a check register and for recording all my credit card charges. I input everything myself so it's entered exactly the way I want it. When I pay my credit card bill, I post an expense (transfer) in my checking account and a payment (the other side of the transfer) in the credit card account. Everything always balances. I require that; I'm a former accountant. (I was also a math major in college.)

I do not use Quicken for budgeting. I do not use it to track investments. I use it to track expenses and it works perfectly for me. I can generate reports to see what I spend on utilities, subscriptions, etc. It does what I want.

Deluxe or Simplifi?

I'm a bit masochistic, so I'd be tempted to use whatever I got to get a bead on past spending and transactions.  Would what you have allow me to start with a Jan 1 2023 or 2022 beginning date?

[Deleted]

They will have to rip my Quicken subscription from my cold dead hands  .  I don't use it for budgeting as we don't budget, but the capability is there if I wanted it.  I track income and expenses, investments, net worth, tax stuff

It also has a wonderful un-advertised function.  It shuts up a stupid husband when he runs his mouth on stuff when he's clueless. "I don't spend much on golf!"  Nope, here your customized Quicken report.  "It would cost less to live in an apartment than a house."  Okay, here's a detailed report on all house-related expenditures over a 5-year period.  Really great function!  

[haapai]

On second thought, my desire to do the books retroactively isn't entirely due to masochism.  It might allow me to detect improvement in discretionary spending or stubborn non-improvement even while trying hard.  Either one would tell me something useful. 

[MN-Investor]

Jun 8, 2023 15:28:25 GMT -5 haapai said:

Deluxe or Simplifi?

I'm a bit masochistic, so I'd be tempted to use whatever I got to get a bead on past spending and transactions. Would what you have allow me to start with a Jan 1 2023 or 2022 beginning date?

Deluxe.

You can start with beginning balances at any date that you want and reconstruct all the transactions going forward.

[haapai]

Did you set a timer?  I suspect that you have anticipated my next few questions. 

I really want to get started and I really want to go way back and that wasn't really a problem with Quickbooks.  That software allowed you to invent multiple financial entities -- so you could start with a relatively current trial balance and then go backwards in as many baby steps as you wanted.  (I never figured out how to merge the "before" with the "current" but at least I had the reports that I wanted from each time period.  Being able to compare current year reports, last year's reports, and the reports from the year before that which are balanced with WITTB entries and un-allocated expenses, was good enough for me.)

I don't know if Quicken Deluxe will allow me to create multiple "companies" like that.  If not, can you suggest a fix or a way around the problem that I have tried to describe?  I want to get started but I fear that starting as far back as I want to go back will result in me never catching up. 

I'm pretty sure that multiple ways around this issue exist but they aren't exactly taught in undergraduate accounting classes.  The folks that teach those classes admonish you to never fall behind and that's it.  

[haapai]

Oh thank-you!  You are an excellent listener.  I think that (if I am limited to only one company) I will pursue the strategy of getting the best beginning balances possible for 1/1/2020.  Then I can use unallocated expenses and unallocated income to make them balance with the 1/1/2021, 1/1/2022, and 1/1/2023 balance sheets.  That frees me up to start keeping the books properly from 1/1/2023 but still allows me to go backwards bit by bit, balancing things along the way. 

Please stop me if you know a better way or think that I am mad. 

[Annie7]

What about Mint? I think it pulls in transactions from 6 months ago or so. That should get you to Jan 2023.

[haapai]

I think that you underestimate how much someone with an accounting education wants to use it. 

I won't be satisfied with only going back six months.  I'm sure that interesting things and things worth thinking about happened long before that. Six months would be a damn good start for establishing my income and spending patterns for the purpose of creating a non-laughable budget, but I want to give myself the opportunity to go back farther than that and learn more. 

[saveinla]

I am lazy - so I created a spreadsheet with all the bills that I pay. At the end of the month or every 2 months I also add notes to my cc bill column that indicates where a lot of bigger expenses happened, so if I go back and check what happened 3 months ago, I dont have to go back to my cc statement.

At the EOY, we do a fairly simple - this is what we spent on these categories so we make sure we account for all of the money. 

I am not an accountant, so this works for me. I also don't need to know about every cent  - as long as the big numbers add up, we are fine.

[MN-Investor]

If I were you, I'd start with 1/1/2023 balances and set up your accounts for checking, savings, and credit card accounts. I never kept track of my investment accounts within Quicken, but you can add them if you want. Then start inputting income and expenses and transfers when you pay your credit card bill from your checking account. Enter a couple of months accounts to make sure you have the hang of it.

Then you might want to start changing the beginning balance to a year earlier and entering last year's data. If you're an accountant, you can figure out what's necessary to make that work. It'd be tedious to do, but you might think it's worth it, I guess.

[haapai]

I bought the subscription today and am setting it up entirely offline.  My ambition to go back several months has evaporated.  This is taking a small slice of forever.  It sure ain't 20th Century Quickbooks.  I'm on January second, frustrated, and seriously wondering why I'm not linking accounts. 

On the other hand, the sheer PITA factor of recording transactions will probably cause my spending to plummet.

[MN-Investor]

Jan 18, 2024 13:40:09 GMT -5 haapai said:

On the other hand, the sheer PITA factor of recording transactions will probably cause my spending to plummet.

How much detail are you entering in your transactions? For me, I'll just enter Target as the payee and Household as the category and call it good enough. I'll only split a transaction if there's something important I want to track.

[haapai]

Too much, apparently.  My ambitions to track my mortgage balance and deal with that credit balance on my water bill are rapidly evaporating. 

Don't worry about me.  I've figured things like this out before.  I'll expense all now and make it tidy later.  Right now what matters is getting checking up to date. 

[haapai]

Well, the bank accounts and the only credit card with any activity or balance are up to date.  I'll worry about the still-existing credit balance on the water bill later or never. 

My ambitions for tracking the rest of my paycheck, or just the contributions into 401(k) and HSA accounts are flagging a bit.  I'm not particularly interested in logging the gains and losses.  I just want to keep track of what is moving in and out of them -- some other day. 

[scgal]

Kudos who use programs to track their budget. I always wrote down how much for what but last year I set up spreadsheets in google and was good until June I lost total interest. I dd find that when I switched to paying everything with 1 credit card and paying it off every month I would have extra money at the month and not needing to go into savings.