spending tracker

[coastiewifern]

My husband and I would like to cut our spending so we can work towards and early retirement. Can you recommend an app that can help you track your spending? Free would be awesome!
We'd like to track for a few months to see where it really goes vs. where we think we spend it.
TIA

 

[Anthony1971]

can not help with app... if you want to cut expenses a lot.. get a pad and pen and write down everything as you spend. While not the best at telling you where your money is going by dollars unless you put it in Excel it will certainly make you think twice when you have write down that 7.00 Starbucks coffee...

 

[aprilchem]

I know a ton of people use YNAB (you need a budget), but it is pretty pricy so I've never bought it.

I use an Excel spreadsheet; on the top of the spreadsheet I have a place to input my income for the month. Then below I have all of my budget categories and the amount that I've budgeted for that category each month - the budget categories are nearly the same from month to month but change slightly - sometimes I'll have a vacation line item in there, sometimes a Christmas line item, etc. I have it set up so that each item in the budget category is subtracted from the income category, so below all of these there's a "how much money I have left to budget" cell.

Then to the right of this, I have a column where I can input each purchase I make into the right category, and then next to that I have a column where I have "amount left to spend"; this column is (amount spent-amount budgeted) and shows me, for example, how much grocery money I have left for that month.

I've used this spreadsheet for about 2 years, now, so each month I start a new tab and just copy the cells from last month (so the formulas are all there) and decide on my new budget amounts. This cost me $0 to set up and is really effective for me!

 

[angierae]

I have a google docs spreadsheet so I can access it from my computer or my phone. It's a lot like @aprilchem 's above.

 

[nursejackie]

One month I decided I would only pay cash for all my shopping and I kept the receipts and totted them up. Having to keep taking money out from the bank made me more aware of what I was spending instead of just mindlessly paying by card. Also, I was able to see EXACTLY what I spent on shopping as little shopping trips here and there over the month really added up to more than I thought I usually spent. Try it, you may surprise yourself too.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I know a ton of people use YNAB (you need a budget), but it is pretty pricy so I've never bought it.

I use an Excel spreadsheet; on the top of the spreadsheet I have a place to input my income for the month. Then below I have all of my budget categories and the amount that I've budgeted for that category each month - the budget categories are nearly the same from month to month but change slightly - sometimes I'll have a vacation line item in there, sometimes a Christmas line item, etc. I have it set up so that each item in the budget category is subtracted from the income category, so below all of these there's a "how much money I have left to budget" cell.

Then to the right of this, I have a column where I can input each purchase I make into the right category, and then next to that I have a column where I have "amount left to spend"; this column is (amount spent-amount budgeted) and shows me, for example, how much grocery money I have left for that month.

I've used this spreadsheet for about 2 years, now, so each month I start a new tab and just copy the cells from last month (so the formulas are all there) and decide on my new budget amounts. This cost me $0 to set up and is really effective for me!

YNAB costs $50 per year. I would not say that is all that expensive. Since using it, we have cut our spending, increased our savings, paid off all credit card debt, paid off student loans, planned for some major life events and financed two vacations. And that has been since June 2016. It has more than paid for itself, so we will keep using it.

I think it is a pretty awesome program. It is a web application and you can also download phone apps to track spending on the go. The technical support is really amazing and has been super helpful. There is a 34 day free trial, so you could give it a chance to see if it works for you. I showed it to my brother recently and he loved it too.

 

[aprilchem]

YNAB costs $50 per year. I would not say that is all that expensive. Since using it, we have cut our spending, increased our savings, paid off all credit card debt, paid off student loans, planned for some major life events and financed two vacations. And that has been since June 2016. It has more than paid for itself, so we will keep using it.

I think it is a pretty awesome program. It is a web application and you can also download phone apps to track spending on the go. The technical support is really amazing and has been super helpful. There is a 34 day free trial, so you could give it a chance to see if it works for you. I showed it to my brother recently and he loved it too.

I agree that it's a great program. But $50 a year is a lot, in my opinion. I don't disagree that a lot of people have benefitted from it; I just can't justify the cost when my system works really well for me and my spreadsheet does essentially the same thing. I can view it from my phone and add to it because I have excel on my phone.

 

[MomToOne]

I know a ton of people use YNAB (you need a budget), but it is pretty pricy so I've never bought it.

I use an Excel spreadsheet; on the top of the spreadsheet I have a place to input my income for the month. Then below I have all of my budget categories and the amount that I've budgeted for that category each month - the budget categories are nearly the same from month to month but change slightly - sometimes I'll have a vacation line item in there, sometimes a Christmas line item, etc. I have it set up so that each item in the budget category is subtracted from the income category, so below all of these there's a "how much money I have left to budget" cell.

Then to the right of this, I have a column where I can input each purchase I make into the right category, and then next to that I have a column where I have "amount left to spend"; this column is (amount spent-amount budgeted) and shows me, for example, how much grocery money I have left for that month.

I've used this spreadsheet for about 2 years, now, so each month I start a new tab and just copy the cells from last month (so the formulas are all there) and decide on my new budget amounts. This cost me $0 to set up and is really effective for me!

Like this poster, I just use an Excel spreadsheet that I've tailored to my liking (in my case, I keep all twelve months on one page because I like to see my budget for a year at a glance). I keep the file on my Google Drive (any cloud drive would work) so I can access it from my home laptop, work computer, phone and even my tablet when I'm travelling and don't want to drag the laptop with me. I could even share it with other people so they can edit or just view it if I wanted.

If you don't have Excel, then as another poster said, Google Docs has a spreadsheet that is free and works just as well for this sort of thing. Honestly, this is basic addition and subtraction type stuff, so pretty much any spreadsheet app will work.

Heck, a notebook where you wrote down all your spending and then a calculator to add it up would work too!

I'm not a huge Dave Ramsey fan but listen to him occasionally. He apparently has a free budget app online - I don't know anything about it, but I assume given his philosophy you track your spending against your budget in it.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I agree that it's a great program. But $50 a year is a lot, in my opinion. I don't disagree that a lot of people have benefitted from it; I just can't justify the cost when my system works really well for me and my spreadsheet does essentially the same thing. I can view it from my phone and add to it because I have excel on my phone.

I mean, I guess expensive is relative. $4.16 per month is less than most people spend on a single drink at Starbucks.

And I don't think that there is anything wrong with using Excel, but some people might not be as savvy with setting up formulas, etc. I prefer the YNAB interface over looking at an excel spreadsheet. I stare at those enough at work and really hate large unruly excel files. I also like being able to link my accounts to YNAB so that I can easily reconcile my expenses. And I especially like no ads at all, unlike some of the other free budgeting web apps.

I was giving my opinion to OP. They are happy to make that cost determination on their own.

 

[SueInBoston]

Try mint.com. I use CC for everything and link my CC to mint to track. I manually enter cash transactions but I do very little cash transactions. At the end of the month and and end of year, I download the transactions into a excel spreadsheet and do my pivot table and that's my official record.