Christian Financial Forums

[Bob]

I use ING myself as I mentioned in http://www.christianpf.com/how-to-budge ... ng-direct/
but what about you?

[inlovewithjen]

This is the biggest weakness in my financial plan.... we have limited a few things like clothing and recreational spending, but we don't track or aggressively budget much else. We are saving lots, but I know we could always do better. Having no debt helps.

[Bob]

yea, you are right about the no-debt thing! without any debt, loosening the reins on the cash would not be quite as big a deal... I remember reading about what someone called a reverse budgeting ... basically it was just picking the few things you wanted to spend your money on and making sure the money went towards those and for the rest, just let the chips fall how they will...

[ScottLeon]

I've been trying a number of things, but nothing seems to be the right fit. We have an ING Direct account to use as a 2nd savings account. The past few months I've been downloading a number of open source (or free) applications to try out, but haven't gotten to spend enough time with any of them to really get to know how they work. I've got Budget Ace from Walltech Software, SimpleD, and a couple of others. Then I heard of Mint.com, which looks very promising, but it doesn't work with our credit union right now (& has a glitch accessing our ING Direct account consistently). Mint looks good because it accesses & downloads directly from your accounts each night, then allows you to set up categories and budget based on your spending. Crown Financial Ministries has their Mvelopes service, which looks great, but it costs over $7 a month; Mint is free (but still in beta).

But what we really need is discipline, not only to track our spending but to actually stick to a budget . Not having a tool is an excuse to avoid the disciplined work that we need to do.

[Bob]

Yea Scott, I have wanted to try out mint, but it doesn't play nice with ING or my CU... Too bad, because they look so nice!! I also am a huge fan of the Mvelopes thing, but the way we budget with ING works about the same way and it's free... It just doesn't have quite the level of ease that Mvelopes provides...

[welikemoney]

I've been using Microsoft Money since I got a job at the age of 16. It's my best friend. I wrote all about it here: http://www.welikemoney.com/2008/08/04/want-to-know-a-secret/

[mutex]

Excel Spreadsheet

[Amatachick]

I use Quicken 2008 currently. I thought about using Mint but I don't like to trust an online entity with that much of my sensitive information not to mention that level of access to my accounts. It's just not in my personal comfort range.

[Aphilp]

We used to use Excel. In January we switched to the Crown Money Map Financial Software.

[welikemoney]

I use Quicken 2008 currently. I thought about using Mint but I don't like to trust an online entity with that much of my sensitive information not to mention that level of access to my accounts. It's just not in my personal comfort range.

I wish I would've paid more attention in my computerized accounting classes when getting my degree and we learned Quicken. A lot of jobs that I'm applying for require knowledge of Quicken and it's been about 4 years since I touched that software! Do you find it easy to learn? I can't remember lol

[Amatachick]

I wish I would've paid more attention in my computerized accounting classes when getting my degree and we learned Quicken. A lot of jobs that I'm applying for require knowledge of Quicken and it's been about 4 years since I touched that software! Do you find it easy to learn? I can't remember lol

Well I found it pretty easy but I also work in IT so I probably grade that on a bit of a curve. It took some playing around to figure it all out and I still run into some quirks now and then but I'd say for the most part it's easy. I think using excel is easier though (that's what I used to use). You can't do as many things with excel but it's definitely easier.

[cisco]

I have been using excel. I don't need anything fancy, so it works pretty well for me.

[Bob]

I am an excel junkie as well... For anyone who might have missed the post and is interested, you can check out this Excel sheet I built for calculating my Net Worth and keeping things organized...

http://www.christianpf.com/your-financial-life-on-one-page-flop/

[welikemoney]

I am an excel junkie as well... For anyone who might have missed the post and is interested, you can check out this Excel sheet I built for calculating my Net Worth and keeping things organized...

http://www.christianpf.com/your-financial-life-on-one-page-flop/

I use something very similar to keep all everything in one place. I printed it and have a copy of it in our safe for my husband in case something happens

[matt]

We don't really use anything other than our brains for the most part.

I do have a couple of accounts set up at ING to save for things like christmas gifts and an etrade bank savings account for our emergency fund. I've also used excel to run some numbers and get a plan for paying our house off sooner. But we really don't have set spending limits written down anywhere on paper. We have goals for how much we spend on groceries and things like that.

One thing we did that really worked to cut down on our frivolous spending is we kept a notebook for a few months where we had to write down each day how much we had spent and what we spent it on. After a few months of having to fess up (and even face it ourselves) on misc spending, we had drastically cut down on those sorts of purchases.

[waterlover]

I track our spending more than stick to a budget. And I do it the old fashion way, pencil to paper, using a 12 column ledger. At the beginning of each month I go through receipts and statements for the previous and track our spending and bills. This way I can see where were spending too much. This has always worked for us. We do have an ING account and I have set up multiple accounts for upcoming big ticket items: car, future home etc.

[pochax]

i am a huge fan of Mint.com. i feel like it has revolutionized personal finance tracking. yes, the previous posters have mentioned issues with linking to certain accts but i was able to link ING and TD Ameritrade (which have crazy security questions) by just editing my security questions right before i linked them up. i have been able to link all my IRAs, my 401k, and my credit cards as well.

the credit card linkup is VERY helpful if you want to track your spending and most of it is on the credit card. the website allows you to see piecharts and bar graphs of how much you are spending per month and how it compares to the rest of the US as well as even your geographical area (NYC for me). granted, a single 25 year old vs. married 38 year old are going to have very different budgeting habits but still it gives you rough comparisons. it also allows you to see where you are overbudget and where you are on-track in REAL TIME during the month.

i definitely recommend people check it out if you haven't before - even if you don't want to use the NetWorth tracker to summarize your assets and debts, you can use it to track spending/budgeting which can make life really efficient if you have to count up receipts at the end of the month.

btw, i don't work for the website....just a fan. i hear yodlee.com is just as good (if not better).

[ScottLeon]

Has anyone used MySpendingPlan.com? I don't remember where I first heard about it, but I signed up for it a week or so ago to see how it worked. I got through a few screens and got annoyed with the pushed adverts that I quit. To paraphrase a friend, "The juice didn't look like it was worth the squeeze."

[waterlover]

i am a huge fan of Mint.com. i feel like it has revolutionized personal finance tracking.

Wow, mint.com looks like a great site for budgeting tools. Thank you pochax!

[matt]

I use mint, but I haven't set up any of it's budgeting tools. I like how it tracks spending and categorizes things for you (though it's far from perfect at doing so) but that helps me to see exactly how much we are spending for certain things like projects on our house, gas, and etc..

[budgeteer]

I didn't like any of the existing tools. None of them handled envelope budgeting the way I wanted, so I created my own. I created and use NeoBudget (http://www.neobudget.com).

[pochax]

I didn't like any of the existing tools. None of them handled envelope budgeting the way I wanted, so I created my own. I created and use NeoBudget (http://www.neobudget.com).

That's great, budgeteer - the more tools out there, the more potential help there is for people who need it. I notice that there is a small monthly fee for use of the website. Since there are free budgeting sites out there, can you tell us how your site is different so people can know what they are paying for?

[budgeteer]

That's great, budgeteer - the more tools out there, the more potential help there is for people who need it. I notice that there is a small monthly fee for use of the website. Since there are free budgeting sites out there, can you tell us how your site is different so people can know what they are paying for?

Gladly.. It costs $2.50/month (or $12.50/6-months). Many of the features are probably available in various free ones out there, but I am unaware of any that contains all the features of NeoBudget. But the main thing it offers is a well-engineered interface with polish. It's extremely simple to use (poor user-interface design is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine).

Beyond polish, it does offer many excellent features:

• Income management/allocation. Set up your sources of income (your paychecks) and tell NeoBudget how to allocate the paycheck (i.e. $50 per paycheck in groceries, 15% into savings, etc) and when you record a paycheck transaction, those envelopes will be populated with your pre-set values. Essentially, you figure out how to allocate your paycheck once, and don't have to think about it again when you get paid.
• Visual envelopes. I'm a very visual person, so I designed this to be very visual. Envelopes are big rectangles on the summary page. This may seem dumb, but it's a mental trick I play with myself to help me feel like my money is in actual envelopes.
• A sweet import wizard. I don't like typing in lots of numbers. I made a 4-step wizard where you can (1) upload a .QIF file that you download from your bank, (2) select which of those to import, (3) tell which envelopes to deduct those transactions from, and (4) review and confirm. Voila! It usually takes me 15 minutes every week to update my budget.
• It's smart. Step #2 of the import wizard checks to make sure you haven't already imported a certain transaction. It also sees if you have entered a transaction as a check and if so, will prompt you when you import ("This check has already been entered."). It has lots of little checks-and-balances like that to help make your life easier.
• Debt repayment worksheet. There's a cool worksheet where you can enter in all your debts (with amount, apr, and minimum payment), and you can project how fast you'll repay them given just a minimum payment, or increasing that payment.

Those are some of the highlights.. There are others too. Take a look at the 5-minute video tour on the website to get a feel for it: http://www.neobudget.com/intro/video.php

[Bob]

Just an FYI, we had a NeoBudget giveaway a while back and I like the program... I also like Mvelopes, but Neobudget is very similar with a lower price tag...

[Lynx1424]

I really like Pearbudget.com. So easy to use. I try to enter my receits daily. I figureif I could spend it, I can enter it.
Lynx

[baolson]

I use Yodlee. www.yodlee.com
Yodlee is actually a company Mint uses to mine the data before they present it at their site. I think I have heard Mint is prettier and has some other features than Yodlee, but couldn't tell you for sure all the differences/advantages of one vs. the other.

Yodlee has been helpful for me in keeping track of all of our accounts.
One useful thing Yodlee does: You can set up "Alerts" on your accounts and they email you based on the criteria you set up. E.G., "A large withdrawal of $500 was made on your XXX bank account" or "Your Electric Bill is now due", or "Your balance on XXX Acct has fallen below $1,000" --- whatever you want to set up.

One problem I have is problems linking some of my accounts up. Some companies are not listed, or they say they are unable to link to it. Others I just haven't been able to figure out.

I am concerned about the whole privacy issue because I basically had to give them all my passwords/usernames in order to have them extract the information for all of the accounts we have. There are numerous assurances that make me more comfortable with the decision, but still... Lots of financial services companies do use Yodlee technology -- Fidelity and Bank of America are two I know of--- they must be confident of Yodlee's protection or they wouldn't offer it because it would be a major blow to their credibility if there was a breach.

I love the concept, though, of having everything at one site to keep track of everything for me.

[rtc]

I currently use an Excel spreadsheet--nothing fancy, but I'm going to try one of Bob's http://www.christianpf.com/ spreadsheets--I think the first one listed.
I am also intrigued by using ING accounts like envelopes. For those of you who do this, do you use these in conjunction with another program like YNAB or by themselves?

[Bob]

RTC,
I don't use any other budgeting software currently with my ING budgeting... I just set up a subaccount for each budgeting category and use the debit card to pay for them and then make the transfer. My wife and I have been doing it for a few years and we really dig it... I did test out YNAB and I like the program, but I like our current system enough that I don't feel like switching to something else right now...

[CharlesT]

Right now, getting started using Excel, building my own spreadsheets. I plan to look at some of the budget spreadsheets that Bob posted recently.
I am also looking to open an ING savings soon for my slowly building emergency fund. 3% is way better than what my local bank gives for savings - .06%!

[geekgirl4god]

We use an old version of Quicken for the Mac (2005) that came free with my second laptop We both don't love it, but are so picky about how we setup our budget and do reporting, that we haven't found a reasonably priced alternative. We really want to use Mint, and even recommend it to people who haven't used other kinds of software, but their budget tools are lacking at the moment. We also thought about mVelopes, but it was too pricey for our tastes. Anyone know of a reasonably priced alternative that can do envelope budgeting/reporting?

[geekgirl4god]

Oops, I missed some of the posts about NeoBudget. I'll be checking that out. Any other suggestions would be good too.

[Bob]

from what I have seen of neobudget, it seems to be a decent (and much cheaper) substitute for Mvelopes...

I am not sure if you had a chance to read this post, but there are a few more ideas here as well...

http://www.christianpf.com/free-budgeting-software/

[geekgirl4god]

We finally found one that we like - Buxfer!

You can check out all of the reasons why we choose it here:
http://joeandkristenolsen.com/journal/2 ... ol-buxfer/

[arkyscott]

I've been using Mvelopes for about 9 months now and have been pretty happy with it. It would be nice if it would alert you to transactions that take you over your envelope balance. It's too easy to overspend unless you're disciplined about checking on the front end...something I'm not so good about. I've had a few glitches with downloading the transactions, but tech support has handled them. It's been several months since I've had any problems.

One thing I haven't seen is much progress in the way of making the product better and easier to use. It would be good to see them investing some time and effort into making it more useful, maybe by incorporating some of the features we see in other online budgeting products. Perhaps that's going on behind the scenes and we just haven't seen it yet.

I am a little concerned about what I'm going to do with historical data once I get past the period of time they store stuff online. I can download it in various formats, but I apparently won't be able to access it later via Mvelopes...only as a saved pdf report, Excel spreadsheet or similar.

[baolson]

Thanks - I'm going to have to check out neobudget

[Bob]

Arkyscott,
that is great feedback, I really appreciate you sharing it...

[ScottLeon]

Based on Bob's recommendation of Quicken Online, I signed up for it yesterday. So far it appears to be doing everything I'd hoped Mint would do. My credit union & ING Direct accounts are accessible through it, and I've done some preliminary tracking of spending. I haven't tried it's budgeting functionality yet, but that's next on the agenda.

Thanks for the recommendation!!
Scott

[Jewell]

Has anyone found an online budget or banking tool that works well with ING? I've tried Mint and Quicken Online but both have their issues... mInt worked for a few days then quit, Quicken Online says they Support ING but it wont work! Mint doesnt support my local bank, so I would rather use Quicken Online!

[lisamarie]

I don't use anything to help me budget. I have not found anything yet that I am comfortable with. I thought about reading Dave Ramsey's book, but I have yet to afford to get it. I am a stay at home mom and my husband recentally lost his job. This is the time I really need to find something that works!

[pochax]

i use Mint and have an ING Direct acct and it works fine. but you have to fine tune the security questions which, i can understand, could be a pain for some. But my point is that you CAN use Mint (or Yodlee or Quicken Online) with ING Direct but it's a little trickier than just putting in your username and password.

[Bob]

I guess I must have lucked out, but when I signed up for QUicken Online, and imported my ING accounts - it was easy as pie! All I did was enter my user #, pin, and 2 security questions and viola it was done...

But, I have been hearing from other people other than you Jewel, that it wasn't that easy for them... wierd!

[emilgo]

I use Easy Money. It's easy to use. I like it.

[Thryah]

I, like geekgirl4god, use a version of Quicken that came on my laptop, 2005 New User Edition (I'm on XP though, btw). I love using it, I tried signing up for Mint, but noticed many people have problems with my bank and Mint, and since I have to access it through a different site due to the teen account, I had no luck at all getting it to work. The alternative site was listed on the website, but when I sent an e-mail in to Mint they told me to use the regular one, which (not surprisingly, since I can't log into that outside of mint) didn't work. Haven't tried any other online sites yet, as I'm happy with Quicken, but I would like to upgrade to a newer version, as I assume it would last me several years as this one has. Someone asked early on if it was easy to learn, and I picked it up really fast, but I tend to be pretty intuitive with anything software based, so results may vary

[geekgirl4god]

Hey Thryah,

You should really check out http://www.buxfer.com. I was able to import all of my old Quicken data into it and you can set it up to automatically import transactions from your accounts and it will automatically categorize it. Buxfer also does a much better job of letting you know how you are doing on your budget than most tools and even has alerts.

[geekgirl4god]

I just found out that Buxfer just introduced envelope budgeting! Yeah!

http://www.buxfer.com/blog/2008/10/30/improved-envelope-budgets/

[CoolHappyGuy]

I use Quicken 2003

I have been a Quicken user since my Windows 95 IBM PC that I bought at Circuit City. (IBM no longer sells consumer PCs via retail stores. Circuit City is bankrupt. Windows has gone through six or so incarnations since then. Yes, I'm old. ).

My version of Quicken no longer supports online transactions. However, I really don't see what the big attraction is. Often, the transactions posted later than I like and I would still have to review and split the transactions. No time savings there.

While I use Quicken for budgeting, I don't actually use the budgeting feature. My wife and I tried it a few years back. We invested a lot of time into preparing a budget and afterwards found it to be of very limited use. We felt cheated by our use of that time investment.

However, the feature that I DO enthusiastically use is the "Savings Goals." SGs allow you to earmark portions of your checking, savings, or whatever account for a specific purpose. Quicken then subtracts these amounts from the balance that appears on Quicken. (This feature can be toggled on and off. You can toggle it off, for example, if you need to reconcile your account.) So, instead of scrambling every year for that $260 insurance payment, you can "deposit" $10 from your bi-weekly paycheck into a dedicated savings account.

Elsewhere in this forum and in ChristianPF.com, Bob touts the virtues of ING accounts. He says that he likes the feature of opening up new accounts to receive funds dedicated to a goal. With Quicken Saving Goals, you can have essentially the same advantages while only using one account. The day after payday, I have about six or eight different automated transfers from checking to savings. Each transfer represents a different specific savings goal deposit that I record in Quicken. So instead of transferring, say, $100 for "expenses"; I can transfer $50 (specifically) for utilities, $50 (specifically) for the mortgage (Unrealistically simplistic for this example). When the bill due date, I "withdraw" the funds from the savings goal and, presto, I have the $ to pay the piper. Kewl!

This is my favorite budget feature in Quicken.

The thing that I really hate about Quicken is that it takes too long to enter transactions. Every month I spend hours on Quicken. "Quicken" is really a misleading and somewhat cruel name for this product that has become an indispensable part of our home finances.

I also use Excel for specific financial planning purposes (e.g. open season employment benefit decisions), determining and monitoring Savings Goal amounts, and as an aid in quickly reconciling my Quicken accounts.

[Bob]

welcome aboard Cool Happy!

Thanks for sharing so much info about Quicken... I have tried it in the past, but could never get it to simplify my life as much as I wanted. It helped me get organized, but I always ended up having to invest a lot of time each month in one way or another - similar to what you mentioned. As far as the "savings goal" aspect you mentioned, that sounds cool - who needs ING anyway?

[A40DayFlud]

We don't budget.

I have tried Quicken and Mint. I am going to try Quicken Online and Buxfer. However, we've never been able to stick to a budget.

[The.Mantz]

We just started budgeting this summer, and so far we've only been able to make it under budget amounts once. We're still trying to see if we can get it right.... And we use Quicken. Should we switch to Excel?

[Bob]

For people who can't stick to a budget I suggest doing something like a reverse budget (I have heard it called). Basically find the 2-3 things that you want to make sure you save for and let the rest of the chips fall as they may. So for example, I would take my tithe 10%, 10% to retirement, and 3% for vacation. Each paycheck I would get I would take those things out first and from there I would pay everything else. The idea is that the squeeze at the end of the month happens on the unnecessary items like entertainment and clothing rather than trying to scrape together some money for retirement at the end of the month (after you spent it all going out to dinner 10 times)