Dave Ramsey's new mint.com competitor...

[ExcuseMyIgnorance]

He just launched it. It's called everydollar.com. I don't really need a tool like this but I'm wondering if anyone else has tried it..

[FLA]

I probably won't since his focus is so much on debt reduction and that's not my financial issue. I stopped Mint, just didn't feel like adding in new 403B company, new credit cards, etc. I should re-start

[ExcuseMyIgnorance]

I probably won't since his focus is so much on debt reduction and that's not my financial issue. I stopped Mint, just didn't feel like adding in new 403B company, new credit cards, etc. I should re-start

Mint couldn't find my local CU. That kinda effs everything up since I use them a lot.

[FLA]

Mint couldn't find my local CU. That kinda effs everything up since I use them a lot.

I feel kind of like I don't really need it. I know I should make a written, formal budget but I put everything on Discover, I can just look there and it separates charges into categories and if I see I'm spending too much, I just cut back. That seems to work for me. The only thing I use cash for is my $10 haircuts and one MD who won't take CCs for a copay. And those two things barely affect my budget, I can't get them any lower than they are so just looking at Discover every few days, I can keep things in check.

Mint was kind of a PITA, putting everything into categories that I can already see on my CC webpage. When my company changed 403b providers, half the time or maybe it was all of the time, Mint didn't have those companies so that had to be put in by hand. Eventually, I felt like I was wasting my time on something I was not using to it's full potential.

[phantom]

I use Mint solely for aggregation and budgeting. I have more accounts than I probably should, and I find it really useful to be able to go to one place and check for changes on almost everything. There've been several long stretches where it hasn't been able to connect to one of my accounts or another. But, as long as it's getting data for most of my accounts, including all of the accounts where I do my irregular spending, I still find it worthwhile. Manually checking 2 accounts is better than manually checking 11. I like using GnuCash for long term tracking.

I've been tempted to try Dave Ramsey's Every Dollar just to see what it's like. I like the fact that it's supposed to work even without being able to connect to your accounts. (It drives me crazy that Mint won't allow manual corrections when their stuff is so often broken.) But, I'm afraid it wouldn't work well for me since I use credit cards, and I'd rather not pay to connect to my accounts if I don't have to.

[FLA]

I

I've been tempted to try Dave Ramsey's Every Dollar just to see what it's like. I like the fact that it's supposed to work even without being able to connect to your accounts. (It drives me crazy that Mint won't allow manual corrections when their stuff is so often broken.) But, I'm afraid it wouldn't work well for me since I use credit cards, and I'd rather not pay to connect to my accounts if I don't have to.

Is his program free? I don't understand its benefits if it doesn't connect to accounts

[phantom]

Is his program free? I don't understand its benefits if it doesn't connect to accounts

It's free unless you want to connect to accounts. Dave Ramsey explains that the banks charge him a fee for that service and he's just passing that fee along. Without that feature, I assume it's just a budgeting tool into which you must manually enter all of your spending.

If it's a good tool, I'd consider paying for the account connection. I feel like part of the problem with Mint is that they don't really care if I can connect to my accounts or not. I wonder if I might be able to get better service if I were actually paying for it. Of course, I was recently trying another tool that offered to connect to my accounts using the same technology as Mint, which makes me think that Intuit must license the tool that makes that connection, which makes me wonder whether Dave Ramsey has built his account connection technology or whether he's licensing Intuit's tool.

If you really need to get your spending under control, I think there's some value in manually entering transactions, in that it really forces you to think about them and perhaps think twice about making them in the first place. I've never had a spending problem, but I've had a bit of an eating problem, and I found that the mere act of entering my food in a calorie counting app reduced my snacking. So, I could imagine a budgeting app having a similar impact. But, that doesn't sound like something you're looking for right now.

[FLA]

If you really need to get your spending under control, I think there's some value in manually entering transactions, in that it really forces you to think about them and perhaps think twice about making them in the first place. I've never had a spending problem, but I've had a bit of an eating problem, and I found that the mere act of entering my food in a calorie counting app reduced my snacking. So, I could imagine a budgeting app having a similar impact. But, that doesn't sound like something you're looking for right now.

I've just always been frugal, sure I could cut more and I do when I realize I am over-accumulating and overspending on something worthless, like inexpensive purses. It took me a while to admit I was wasting money but I stopped myself without having caused much upheaval. It's hard to make small budget inroads now that I have joined households. Our cable, internet and landline that we HAVE to keep, I think is between $165-180. I feel that we should cut back on the premium channels, since we also have Hulu and Netflix. But my father has driven me to so many appts, picked me up off the floor, takes care of my mom, I cannot even ask him to let me cut that back, he enjoys those channels. Since between the two of us, we are basically keeping him from having a life, I would pay $500 for cable and starve before denying him something he really loves. I've only just received 2 long term disability checks and they are notorious for just dropping people. And my meds keep changing, the frequency of MD appts keeps changing, I haven't gotten the bills for out of network tests yet, etc. it's hard to budget when my biggest expenses are never the same. I sort of feel like I can just keep trying to keep my costs low and then in 16 mos, I'll find out about SSDI. And that will be a more permanent amount and that's when I should knock out a detailed budget.

I know a budget is so important, but when I was working, I was able to contribute well to retirement accounts and live pretty frugally, with occasional vacations that while not cheap, were researched to be as inexpensive as possible. And for 23 yrs, living like that, monitoring my cc statements, I think we did fine without a written budget. It's at least worth trying, though and see if it makes an impact.