What do you look for in a budgeting program?

[buildmybudget]

So I'm really curious-- what do most people look for in a budgeting program? Is it account aggregation, fancy charts, custom tailored advice, portability, usability...or convenience maybe? Do you use Mint, Wesabe, Banzai or another online program and do you see any risk in giving these sites all your info?

[Alex_Adviser]

A Budgeting Program can be used to budget your personal finances and track your spendings. The program simply allows you to enter your paycheck information for each month and allocate your spendings accordingly.

[heartsong]

What do you look for in a budgeting program?

We recently became disgusted with our old quicken 2000 program with it's inability to reconcile properly. It must have been very tired and worn out. So we began the search for a new program. I discovered there were lots of them out there! We compared...deliberated... put off the decision, until we finally decided to go back to Quicken, hoping the newest version would be a lot like their online version and more user-friendly. Not! It is sooo complex! Often I've wished for a paper manuel I could flip through with screen prints to figure out a certain feature. The online help is helpful IF you know the proper question to ask. Plus, we haven't been able to find out YET how to reconcile a monthly statement!

So what were we looking for?
1) One stop shopping, with all our accounts, Retirement funds, and every financial account into one place.
2) Some automatic features and integration of this knowledge to provide a decent future projection or two.
3) Speed and convenience for reconciling- i.e. automatic downloading of data from bank accounts.
4) Easy budgeting and reports, for tracking our budget progress
5) Alerts
6) SIMPLE!
7) Trust and faith that the account balance is true and accurate
8) automatic checks and balances
9) Easy reports for IRS tax time

We still get frustrated with Quicken. maybe we just need to take a class on how to use this program! Is there a training CD out there?

[project15]

I started with a simple excel spreadsheet that's evolved over the past 3 years into a complex, but useful tool for me that can do anything I want it to.

My friend is trying to convince me to use Mint, so I'm trying it out alongside of my old trusty excel sheet.

[buildmybudget]

What do you think Mint will provide that your spreadsheet can't? Also, are you afraid of any securiy risk?

[sandrark]

What I wanted:

* Easy to use
* Reports, searchable by date, category or account
* Ability to set up custom categories
* Ability to track multiple accounts, including cash ( a problem for many)
* Web-based, accessible from home and work
* Something NOT like Mint or Yodlee - I did NOT want to enter account numbers or passwords.
* Low cost
* Mac-friendly

I ended up with clearcheckbook.com

It meets ALL of my requirements, and it also can import/export bank account info. I prefer to to data entry manually, as it helps me "absorb" the spending patterns of the week/month, and stay on track better.

Sandi

[project15]

What do you think Mint will provide that your spreadsheet can't? Also, are you afraid of any securiy risk?

I'm not afraid of security risks. Enough people seem to be using it without issue and it's been a round for a while now. I'm wanting it to import all my transactions and values automatically instead of me having to login to every site and manually record the numbers.

[Justice44]

RE: Buildmybudget

What do you think Mint will provide that your spreadsheet can't? Also, are you afraid of any securiy risk?

Hi buildmybudget,

As a Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist, my studies reveal that the vast majority of financial identity theft occurs offline.

[Broken Arrow]

So I'm really curious-- what do most people look for in a budgeting program? Is it account aggregation, fancy charts, custom tailored advice, portability, usability...or convenience maybe? Do you use Mint, Wesabe, Banzai or another online program and do you see any risk in giving these sites all your info?

That is such a GREAT question, and listen, seriously, I badly need budget programs to do the following. Ahem.

Integrate budgeting and transaction tracking seemlessly!

Mint has a separate budget program, but guess what? The budget system is on a monthly basis. Well, I don't operate monthly. I operate per paycheck. Why is this important? Because many of my budget items are weekly. Food? Weekly. Gas? Weekly.

And if that's not bad enough, they try to "automate it" by using their own "best guess" categories. Then you have to try to build your budget AROUND their categories for the budgeting system to work. In short? It's broken! I can't use that. People must have the freedom to develop their own budgets! For example, I lump my electric and gas bills together. It works for me, please oh please don't fight me on it. The software should work FOR me, not me work FOR it!

Some don't even have a budget section, and instead only lets you track your transactions, while others only let you budget, but don't have detailed tracking of transactions.

Speaking of which, on the transaction tracking side, I wish there was a way where once I reconciled a transaction, it would go straight into a monthly archive and off my transaction list. Kind of like checking things off of a to-do list. Poof, gone. Archived, but not deleted. Many software right now have you check them, then you have to roll up or purge it separately. Why? If it's gone, it's gone. And if I made a mistake, let me go back to the archive and uncheck it just as easily and have it go back to where it belongs.

And while I'm here, please make it super fast and easy for me to enter stuff. Let me be able to click on the budget item, and have a number screen quickly open up so I can punch the number in. Also, let there be a category menu where I can quickly select what category this is.

Mind you, I am speaking mostly about a PDA software when I say this, because that's how I track my personal finance. I keep on me at all times, and my budget is updated right after I make any purchase. That way, I am not tethered down by having to get to a laptop or even somewhere with an internet connection. No, I open, I tap, I go. And I want to know everything down to the last cent.

Anyways, I'm rambling and all over the place. But I have some very specific views about how budgeting can be optimized, especially for those who carry their budgets everywhere on a PDA.

What do you think Mint will provide that your spreadsheet can't? Also, are you afraid of any securiy risk?

Speaking as someone paranoid about security in general (including infosec), online sites like mint are actually safer than even bank sites. They use the same type of encryption as banks, and even if it's broken into, there are no functions to transfer funds or even change banking information. The tough part, though, is to convince people of that....

[AsiaTraveler]

I have not found a program that works for me. We budget monthly- fine. But we also want any "extra" (or a negative balance if that's the case) to carry over from month to month. This works for us, but I haven't found a program that does it (maybe I haven't looked in the right places!).

So right now I do it by hand on Microsoft Works. Would love to get out of that, but haven't found the right program! I am totally okay with automation, too!

[lovcom]

You really don't need a fancy program to create and execute a budget. If you have a computer and a spreadsheet program, that is all you need. Anything beyond that is just niceities, and conveniences.

I use Mint and love it. But it is not a necessity, rather a nice-to-have. I used Quickin for 15 years but hate it, and no longer use it.

As to budgeting, a great budget is one that is designed to pay off consumer debt fast and aggressively without putting the person in a vulnerable state.

[minnie1928]

We recently became disgusted with our old quicken 2000 program with it's inability to reconcile properly. It must have been very tired and worn out.

Are you serious?! I had the 2000 version until I upgraded to 2007. I wish I could go back to the 2000 version! What problems did you have with reconciliation? I've never had a problem reconciling Quicken, in any version. But, I am an accountant and I do have it set up very detailed.

Back to the original question - What do I look for?
1. Report functionality
2. Ability to set up recurring items (saves me time)
3. Graphing/charting functions
4. Ability to compare one period to another
5. Ability to download investment prices to update portfolio

That's pretty much it. I don't automatically download transactional data into Quicken. I've always felt that it would be a great target for a hacker to get access to that one file that contains your account, pin, password, etc. for all your online accounts...that would be the motherload! So, I still key things in manually which is fine because I often split receipts into multiple categories (Ex: go to Target, buy clothes/groceries/auto supplies and book them to their respective categories). I'm very anal about my Quicken data.

FWIW - I do my budgeting monthly based on 12 months of historical expenses. Once/month I deposit the money into my "envelopes" in Quicken. Then when the credit card bill comes, I take the money out of the "envelope" and pay the bill.

[Guest]

I'd look for something that was easy enough to use that it wouldn't feel like a hassle. The harder it is to do something the less like you are to do it.

[mrpaseo]

Three words: excel, excel, and excel. I tried Quicken and Money many, many years ago and truthfully, I never could get all my accounts to line up. I built a budget in excel and it has not let me down in 15+ years.

I like to manually track my finances to keep everything fresh in my mind. I do not have anything set up automatically for this reason.

I would not mind having more, but really do not want to dedicate the time due to past failures. As was already said, I do not want to become slave to my finances.

Great topic though,
Ray

[zetta]

I have not found a program that works for me. We budget monthly- fine. But we also want any "extra" (or a negative balance if that's the case) to carry over from month to month. This works for us, but I haven't found a program that does it (maybe I haven't looked in the right places!).

So right now I do it by hand on Microsoft Works. Would love to get out of that, but haven't found the right program! I am totally okay with automation, too!

Personal Budget Software - Free Home Budgeting Course for the Family - YNAB rolls the extra over to the next month, just like you're asking for. I have found it to be the best program by far.