Would you use an online budget?

[DivaJen]

Re: Would you use an online budget?

I voted no. I like Quicken, but in the past I've used my own Excel spreadsheets and they've always been just fine.

[jmjj215]

Re: Would you use an online budget?

Right now I painstakingly enter every expense into the spreadsheet, and I have to customize it every time I want a new kind of report. I want to be able to download my checking acct info, credit card statements, brokerage statements, etc into my software and then just assign each expense to the right category. Also, I'd like to be able to graph how my expenses and income changes month to month, year to year, etc. And both my spouse and I have a small amount of freelance income most years, so it would be nice to be able to just print a report of all tax deductable expenses every year at tax time.

Sounds like Quicken may be the right choice for you after all!

[TBH]

Re: Would you use an online budget?

Sounds like Quicken may be the right choice for you after all!

Jesse--
I looked at your site and it seems like you know a lot about PF software. At the risk of asking you to endorse one of your competitors, do you think for what I'm describing Quicken is better than Money?

Thx.
C

[somekool]

Re: Would you use an online budget?

about justbudget.com

meaghanchan is absolutely right. I think the idealistic idea of a budget is silly. Fixing yourself limits and trying to stick to them sounds more like of a diet challenge than anything. By Tracking your expenses, you gain information about your own lifestyle which you can modify, adjust your future and thus save money and live healthier.

yes, you can also use Excel to track your expense,... but justbudget.com also gives me stats and graphs, and adding an expense to justbudget is lot faster than managing an excel sheet myself. justbudget remembers categories and locations and do the work for me.

also, I think they guy is pretty open for suggestions, so if you need something, you may just see it happen in the future.

I try to manage my expenses in Excel many times and always gave up missing discipline and wanted my spreadsheet to do more. I'm set now. http://justbudget.com do what I need.

[arianeira]

Re: Would you use an online budget?

I like what I've seen of the mvelopes system, and I'm sure that it is worth the fee for some people, but with my finances I've found that Quicken works the best for me. I have six savings accounts, one CD, one joint checking account, my personal checking account, three rewards credit cards, and some outstanding debt that I need to keep track of and I haven't had any problems with Quicken.

So I guess I would have to say that yes, I would use an online budget if it fit my needs, but no I don't use an online budget because Quicken fits my needs (and comes out quite a bit less per month)