Are there any good Budget programs?

[GrimJack]

I find that my ADD interferes with my ability to sit down and work out a budget. I am hoping it would ask me specific questions so that I can take everything that I forget to take into account (like the 15% of medical bills that I have to pay cover - those bills show up and I wonder where they came from). [it has taken me 25 minutes to write this little bit and I have already forgotten most of what I wanted to include in this request for information]

Sigh!

[btctony]

I've tried out nearly every free piece of budgeting software I could find, including a bunch of mobile apps. Even paid for a few of those and then decided I didn't like them. I've found that none of them allow me to customize to exactly what I wanted in a budgeting app, so I went back to the excel spreadsheet method.

You can build it from the ground up, in order for it to work exactly how you want it to work. It was worth the few hours of my time, to make it fit what I wanted.

[bUU]

I use Quicken Lifetime Planner for long-term planning but their budgeting and budget tracking component is simply not acceptable. I really would like to see a tighter integration between the two components - effectively the ability to configure a 35-40 year budget plan, building in knowns such as when a mortgage is paid off; how medical expenses will change due to retirement, subscription to Medicare, etc.; even how expenses will be affected by a death of a spouse. Quicken Lifetime Planner actually gives you the ability to configure those things into the lifetime plan, but there's no good way to see how that affects this year's budget and next year's budget, on a category by category basis. Especially once you retire, from where you're getting the money to live on (savings vs. taxable vs. retirement accounts) is as important as what you're spending it on.

[SETFinancial]

Intuit Quicken or Mint

I have used intuit's quicken and it has a budget feature. I have also used their mint cloud based app and desktop tool that is free. I would try mint.

[danielhermann]

Maybe you could enlist somebody's help the first time round to make up a comprehensive budget. Run it past a few people close to you so that they can suggest if something is left out. Next time, you can simply update the amounts based on actual expenditure during the year. I suggest you do it on real time basis, as and when you spend on the big ticket items. Hope this helps.

[GrimJack]

Darn it - you make it sound like I have to do this myself! I do have a Mint account, I will dig a little deeper into that to see what it will do for/with me.

[jpham540]

I also use mint to I am able to add all of my account, but mint does do a terrible job of keeping track of your monthly bill due and the investment tracking isn't any better. I only use it for a snapshot of all of my account. For investment I use personal capital it has a nice asset allocation chart and also assign you a financial advisor which I will never use, but keep track of investment it does a good job it does have an online budgeting too.

[llckll]

I currently use Mint.com as it's the most automated solution for me. It's also free.

I also use Level Money for the iPhone. It's a lot simpler than the other programs but may be too simple for some.

[llckll]

What I find is that it's easy to have a budget. The hardest part is sticking to it b

Charlie
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Come read about my personal journey: Our Journey To Zero Debt

[SnoopyCool]

Ynab

We use YNAB and love it. Not sure if it has what you're looking for but you could check out the website youneedabudget.com

[figuringmoneyout]

Personally I like Quicken or Mint. I've been using Mint for a while now and really love it.

[xclonexclonex]

I have tried Mint and YNAB, but I went back to the spreadsheet method.

Its a lot easier for me, and with dropbox, I have access to my spreadsheet most of the time. Also, I am planning to learn to write some macros which will allow me to make reports easily.

I find that to be the easiest solution for me.