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Expense Tracking - Page 2

post #16 of 23
5/18/11 at 12:04am
I always tended to slack when entering every single ¢ spent on a spreadsheet. That's why I loved mint. It tracked every penny spent automatically forme.
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post #17 of 23
5/18/11 at 12:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reynard369 View Post
This. I know I could make my own spreadsheet in Excel, but I was hoping there was a template already out there people have used.

Your best bet is still to go with an Excel spreadsheet, and you can customize it based on the restrictions you want to place on yourself, or even if you just want to be aware of how much you've spent. In any case, if you're trying to cut down on spending the most important decision is how you will place restrictions on yourself.

Give yourself a spending limit per week, per month, per quarter...
Try to avoid buying more _______s because your closet is overflowing with them...
Only buy X items per week, X per month, X per quarter...

I suggest building in some flexibility/transference for those occasional steal you just can't pass up. If you go over budget one month, subtract it from the next. Things like that.
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post #18 of 23
5/18/11 at 2:41am
Mint is awesome.

I had never heard about the password voiding thing (is it really any different than when quicken can access your accounts...especially now that they own mint?) but banks are catching on. My ING account has a separate key that you can give to sites like mint that gives them read-only access.
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post #19 of 23
5/18/11 at 2:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Piobaire View Post
Do you really need a spreadsheet? I mean, if your discretionary budget is $20, when it's gone you stop spending.

^ That's me. The number is higher, but not by a lot.
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post #20 of 23
5/18/11 at 11:35am
I use a pretty simple Excel spreadsheet. It took me 10 minutes to set up years ago and I track every month's spending split between disrectionary credit card, discretionay cash and mandatory cash spending. I also have a section where I track due dates for bills and whether I've paid them or not.
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post #21 of 23
5/18/11 at 12:04pm
I used to do double-entry in gnucash...but stopped caring so much.

Mint is just so handy. Sometimes I have to re categorize stuff that gets selected incorrectly (and their stock charts are useless as a measure of total return) but it just isn't worth my time to do more.

Cash purchases just get ignored. I don't use a lot of cash in general...I'm sure it skews out my dining and taxi amounts since about the only time I use cash is when I am splitting a bill with friends and that only happens in those situations but I don't care enough (and I can just assume that 80% of my ATM withdrawals go to food).
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post #22 of 23
5/18/11 at 12:10pm
I use a LibreOffice spreadsheet.

Don't really want to have a third-party like Mint or whatever on the internet (in the cloud) with my personal banking and financial details.
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post #23 of 23
5/19/11 at 6:04pm
I'm using MoneyWell on Mac. I don't bother putting in cash purchases, but I do put in everything I charge on my card, as well as the few bills I pay. Works pretty good, gives you a few categories, makes a few nice graphs and it's easy to use. Sure, you can duplicate basically the same thing with an Excel spreadsheet, but the interface is much nicer and you can sync it with iOS devices.
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