Online Budgeting minus the Online.

February 23, 2009 8:23 AM

Do any online budgeting tools exist that (a) allow manual entries and (b) don't require any access to my account information?

In the olden days when I was debt-free, I used to use Microsoft Money to track my budget. You could setup Money to import changes to your account automatically, import these changes manually via files you could retrieve from many credit card / banking web sites.. or you could simply add manual entries, either one-time or recurring charges or income.

These days I don't use the same computer with regularity and I'd like to move my budget to something a bit more full-featured than the Google Docs spreadsheet I've been running with. I've tried Mint.com, but frankly I'd rather manage the data myself without providing access to any of my account information. What I'm looking for would provide the type of data entry I've described, but really what I'm hoping to get out of this is the charting and scheduling functionality to both get a quick view of where all my money is going for any given month and to see how I'll be doing financially, say, 16 months from now if all goes according to plan.

Does anything like this currently exist?

posted by Raze2k to work & money (6 comments total)

I am trying out Spending Diary, as a quick get-those-numbers down somewhere kind of option. It doesn't link to an account, just tracks spending, catergories and can generate simple reports.
posted by typewriter at 9:05 AM on February 23

I don't anymore (i use mint now), but I used to use Pearbudget for my money tracking. There's a paid online version and a spreadsheet based version. It would probably have some but not all of the scheduling stuff you are looking for, but it should be worth at look.
posted by theDrizzle at 10:29 AM on February 23

Two months later and I'm still using Google Docs. Charting support is still bare bones so I remain hopeful that someday I'll find a service that works better for my needs, but for now it works well enough. To be continued ... ?
posted by Raze2k at 5:44 AM on May 1

I would love to find a service like what are describing that would allow me to sync with my iPhone. The iPhone (or similar device) is great for entering purchase data on the spot. It would be great to find a service that will sync with my iPhone so I could have a record of all my transactions. I agree with you about Mint.com. I just do not want to give a third party access to my account. Same goes for Quicken Online. I would be willing to pay $$ for such a service if it existed.
posted by DerekTheGeek at 8:53 PM on May 4

Five months later and I'm still using Google Docs. Whenever I can afford a laptop, I'll probably just wind up running a version of Microsoft Money or Quicken; it's a shame that I still haven't found something that suits my needs.

Oh well, shutting this thread down. Thanks everyone :)
posted by Raze2k at 8:57 AM on July 28

Actually, I just came across Money Strands which offers a lot of the features that I was looking for, although I don't believe it allows you to schedule recurring bills and such or to look at future balances. Still, the ability to manually add entries as well as import files is a plus, the interface is pleasant and the cost (it's free) is nice!
posted by Raze2k at 8:28 AM on July 29