Low-key budget software?

July 30, 2015 1:02 PM

I'm looking for a more exciting way to track my budget than the pen/paper/envelope method. But I hate Excel and Mint/YNAB/Quicken seem like overkill for what I'm looking for. What are the best options for tracking monthly expenses tese days?

I have a good general handle on my expenses, but I'd like to bump up my monthly savings, so I want to track my discretionary spending a bit more closely. I'm not interested in fussing with my credit cards or setting up a super complex thing, and frankly the hardcore fervor around YNAB and Mint turns me off a bit. I really just want a simple interface: customizable cateories for expenses and maybe a pie chart and a little warning that will let me know when I only have $8 left to spend on Starbucks this month in a way that's more exciting than the tried-and-true actual envelope method.

Any suggestions? So far, TheBirdy and PearBudget, recommended in a few posts from several years ago, seem like what I'm going for, so if anyone has any specific knowledge about those (or suggestions for how I can do this easily for free!) I'd love them.

posted by TwoStride to Work & Money (10 answers total)

I set up Mint exactly for this. I like it. I think it's popular for a reason.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:05 PM on July 30, 2015

This sounds exactly like YNAB, though it does cost money. The syncing/conflict handling is top-notch. You can take the YNAB software and leave the "rules". I did exactly that for years. (Of course, when I started following the rules, my savings increased dramatically.)

Or by "fervor" do you mean how much everyone likes/recommends it? That seems like a point in its favor.
posted by supercres at 1:16 PM on July 30, 2015

By "fervor" I mostly mean the marketing emphasis on "changing your life!" and following rules, etc. I really just want a stripped down expense tracker.

I'm not interested in linking my account information. Can I run Mint or YNAB without synching my credit cards/debit card?
posted by TwoStride at 1:35 PM on July 30, 2015

You're basically describing YNAB to a tee. They don't recommend you sync your bank accounts, and the program is waaaay more stripped-down to essentials than Quicken or even Mint (which I think does basically require you to sync your accounts). YNAB is essentially just a high-quality software interface for the envelope method.
posted by dialetheia at 1:42 PM on July 30, 2015

You need GnuCash. There's an Android adjunct for it now, too, so you can enter data in the field and sync later.

"The cloud" is just a corporate buzzword-speak way of saying "someone else's computer." Don't trust any solution that sends your data -- especially financial data -- to the cloud.

I trust something like GnuCash (where lots of smart people have eyes on the source and no incentive to lie about it) a lot more than any of the commercial offerings. I'd be worried about a closed-source solution wanting to "phone home," stealing or leaking data, or pushing an update that does something sketchy.
posted by sourcequench at 1:53 PM on July 30, 2015

YNAB actually doesn't have the ability to automatically link account information, the entry is dead simple, and there's a phone app which combined with DropBox + syncing means you can enter purchases you make while on the go. The rules it crows about are likely rules you want to follow because you are describing some of them in your post: you put income you get into buckets and you try not to spend more than is in your buckets, and if you have to, you need to take money from another bucket and add it to the other bucket. If that's the system you want, then it will give it to you in spades. There's just two other "rules" that they suggest: budgeting for larger expenses by dividing up the big payment into small payments you set aside monthly and reaching a point where you can reserve all income that comes into you this month to budget with next month so your finances are always operating with a buffer. Those are optional, however, and it's easy to use the software without following those last two rules.

You can even fudge on one rule and let categories get in the red month to month, but if you don't intend to track all of your purchases with on budget accounts, it could be difficult to use YNAB. My boyfriend didn't get it to work with how he wanted, which was just keeping track of discretionary expenses, because he didn't want to manage his income + outflow and didn't want to set up a specific discretionary expense accounts to silo them in a way YNAB would work with; he does much better with Mint because he doesn't like entering in every transaction he makes. I work very well with YNAB because I do want to keep track of everything and don't mind entering in transactions.

All the rules are doing is trying to teach people who have NO idea about the basics of budgeting and money management a system where they are no longer scrambling paycheck to paycheck, and then people who did not know how to do that before YNAB get very excited about it once they use YNAB to do it. But YNAB is not necessary to do it, and they fully admit that one can follow their quite simple rules just using a spreadsheet. In any case, YNAB is free to try for 31 days so it wouldn't be hard to see if it works for you and whether or not it would be worth the price tag.

I'm assuming that hating Excel also translates to hating a Google Doc spreadsheet, which would be free and accessible across platforms in some fashion.

I've also heard about GNUCash, which is an open source finance program, but I've gotten the impression the learning curve can be a bit steep, and it has a LOT more features than the ones you are looking for.
posted by foxfirefey at 1:55 PM on July 30, 2015

Yeah, I'm gonna third (fourth?) YNAB here. It's essentially a glorified spreadsheet. I don't think you CAN sync. I certainly enter everything by hand. It doesn't take long.

It doesn't give you a warning but you can do things like sync to a phone app and check the category ("envelope") before you spend.

I also use it for a small business and I basically use it as a tracker. It's easy to export what I need and there are graphs.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 1:56 PM on July 30, 2015

YNAB doesn't allow automatic syncing of bank accounts, but they do allow you to import the data that most online banking services provide, if you need to import a bunch of transactions at once. It's a nice compromise - you have the ability to do it if you need to for whatever reason, but it's somewhat difficult and the path of least resistance is to enter each transaction manually, like you want.
posted by dialetheia at 2:23 PM on July 30, 2015

I'm superlatively lazy, but have managed to use Receipt Tracker to good effect. I only need to snap a picture of a receipt, then add a category. The app does the rest. It took a few minutes to set up my own categories, but otherwise it's been little to no effort. You can review each expense along with the saved photo, as well as view the aggregated data in bar graph format.

Unfortunately for most, you will only be able to use this app with Windows Phone. If you do have such a device, the app is free and can export to OneDrive as .csv, or to OneNote.
posted by gox3r at 2:41 PM on July 30, 2015

I've tried both GNUCash and YNAB. I do NOT recommend GNUCash. I'm a software engineer and regularly use Linux, but GNUCash definitely had a steep learning curve. I used it for 2 months and could do the things I wanted, but not easily. If you want "easy" or "low transaction cost", GNUCash is NOT it.

I really like YNAB for all the above stated reasons. I just ignore the whole philosophy behind it. (I am *still* not "spending last month's income, because that's not how I think about my cushion.)
posted by ethidda at 5:32 PM on July 30, 2015