Software for a young adult to track bank, spending

April 19, 2022 10:28 AM

Can anyone suggest software for a young adult (turning 18, graduating high school) to track paychecks, cash payments, bills, etc.? iPhone and MacOS; free preferred.

So far it's not full-on "household budgeting" time for him, though that feature might be useful in the future. He has a phone bill & car insurance to us, plus cash & paycheck from a few sources, and occasional things we pay for that he gets an IOU to pay back. He loves his iPhone, and deposits checks to our credit union using their app.

Currently he has a homemade spreadsheet where he manually types in each bank deposit -- and it's so sluggish to launch Excel that he saves up the work for weeks at a time. Grrrrr.

The Wirecutter review of budgeting software picks two paid applications (Simplifi and YNAB), though they also offer a barebones .csv file to download as the starting point for making your own budget.

posted by wenestvedt to Work & Money (14 answers total)

I've been using Mint for over a decade now and I absolutely love it.
posted by phunniemee at 10:42 AM on April 19, 2022

I adore YNAB, but the price has increased recently. But IMO zero-based budgeting (Which YNAB is) is the way to go. I’ve heard of some competing free versions, I can’t personally recommend them but a quick google search says good budget may be a feee alternative.
posted by sillysally at 10:49 AM on April 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

Also, if you checkout the YNAB Reddit group, they usually have some alternatives to recommend, I remember seeing many discussions about it after the most recent price hike.
posted by sillysally at 10:51 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

YNAB is free for students → https://www.youneedabudget.com/college/
posted by 10ch at 10:52 AM on April 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've used YNAB for something like 10 years now and highly recommend it. I think it's worth the cost. It will grow with him as his budgeting needs get more complex over time.
posted by number9dream at 10:56 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have and use YNAB 4, a standalone version purchased long ago on Steam. I no longer recommend YNAB. They went from a sensible "purchase it once and own it" model to a subscription that keeps getting more expensive, for very little or no improvement in features over the original model.
posted by xedrik at 11:02 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

There is no more powerful financial tool than YNAB in my opinion. Fully worth the cost of subscription every year no matter what, but it is free for students.
posted by anderjen at 11:39 AM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: (Clarification: it's free for one year for currently-enrolled college students.)
posted by wenestvedt at 12:12 PM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: sillysally: ...a quick google search says good budget may be a feee alternative.

Goodbudget is at https://goodbudget.com/how-it-works/ and offers a free tier and a paid tier.

And the recommendation to check r/YNAB is a good one! There's a thread today titled "Advice for a newbie" that's pretty broadlyuseful.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:19 PM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Being able to use a spreadsheet is a super-useful tool for students and I keep my financial data in a GSheet. I like being able to do calculations on the fly off to the side if I want to forecast something, etc. There are lots of free budget templates available, I just do monthly expense/income tracking sheets and an annual summary sheet.
posted by momus_window at 12:32 PM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Add another vote for YNAB (or at least the method) to get started.

Once upon a time, I had an Excel spreadsheet that I used to track everything. It was a pain to manage, so I switched to YNAB back in 2010. I eventually upgraded to v4 in 2013, which was the last standalone version you could get. It did everything I needed from a savings/projection standpoint. (Auto-sync with my bank looks nice but I don't mind hand entering in everything. I find that it forces me to review every single transaction I've made and that 2nd look provides a bit of valuable insight into just how much things cost. )

As a student, the 1st year free option may be a good idea to get used to the idea and gain visibility into where the cash is flowing. After that you can make the determination if it is worth the $100/yr to keep using it or take what you learned and roll your own spreadsheet.

Side note: I have a general annoyance with things that switch from 'buy once' to 'subscription' based pricing. I know that it cost money to support the back end infrastructure to support the app, but $15/mo is a bit on the high side. That is Netflix premium level pricing. Once you get to a certain feature set, the software does the trick and the only new features are really just bug fixes to keep stuff working. I do wish they offered a low cost tier that just did basic budgeting and ditched the advanced stuff like automatic bank syncing.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 1:02 PM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’ve used Mint for years and it works for me. I think it’s actually better than a more full featured app for basic tracking of input vs. output, how much you spend on groceries, etc. it’s easy to just launch the iPhone app every couple of days to keep track of how you’re doing.
posted by MadamM at 1:15 PM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I use Google Sheets and it's a good alternative because it can be accessed through the phone or computer.
posted by DoubleLune at 1:54 PM on April 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

The article says they liked Zeta but could not recommend it because it lacks two factor authentication. The Zeta website says it has two factor now. It looks very couple focused but it is also free so it might be worth trying it out a single person.
posted by soelo at 6:51 AM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]