How do u keep track of your budget? best app for expenses?

shofar

Tue, Feb 04 2014, 9:42 pm

Do you write down every time you spend money? Do you use quick books? I would really like a app for an android that keeps track of all credit and debit cards, checks and cash and where u can set a budget as well. Any ideas?

seeker

Tue, Feb 04 2014, 10:08 pm

Mint.com - there is an app to go with it. I prefer the website for looking up records because it seems more flexible in what you can search for, and the app is excellent for recording cash/checks on the go as well as basic tracking. They work together. It lets you set budgets and then tracks them according to the expenses that come in. Same for savings goals. It puts a lot of the info into nice graphs so you can visualize what goes up or down, or what percentage is going to different expenses... A really superb program. It's free and made by a reputable company so I'm comfortable enough to use it, security-wise.

shofar

Wed, Feb 05 2014, 2:49 am

seeker wrote:

Thanks. I will try it. How do u add in cash or descriptions of checks? Can u see previous months expenses? How do u use it day to day?

seeker

Wed, Feb 05 2014, 2:25 pm

There's a button on the app for entering purchases. Download it and you'll see, it's free anyway.
Yes, you can see previous months' expenses, that's most of the point.
I don't use it every day but I use it for:
1. Checking what I've spent on specific things in the past to get an idea of what to budget in the future
2. Seeing where the money is going, either generally or if I notice we've had more expenses than usual
3. Seeing what I've already spent vs. what's left in a budget category
4. Helps for keeping track of what I spend on work-related things, to report for tax deductions (obviously you need other records as well, but this can help sum it up)
5. Checking whether certain payments came in, because it's easier to log into than my bank website

runninglate

Tue, Feb 18 2014, 5:07 pm

Just wondering how you determined that mint.com is secure. I would love to use it, but I'm nervous about entering so much personal information.

seeker

Tue, Feb 18 2014, 6:49 pm

1. It's owned by a reputable brand
2. Good reputation, no scandals or anything
Those were enough to get me started until
3. No personal bad experiences

runninglate

Sat, Mar 01 2014, 7:53 pm

I gs I'm not understanding how exactly mint works, but why do they need my log in info for my bank accounts? What I'm looking for is to track my expenses on my credit card, couldn't they just use a copy of my credit card bbbill?

SplitPea

Sat, Mar 01 2014, 8:01 pm

My husband (an accountant) says he is wary of Mint.com because its free. He says every free app works in some way to make money be it date mining, cooky storage etc. there is no such thing as a free ap. they make money some how.

seeker

Sat, Mar 01 2014, 8:08 pm

Mint.com does promote certain products and services but it's not pushy about it. I agree it's not so comfortable sharing your info; it's a personal choice thing.

I'm not sure if you actually have to put in your bank info or if there's an option to enter everything manually. They use the bank account to automatically track your income and expenses as it happens, but since you can also enter items yourself, you could probably do it all that way - though that kind of defeats the purpose, because the whole point is that the app does it for you so you don't have to.it would still have advantages over a paper list though...