

Ask HN: How do you keep track of your personal expenses? - noobie


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chrisrickard
I whole-heartidly recommend YNAB (You Need Another Budget).
[http://www.youneedabudget.com](http://www.youneedabudget.com)

You have to enter all your income/expenses in manual, but that's part of it's
value - it really makes you accountable for what you spend.

Since tracking all expenses for maybe 5 months, I have probably saved
thousands of dollars simply by making cheaper choices and being mindful of
excess.

~~~
bengali3
whole-heartildy agreed. very different way of thinking compared to the post-
mortem options like Mint. See
[http://www.youneedabudget.com/method](http://www.youneedabudget.com/method)

bonus: here's Jesse Mecham's MicroConf 2014 talk
[http://www.microconf.com/videos-2014.html](http://www.microconf.com/videos-2014.html)

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mrorbitman
I use mint.com, which is free and pretty amazing. It makes automatically
tracks all of your credit card and bank account activity, creates useful and
informative graphs, lets you set up budgets and notifications, and all around
is fun to use. highly recommend.

~~~
pzxc
It's awesome but it has stagnated and slowly started to go downhill since
Intuit (the Quicken/Turbotax company) bought it. First there were no updates
for a long time, and recently they FINALLY started changing things a little
bit here and there.... those changes being more overt advertising, that is. :(

I wish the mint folks had never sold out. But you can't change the past, so
now I just hope Intuit doesn't ruin it before the next personal finance
tracking startup comes along to kick mint's ass so I have a replacement.

~~~
smartician
I've been using Mint.com since 2008, and just the other day I contemplated how
astonishingly little it has changed since then. The "Investments" section is
still as unusable as it was back then (personalcapital.com is running laps
around it). I think the homepage/log in screen was redesigned, and as you
said, more overt advertising was added. Maybe there were some backend changes,
but as a customer, the lack of progress is staggering.

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alc90
I use Money Lover - an Android app that's easy to use and quite usefull. Also
for a few weeks now I've started keeping track using Quip sreadsheets.

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kentnek
I'm also using Money Lover everyday. The Budgets and Events features are
really powerful.

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JacobAldridge
Low tech solution that has evolved over time - spreadsheets, fortnightly
budget reconciliation, and a hand-written Personal Balance Sheet (which I
replicate in the Wealth+ app).

The Budget spreadsheet has a (annual/qtrly/mthly/weekly) budget for about 100
items (this is the bit that's evolved most over 10+ years), broken into 15
categories (including Investment and Cash Reserves; this also evolves). Most
expenses are Food or Entertainment - these get a fortnightly cash amount,
rather than having to reconcile that individually. Everything else goes on a
Debit Card and is recorded - takes us about 20-30mins a fortnight.

The Personal Balance Sheet was a revelation for me at the beginning of last
year - suddenly when we talk about money, we're talking about our net worth
and assets not how much we spent on lunches or clothes. I write it out
longhand as part of my monthly 'Board' financials - so it includes my own
business, property, and some categories like Other Business Equity that are
currently empty. The Wealth+ App graphs it all, and you can see some cause and
effect - our Cash dropped last month because of some renovations, but our
Property Values have gone up this month.

A Funds Manager I know who used to lunch with these guys for work once told me
high-net-worth-individuals disproportionately use cash - they see money as
real, not abstract.

For me, there's an analogy with understanding my finances. Sure, I can have a
system spit me out a personal balance sheet each month - but hand-rolling my
own in coloured markers connects me to the reality.

I'm always happy to share these templates if it might help anyone - email is
in my profile.

[Edit] I should add, I'm going to review the other options in this thread.
Like a To Do List app, with Budgets it can be hard to find something that
replicates how you do it.

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yllow
Apps definitely. I'm using Saved, fairly new iOS app. It has clean graft, pie
chart and a list of expenses in week/month mode. But the main benefit is
speed. Saved takes seconds to use at any point, especially during entering
figures and immediately get a clear overview of what's going on. I strongly
recommend this app, if only you don't demand it syncs with credit card.
[https://www.snappymob.com/saved/](https://www.snappymob.com/saved/)

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loumf
Step one is to use cash as little as possible. Then practically any reasonable
thing you pick (Mint, Quicken, etc) can pick up your expenses from your credit
card or bank.

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zhte415
Excel.

Learn and practice double-entry accounting including how to manage many
accounts: payable accounts, receivable accounts. For a personal solution, it
can't be beat (IMHO).

~~~
pdiddy
Any suggestions on where to start learning?

~~~
zhte415
I've recommended and have had good feedback on the Coursera course
Introduction to Financial Accounting.

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CongT
I have tried serval applications on both PC and smartphone, but 6 months ago I
decided to stick to Money Lover every day. Easy to use, friendly and it
contains most tools and functions I need to manage my expenses. I extremely
love the function Event Mode which support users tracking all spending during
trips. And web version is pretty cool, very simple for lazy guy like me.

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xzlzx
I switched from Mint to Personal Capital
([https://www.personalcapital.com](https://www.personalcapital.com)) and
haven't looked back. The interface is more modern, and the graphs and summary
emails are more on topic with what I care about in my spending trends.

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KhalPanda
I like ledger-cli.

Open source, command-line, double-entry accounting system that handles
multiple currencies, stocks, recurring payments, etc with highly customizable
reporting.

[http://www.ledger-cli.org/](http://www.ledger-cli.org/)

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narwally
I use Shoeboxed.
[https://www.shoeboxed.com/features/](https://www.shoeboxed.com/features/)

I just send them a prepaid envelope full of my receipts every week or so.

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debacle
I keep track of my expenses in gmail. I manage them with scalc.

