I'm currently using mint.com to keep track of my financial accounts and budget and really like the ease of use, categorization of my purchases and budgeting tools but have never been at ease storing all my bank passwords at one third party site. Do you use mint.com for this or have another way to easily manage your accounts?
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If you want online and free, mint.com is a top choice right now. If you don't want it to be online, go with Quicken (which also has an online utility, but I have never used it). If you want free and offline you have two choices. Use Excel (or OpenOffice) to create your own spreadsheets and do everything manually, or go try Gnu Cash http://www.gnucash.org/ |
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I've always been a fan of the envelope accounting method. As such, I've been using mvelopes.com for about 2 years now with great success. I haven't been able to give mint.com a try because I live in Canada and they don't do the banks up here. |
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I didn't know mint.com cannot be used outside the US. You can use https://moneycenter.yodlee.com if you like, which is a free version of the backend engine used to drive mint.com |
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My wife and I use 2 excel spreadsheets: One breaks down our income and budgeted expenses on a paycheck-by-paycheck basis. The 2nd spreadsheet breaks down our savings account into several infrequent expenses. (If you're interested, these 2 spreadsheets are based on Dave Ramsey's allocated spending plan and breakdown of savings worksheets). To backup and share information, we use Dropbox. This allows me to see the the latest synced version of these spreadsheets on my iPod touch. For secure access and storage of bank account information (like passwords or account numbers) we use Keepass. To manage day-to-day expenses, we use an envelope system. My wife and I each have one of these. And that's pretty much it. It's simple and effective. |
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To track my expenses, I use clearcheckbook. It doesn't automatically update like mint, but that is by design. It's good if you just want a service that will let you track your expenses without getting in your way. I do use mint as an alternative interface to my online banking. Chase has an awful interface for searching through old transactions. I like the automatic nature of mint, but I also like to manually track my expenses to ensure accurate categorization. |
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