Budget/Investment Apps... do you use one?

[DawgMan]

So I am an old school Quicken guy... old school in that I still review my credit card statements and check book manually entering them in my Quicken account once a month. Yes, I know there is a way to set it up to automate otherwise, but I just have to touch/feel my transactions as it somehow helps me "feel" what I am spending and where. I also use some of the Quicken rudimentary investment performance and forecasting features. I see my kids all using apps such as Mint to run their finances and am wondering if I need to to move on into the 21st century come this Jan and start using a new system, app. Anyone find a good app to take the place of their old money managing system that 1) was a good budget tool, and 2) had some good investment management/analysis/forecasting tools/calculators they would highly recommend?

 

[pb4uski]

Maybe your first baby step to move into the 21st century would be to just import transaction into Quicken and continue using the tool that you are used to.

I have every financial account defined to Quicken and use One-Step Update periodically to update all accounts and import transactions.... then I review and accept transactions... that gives me the opportunity to review them and make sure that they are properly categorized.

One thing that I really like about Quicken is that I have all my regular deposits and bills defined and I can then do a 90-day projection of the balances in the account that I use to pay my bills and see if/when I need to consider any special transfers to make sure that I don't overdraw my account.

 

[bobandsherry]

^^^what they said. Mint is just a scaled back version of Quicken (Quicken owns Mint). I tried Mint and it left me wanting more, so I stuck with Quicken. Honestly I've tried almost all Quicken alternatives, nothing checked all the boxes that Quicken does for me. I have Quicken download my transactions and would recommend that you do that, lots of time saved and yet still maintain the richness of your detailed transactions. You can also get Quicken to save your info to the cloud and then access your Quicken info from phone or tablet. You don't need something new, you just need to fully use and appreciate what you already have. [emoji41]

 

[bingybear]

excel/libreOffice

 

[Katsmeow]

I have used YNAB for many years. I just recently subscribed to Quicken once again (I bought it about 3 years ago and wasn't really happy with it). I like the zero based budgeting of YNAB. But, it is very limited in some ways so I decided to do Quicken as well. I am grandfathered into inexpensive subscription to YNAB so may end up keeping both.

YNAB meets your criteria 1 very well. It does not meet 2 at all. And that is the problem. I haven't yet found any software that does both of these well. It simply may not exist so I may just need to use Quicken and YNAB....

 

[steelyman]

I’m another Quicken user and remain so.

As far as hardware and native OS are concerned, I knew I didn’t want to remain on PC/Windows and wanted to move to Mac (Unix-like). But I’d tried Quicken for Mac and thought it was terrible. I looked into iBank (since renamed to Banktivity), but that had its drawbacks too.

I’m now using Quicken for Windows through a Parallels Windows VM on an iMac running MacOS Mojave.

Everything works and I figure that now ER’d. the extra expense is worth it rather than setting up some software (sort of) workarounds that don’t quite do what I want. I can go for a walk instead!

 

[W2R]

Not me.

I actually bought Quicken back in 2010, because so many ER Forum members that I greatly respect have used it for years. I really tried to adjust to it and like it, but failed. I also tried YNAB with similar results.

I keep track of my spending and investments in Excel (well, Open Office). I like this a lot better for some reason.

 

[donheff]

Not me.

I actually bought Quicken back in 2010, because so many ER Forum members that I greatly respect have used it for years. I really tried to adjust to it and like it, but failed. I also tried YNAB with similar results.

I keep track of my spending and investments in Excel (well, Open Office). I like this a lot better for some reason.

+1 I used Quicken years ago and was always screwing up one thing or another. I eventually dumped it and use a Google Sheet tied to Google Finance functions to track my accounts day to day bounces, my AA, and my SWR. Back in the day with Quicken I needed to track all my expenditures by category from checking and CCs so I could analyze my spend and evaluate my "number" for ER. 14 years into ER I no longer need a budget or to track the minutia of my spending, I just track how much I liquidate each year.

 

[COcheesehead]

Use Google Docs. Created my own. Very simple so it’s not a chore to update. I have years of data at my fingertips.

 

[NgineER]

^^+1. Didn’t like how quicken worked and decided to set up a simple google doc to track investments and track spending

 

[DayDreaming]

I use Moneydance:
Moneydance - Personal Finance Manager for Mac, Windows, and Linux | Infinite Kind

 

[VanWinkle]

Use Google Docs. Created my own. Very simple so it’s not a chore to update. I have years of data at my fingertips.

+1

 

[Ronstar]

Started with Quicken years ago. Then quit Quicken and started my own spreadsheet with macros that categorized expenses. And created a net worth summary and running WR calculation.

But the categorization in my spreadsheet wasn't as good as in Quicken. So now I'm back to Quicken and continue the running WR portion of the spreadsheet.

 

[SumDay]

I've been using Quicken for ~10 years. I've tried to find something comparable, and am resigned to the fact I'll be paying for the every other year upgrade. There are a few things I don't like about it, but all things considered - it does what I need.

As someone said above, set up the download feature - it makes life a lot easier.

 

[btdt22]

I use USAA bankings Money Manager. Easy to use and automatic tracking......not to mention 'free'

 

[steelyman]

I’m also a Google Sheets user and probably use it more frequently than Quicken for various things.

So in my case, there’s not just a single tool/package that does the job.

 

[kgtest]

Percentage Calculator (I am lazy)
Yahoo Finance Portfolio app
ER
M*
Google Drive / Sheet (Allows me one 2-click access to realtime net-worth via my Customized Google Sheet). Probably my favorite.
My Credit Union App (for xfering to DW, Vanguard for Roth contributions) and check deposits.

I've used I-Orp, TaxCaster and FIRECalc quite extensively, although those are not apps.

 

[tulak]

+1 for downloading transactions. Entering data is tedious.

I moved away from Quicken years ago to Moneydance. But if you’re happy with Quicken and it works for you, I’d stay with it.

I don’t care for any cloud based finance apps. There’s no way I’d share my account info with them so they could aggregate all my data.

 

[steelyman]

I don’t care for any cloud based finance apps. There’s no way I’d share my account info with them so they could aggregate all my data.

I feel the same way. While my Google Sheets have complete information about holdings (shares, tickers, location - like Fidelity, Vanguard), there’s no account information.

I also don’t link any accounts to Quicken or use its mobile features. My transactions are simple enough to enter manually and Quicken has “learned” my categories pretty well.

 

[HI Bill]

I guess I'm really a dinosaur! I use Excel, with worksheet tabs for:

1) tracking investments/NAV
2) checking
3) savings
4) asset allocation
5) current year tax estimate
6) ESOP tracking
7) ROTH cost basis tracking
8) budgets/credit limits/social security
9) Retirement income/tax planning

Many of these are cross-linked. I enjoy maintaining these, and understanding the interconnectedness of all of these.

 

[HI Bill]

I feel the same way. While my Google Sheets have complete information about holdings (shares, tickers, location - like Fidelity, Vanguard), there’s no account information.

I also don’t link any accounts to Quicken or use its mobile features. My transactions are simple enough to enter manually and Quicken has “learned” my categories pretty well.

I understand your feeling. MINT uses read-only access. MINT is owned by Quicken (who I use to file taxes, TurboTax), who I give access to my Vanguard accounts when it comes time to download 1099s. I've gotten over the fear of sharing such data. MINT is an account aggregator.

 

[RE2Boys]

I understand your feeling. MINT uses read-only access. MINT is owned by Quicken (who I use to file taxes, TurboTax), who I give access to my Vanguard accounts when it comes time to download 1099s. I've gotten over the fear of sharing such data. MINT is an account aggregator.

TurboTax and Mint are owned by Intuit. Intuit sold off Quicken back n 2016.

 

[ejman]

I feel the same way. While my Google Sheets have complete information about holdings (shares, tickers, location - like Fidelity, Vanguard), there’s no account information.

I also don’t link any accounts to Quicken or use its mobile features. My transactions are simple enough to enter manually and Quicken has “learned” my categories pretty well.

Same here except that I also use Quicken for investment information as well. I have Quicken 2010 and see no reason to update to allow for electronic download since it only takes me a few minutes once a week to manually enter all prior weeks transactions for a couple of credit cards or the few checks I write. After all, I'm retired it's not like I have hundreds of transactions a week and I've simplified my investments to where a few mutual funds do the job. Again, no big deal to manually enter a few mutual fund transactions a year.

 

[jimbee]

LibreOffice.

The last time I used Quicken was in 1996. I found that every function I used in Quicken could be easily replicated in a spreadsheet, so that's what I stuck with. Since my experiment using MS Windows at home didn't last long in the late '90s, and Intuit didn't make a version of Quicken for Linux meant that would forever be the last time for me.