S/O on Budget questions - What software do you use?

[littleme2]

With all the budget questions, it got me thinking that this is something I really need to do. I have no idea where the money goes and I really want to start saving for vacation, home improvement projects, retirement. The only thing we do for retirement is max out our work retirement account. So, now I want to get organised and see where it is all going.
So, I need to find a software to do this. What do you use? BTW, I have no idea how to use any software so it would have to be simple. I have heard of mint.com but I really don't want to give any website all my financial information.

Also, we are trying to save for the 6 month emergency savings. Is the 6 month amount pretax or after tax amount?

What kind of account do you keep your emergency savings in, i.e. savings, stocks, MMA? Right now, we just have a checking account and I think we may need another account for savings but I don't know what type.

Thanks.

[niccig]

I did just set up mint.com yesterday. I understand the concerns with giving out information, it is backed by intuit - same people as Quicken, and I think someone has better chance of getting information from my computer than from them. You don't give your name or account number, but you do need to give account log in/password. There is no transferring of money, it's read only site.

Reason I went with them is that they download the transactions every day automatically and you can tell it that a transaction from this place should be assigned this category. I've tried Quicken and Money (for Mac) and you have to download the transactions and go through and assign categories yourself and I just never did it. Mint will also email you updates, and for now I think DH needs this. I want to use YNAB (You Need a Budget) as it uses the envelope system, and I would prefer this. I think we'll use Mint for a while so we can see where the money is going, and if I can get DH on board with a budget, I'll transfer over to YNAB, and cancel mint account, go in and change all my account passwords.

[littleme2]

Which one would be better - You Need a Budget or Quicken?

[boltfam]

My husband uses and loves Quicken. Our emergency fund is in our checking account, because it's a high yielding one.

[infomama]

We own You Need A Budget but I have yet to set it up (bag over head). We still like Quicken for banking though.

[littleme2]

Is there a difference between Quicken and You Need a Budget? Do they both provide the same service?

[Mommy_Again]

Personally, I can't stand Quicken but I admittedly have very limited knowledge of how to use it. DH set me up on it but from what I can tell I have to manually assign categories to every.single.transaction and I use my debit card for EVERYTHING. So it just creates more work for me and I don't use it. I never found it to be a very user friendly program. Also I like using my bank's online banking but I think Quicken offers a direct bill pay option.

DH set up something with Mint but we're not using it to budget yet. I get email alerts for certain things and it seems like a nice interface. I'd suggest checking it out.

[littleme2]

So, exactly how complicated is You Need a Budget?

[niccig]

THis is my understanding of difference between YNAB and Quicken.


YNAB is the envelope system of budgeting - you work out how your money will work for you - you assign your dollars to a certain category. If you go over in one category you can adjust you budget so that the money comes out of other categories so you don't go over for that month. YNAB also wants you to work a month ahead - eventually you're paying for this month's bills with last month's money, so there's no paycheck to paycheck situation.

Quicken and Mint that I just set up, to me seem to be more tracking where you money goes. They do have budget components, but to me it seems secondary to the tracking. YNAB seems to be budget is primary focus. Quicken also does more with investment accounts etc.

I went with Mint as when I had Quicken and Money, I never downloaded the transactions from the bank, then sat there and assign categories. Mint does it automatically, but yes you have to give access to your accounts. Once you set the budget up, it will email you alert if over in a category - so you can go in and adjust budget.

I haven't checked recent version of Quicken or YNAB, but if you can assign rules "transaction from x means this" that helps. Also see it they automatically assign eg. Vons goes to grocery category without you having to do it.

I would also want something that emails you an alert - I don't know if YNAB or Quicken does this - with both I believe you have to sit down and do the transactions before you can get totals in each category. If you can do this weekly, it's not a problem. But I wasn't, so for us it was always looking back at what we had spent and not adjusting as we went forward.

You can download a trial version of both software, so maybe look through them.