Anyone have a kick ass family budget spreadsheet?

[MikeMc]

Nerd question: I'm hoping someone has a line on a solid family budget spreadsheet?

I'm looking at the native Excel one(s) but there must be something better out there.

Any ideas? A Google search hits on a whack of pay to download ones but there must be some free intelligent ones out there.

Hopefully this is the correct forum to place this in.

[The Goon]

Preet Banerjee recommends the one at Squawkfox:

http://www.squawkfox.com/2010/04/26/budget-spreadsheet/

[Ducay]

Mint.com

/thread

[GGG]

What kind of features do you want?

I have a basic one which I just bunch everything into categories. Then at the end of the month I import my visa and bank statements and assign each expense a number based on the category it falls into. Then it totals each catagory so I can compare it to my overall budget.

It is cumbersome and not user friendly I want to write a query which will auto populate the expenses into categories for me based on key words but haven't bothered yet.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by GGG

What kind of features do you want?

I have a basic one which I just bunch everything into categories. Then at the end of the month I import my visa and bank statements and assign each expense a number based on the category it falls into. Then it totals each catagory so I can compare it to my overall budget.

It is cumbersome and not user friendly I want to write a query which will auto populate the expenses into categories for me based on key words but haven't bothered yet.

I used to do something similar until I discovered mint. Automatically pulls transactions and assigns categories on a daily basis from pretty much all banks and credit card providers, etc.
Best thing is you can have it as complicated or as simple as you want it, and will continue to compile info and budgets even if you skip a month.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Ducay

I used to do something similar until I discovered mint. Automatically pulls transactions and assigns categories on a daily basis from pretty much all banks and credit card providers, etc.
Best thing is you can have it as complicated or as simple as you want it, and will continue to compile info and budgets even if you skip a month.

Is mint completely free?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Is mint completely free?

Yes

[MikeMc]

Thanks all. Looking at both suggestions now. I appreciate the input.

Mainly i just want an easy manner to track our family income, expenses, savings and net worth moving forward.

[GP_Matt]

I was of the impression that using Mint left you open to fraud.

Don't the banks have a clause preventing you from giving your login information to a third party website. Or voiding some of your protection if you do.

[Northendzone]

Just break your expenses down to those that are porn/sex related and the other column is wasted money.

You'll likely be stunned at how much is in the wasted column

[V]

Mint wouldn't work with our bank, so we couldn't use that. Ended up purchasing YNAB about a year ago, and we still use it religiously. Expenses have come down quite a bit just because we're watching it.

[maverickstruth]

Originally Posted by V

Mint wouldn't work with our bank, so we couldn't use that. Ended up purchasing YNAB about a year ago, and we still use it religiously. Expenses have come down quite a bit just because we're watching it.

Yep, I was going to recommend YNAB as well. I used Mint for years, but far prefer YNAB. There's usually some coupon codes floating around as well, though I think it's definitely worth full price.

[jayocal]

I just downloaded YNAB a few hours ago thanks to this thread.

I've been playing around and setting up our family budget. I think it's really going to help us. It's pretty slick. Love it so far.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by maverickstruth

Yep, I was going to recommend YNAB as well. I used Mint for years, but far prefer YNAB. There's usually some coupon codes floating around as well, though I think it's definitely worth full price.

Can you give me a quick rundown of what the difference is? I'm not totally ashamed to say that I can be a little bit (or maybe more than a little bit) OCD when it comes to this kind of thing. I looked at the website for YNAB and it does look pretty impressive, and I'm not against spending money for something better. Just curious to hear from you because you have used both and could probably explain what makes it better.

[troutman]

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/05/05lbuy.phtml

Wife: We've tried debt consolidation companies.

Husband: We've even taken out loans to help make payments.

Spokesman: Well, you're not the only ones. Did you know that millions of Americans live with debt they cannot control? That's why I developed this unique new program for managing your debt. It's called [presents book] "Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford."

Wife: Let me see that... [grabs book, reads] "If you don't have any money, you should not buy anything." Hmm, sounds interesting

Husband: Sounds confusing.

[maverickstruth]

Originally Posted by Slava

Can you give me a quick rundown of what the difference is? I'm not totally ashamed to say that I can be a little bit (or maybe more than a little bit) OCD when it comes to this kind of thing. I looked at the website for YNAB and it does look pretty impressive, and I'm not against spending money for something better. Just curious to hear from you because you have used both and could probably explain what makes it better.

Four big differences that come immediately to mind:

1) Mint's budgets tool is based on projections of future earnings. In other words, you tell it how much income you expect to earn in a month and then you allocate from there. YNAB is based on actual earnings. In other words, you enter your income (or how much you have in each of your accounts) and you allocate based on that. Every time you get new income, you can allocate it to future spending. But you can't allocate money you don't have yet.

2) Mint is passive budgeting, YNAB is active. Mint reads from your bank accounts, does automatic categorizations, and basically does as much of the work for you as possible. YNAB, you have to enter your transactions one-by-one (they have an app that allows you to do it while you're out and about, too), though it does remember how you categorized previous transactions from a given vendor.

3) Moving money around / transferring between budgets was always a pain for me in Mint because I had to create fake transactions to reflect a 'spend' from one budget item and an 'income' into another budget item. This really screwed with the reporting tools when I wanted to see spending levels (for example). In YNAB, it's just a matter of adjusting your budget amounts; no mucking with transactions.

4) YNAB doesn't handle investments particularly well, whereas Mint reads them just like any other account. I've created what they call 'off-budget accounts' in YNAB and update the 'balance' monthly to keep my net worth figures up to date, and that's good enough for my purposes.

If you're OCD about this stuff, then I'd say definitely go YNAB. For me it's almost like a game -- how much can I optimize things this month? With Mint, I didn't have the fine-grained control to let me play with the details.

As a tip, if you (or anyone else reading this) goes with YNAB, definitely go through their getting started tutorials. YNAB works really well just as a budgeting tool, but they have an ethos (things like 'give every dollar a job') that aligns with how the tool works, which makes really makes it more than just a spreadsheet. Even for someone like me who has always been really good with finances - no debt, pretty frugal, good with budgeting, etc. - and YNAB gives me the control I wish I'd had with Mint.

(I feel like at the end of all that, I need some kind of "I'm not affiliated with YNAB" disclaimer :P)

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Is mint completely free?

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Yes

"Free" as in doesn't cost you money to use. But you are giving them access to quite a bit of highly sensitive personal information.

Now it's up to each person to decide if the service provided by Mint is a good value for the amount of information you're sharing.

For me personally it wasn't, I don't think it's a bad product, and I completely understand why people use it. The user experience is fantastic, it really is top shelf financial software. But as I said, the trade off in information wasn't worth it.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by maverickstruth

Four big differences that come immediately to mind:

1) Mint's budgets tool is based on projections of future earnings. In other words, you tell it how much income you expect to earn in a month and then you allocate from there. YNAB is based on actual earnings. In other words, you enter your income (or how much you have in each of your accounts) and you allocate based on that. Every time you get new income, you can allocate it to future spending. But you can't allocate money you don't have yet.

2) Mint is passive budgeting, YNAB is active. Mint reads from your bank accounts, does automatic categorizations, and basically does as much of the work for you as possible. YNAB, you have to enter your transactions one-by-one (they have an app that allows you to do it while you're out and about, too), though it does remember how you categorized previous transactions from a given vendor.

3) Moving money around / transferring between budgets was always a pain for me in Mint because I had to create fake transactions to reflect a 'spend' from one budget item and an 'income' into another budget item. This really screwed with the reporting tools when I wanted to see spending levels (for example). In YNAB, it's just a matter of adjusting your budget amounts; no mucking with transactions.

4) YNAB doesn't handle investments particularly well, whereas Mint reads them just like any other account. I've created what they call 'off-budget accounts' in YNAB and update the 'balance' monthly to keep my net worth figures up to date, and that's good enough for my purposes.

If you're OCD about this stuff, then I'd say definitely go YNAB. For me it's almost like a game -- how much can I optimize things this month? With Mint, I didn't have the fine-grained control to let me play with the details.

As a tip, if you (or anyone else reading this) goes with YNAB, definitely go through their getting started tutorials. YNAB works really well just as a budgeting tool, but they have an ethos (things like 'give every dollar a job') that aligns with how the tool works, which makes really makes it more than just a spreadsheet. Even for someone like me who has always been really good with finances - no debt, pretty frugal, good with budgeting, etc. - and YNAB gives me the control I wish I'd had with Mint.

(I feel like at the end of all that, I need some kind of "I'm not affiliated with YNAB" disclaimer :P)

Just wanted to say thanks for the great amount of information here!

[V]

Originally Posted by maverickstruth

Four big differences that come immediately to mind:

2) Mint is passive budgeting, YNAB is active. Mint reads from your bank accounts, does automatic categorizations, and basically does as much of the work for you as possible. YNAB, you have to enter your transactions one-by-one (they have an app that allows you to do it while you're out and about, too), though it does remember how you categorized previous transactions from a given vendor.

Keeping in mind the fact that if you fall behind in entering transactions you can always import your statements into YNAB, which is very quick and easy. Entering the transactions can be a little tedious at times, so I've used this feature a few times. Only issue is that it does take away from the whole idea of YNAB, which is active budgeting. I do find that the app is pretty useful, though, where I can enter transactions as I make them at the store. The program remembers categories, so you don't have to waste any time categorizing your expenses.

[calculoso]

Originally Posted by maverickstruth

3) Moving money around / transferring between budgets was always a pain for me in Mint because I had to create fake transactions to reflect a 'spend' from one budget item and an 'income' into another budget item. This really screwed with the reporting tools when I wanted to see spending levels (for example). In YNAB, it's just a matter of adjusting your budget amounts; no mucking with transactions.

The amount budgeted for any item can be adjusted in Mint as well