Tracking Support

[cdttmm]

After a less than frugal month, I am ready to start tracking again on Tuesday, May 1. Looking forward to being super organized when it comes to my finances!

[catherine]

I agree with Rosemary that Mint is great for tracking accounts--it gets an A for that.

For tracking spending, I'd give it a C+ because it doesn't have a great "wallet" system, and the budget software is pretty lame.

I use Mint when I really want to know what my accounts are up to without any work on my part. I do my budget in YNAB, setting up categories to reflect the Elizabeth Warren "All Your Worth" proportion of 50% Needs, 30% Wants, and 20% Savings/Debt Reduction (however, I have a lower %age for "Wants" which is diverted into the Savings/Debt bucket.)

[HKPassey]

We've posted some useful tracking tools on the wiki as well: http://financialintegrity.org/index....Tracking_tools. Are there any we should add?

Helen

[fidgiegirl]

I did go through them before, and the buddi link seems to be broken.

Will let you know if I stumble upon anything awesome . . .

[RoseFI]

PERFECT timing on this for me. I can't believe how behind I am, and how "unconscious" (relatively speaking) about money I've been for the past few months. I think that is because I haven't had any specific goals for my money -- that's the best motivator. I also have been vacillating re: technology. Still using 2004 Quickbooks for bookkeeping, but nothing else on that old PC. The rest of my life has been on a mac for the past year. Started to try to migrate to GnuCash (free download) but I miss the bells & whistles of QB --- not to mention the 12 years of historical data! Really bad form lately though, as the desk is dominated by the PC, and so receipts are just thrown on top of it while I work at the kitchen table on the rest of life. The desk is a cabinet, so the doors just close, and out-of-sight...

Got to get my %*& together before I start thinking about offering another FI class, so for goodness' sakes -- Count me in!

[fidgiegirl]

I wanted to take a baby step toward getting back on track, but it is so daunting . . . maybe becuase there are so many more accounts now? Maybe what I need to do is hook Mint to the accounts that never calculated correctly in Moneydance, anyway, and only use Moneydance to worry about spending tracking and maybe savings accounts/checking/CC balances. I like the flexibility in Moneydance, and I'm used to the interface, but it was always worthless for tracking the mortgage balances and the retirement accounts, anyway.

I also think I need to just start over with Moneydance if I'm gonna do it.

Or maybe just use Excel?

We have business expenses now (not a ton, but some), and we're two people, so the whole tracking thing is a lot more daunting than when I was single and basically broke

How's it going for you?

[RoseFI]

I have used a combination of Excel and Quickbooks for, oh, jeez can it be almost 20 years now? Well really I just started the steps officially in 2005, so it was QB before then, but I export monthly reports into Excel to really do the tabulation and the wall chart -- it's much easier to deal with the way you want to there. I recommend that if you like to make everything "just so", although it is more time consuming (witness the resultant procrastination on my part...!) Maybe better to just "get 'er done" and then add bells and whistles after you're back in the groove?

[fidgiegirl]

rozie, I am thinking so. AND, since I now know how to do pivot charts, I think I can do all the reports I want through Excel quite easily. I used it for a while and it worked well.

And, Mint.com is out anyway because my main account isn't supported.

[fidgiegirl]

Ok. I decided that May was A TERRIBLE time to try to recommit to this. Now that we are closer to the end of the month and we have wrapped up lots of fun, I am ready to track again.

I cleared out all my old, out-of-date tracking information. I still have the monthly numbers from complete months in a wall chart, but got rid of the transactions.

I liked the categories I had set up in Moneydance, so I decided to keep it, but just deleted all the previous transactions. Huge weight off. I don't feel like I have to "catch up." I can just start from today.

I also deleted all retirement, securities, mortgage accounts from the program. It doesn't keep accurate balances, which just stressed me out. I will record those as expenses rather than transfers and will keep a separate net worth Excel or something. I was never that concerned about my net worth, though I suppose we should be. I was more worried about the daily tracking and the 3 questions when I was hard core into it.

I do realize I have to add in our business checking. Will do that now.

[RoseFI]

I'm with you, Fidg... will try to get back on top within the next week! I did do a good job of catching up in May, but dropped the ball again in terms of records. Have been keeping a lot in my head (amazing how you can do that after so many years of tracking!) But time to get it in the computer...