Balancing the Checkbook - gone the way of the dinosaur? What do you do now?

[Familia]

This is driving me bonkers.  Budget writing for the first time in years.  With our financial goals, using a HELOC as our only mortgage with every inch of income going into it immediately, a complicated pay structure, and use of a credit card (paid in full each month) you may not be able to help me figure out how to get a solid snapshot of our finances in one moment in time, but...

How do you balance your finances in this cyber pay/check-less world?  In my past, I was responsible for keeping finances in tight line at work and at home.  But, I don't do that professionally anymore, nor have i kept up with the old 'balancing the checkbook' personally, either.  I just figured out how to balance the HELOC each month: checking for the few direct withdrawals, check credit card payment from HELOC for that time period, check that our multitudinous reimbursements went in and out as needed, and a few other items.  But, what is the point of 'balancing' it anyway?  The credit card bill is paying one months + old charges, direct withdrawals went out immediately.  

Is there a new system or term for balancing one's finances as a snapshot in time?  Or, do those so inclined just log-in and check credit card/bank withdrawals every day or so?  What have you taught your young adults to do?  What do they do, if anything?

[Laura Corin]

Husband downloads the credit card statement into a spreadsheet and tags items by category. We put everything on the credit card.

[Rachel]

We use cash or auto payments for most things, but basically my husband checks the bank app daily to make sure any charges are correct. We do write a handful of checks a year, it drives him crazy if those take awhile to clear. It’s so few though that he can generally keep in mind that there a check out there waiting to be cashed. 

[MeaganS]

We use the ynab software. And record all our purchases in all their forms (credit cards, checks, etc) immediately. YNAB imports credit card and bank info and syncs the two. 

Edited October 16, 2019 by MeaganS

[Bambam]

I've wondered this too. I still get a paper statement from the bank and do mostly online bill paying - but I still write a few checks (church, kids selling things - stuff like that). We've used Quicken for years, but I find I often forget to enter some of the electronic payments until I balance my checkbook - the old fashioned way - which I'm not sure makes 100% sense. 

[Familia]

2 minutes ago, Bambam said:

I've wondered this too. I still get a paper statement from the bank and do mostly online bill paying - but I still write a few checks (church, kids selling things - stuff like that). We've used Quicken for years, but I find I often forget to enter some of the electronic payments until I balance my checkbook - the old fashioned way - which I'm not sure makes 100% sense. 

I liked quicken when our finances were all out of the checking account.  Now, with CC's, it makes getting an overall financial snapshot too complicated (money going out of one account to pay off those CC purchases, etc).  I couldn't figure out what to label ins/outs to make it actually balance.  I do like seeing the graphs for spending categories, though.  As @Plum said, my CC statement categorizes, but I like the pretty chart!  Maybe I could use the app 'Spend Tracker' that I used for awhile to just put in spending categories, in order to get the chart, but forget about something external giving me our true financial balance.

[Ann.without.an.e]

We use YNAB as well and have for years.  Love it.  I just balance everything by making sure everyone online matches YNAB.  So YNAB works like my register, if that makes sense?  You can enter your checks, charges, etc and then mark them as clear.  It will show you the balance vs the cleared balance.  

Edited October 16, 2019 by Attolia

[Annie G]

I balance the checkbook so I can see how much is in there. I write bills in the register when I get notification but they’re all on autopay and come out on their due dates throughout the month.  Once a month I pay our credit card, which covers nearly everything. 

Mint divides things up for me so I can see at a glance if I’m on track within categories. Some need manual adjustment - if I go to walmart I might buy things from groceries, household, auto, yard care...multiple categories. So I save those receipts and manually adjust the Mint entry to divvy them up. 

I spend very little cash, usually only for small purchases like a farmer’s market visit, etc.  So we have a petty cash envelope and just refill it every few months. For me it’s not enough to bother tracking. 

[RootAnn]

I still write checks. Quite a few, actually. I still "balance the checkbook" when the statement comes. The hardest thing for me is keeping up with the current balance in the checking account with all the auto-electronic pulls at different times each month for varying amounts. I missed writing down three of them last month & we had a check overdraw on our account. I was mortified! 

As you can tell, I don't embrace tech/online & don't have an online method/portal for all of this. I can call the bank telephone system & listen to deposits/withdrawals and I do that sometimes. I haven't figured out a new system to make sure the autowithdrawls are written down & figured in yet. Hopefully I will soon.

[Familia]

Ok, @MeaganS and @Attolia I am looking at YNAB now.  I just want to see where there flexible spending is going...I'm a numbers person.  I want to see if the water bill was high (daughter's barn critters drank a lot this year!) or the groceries came in low.  I hate to pay for something, because we don't want syncing, though.  Maybe I should just give Spend Tracker another chance.  I tried to track everything, and even that simple platform (much simpler than Quicken) got too complicated because our income is so varied. If I only track certain spending categories, and forget income, it would give me the charts I want.

There are three things here: Planning where money will go, observing where it went, and how much we have today.  The planning where it is to go ahead of time, and sticking to that, is the only way we survived college expenses.  Money seemingly crawled out of the woodwork when we strictly followed a plan laid out ahead of time.

Balancing the checkbook doesn't give much of a snapshot of how much we have today w/CC use anyway. For checking on accuracy, I can see it is obsolete - too little, too late.

 

[Familia]

1 minute ago, RootAnn said:

I haven't figured out a new system to make sure the autowithdrawls are written down & figured in yet. Hopefully I will soon.

When we were putting everyone through school, we survived by looking at only two weeks at a time.  I had a master list of monthly bills in a simple chart by date.  First column was blank except with a big, fat 'A' for the auto-withdrawals, Then, when I wrote the next two weeks plan (a blank chart/list style), I listed the auto withdrawals first, then the other bills needed those two weeks (including a little savings...that was a miracle to save during college), then figured out how much for food or gifts, etc from what is left over.  (BTW, some of those non-auto bills got pushed to the next pay period if there just wasn't enough for food=)

That is overkill for what you need, but a master list of your monthly bills (with Autos highlighted someway)  posted on the wall near where you pay your bills may help you not forget?  

[Ann.without.an.e]

5 minutes ago, Familia said:

Ok, @MeaganS and @Attolia I am looking at YNAB now.  I just want to see where there flexible spending is going...I'm a numbers person.  I want to see if the water bill was high (daughter's barn critters drank a lot this year!) or the groceries came in low.  I hate to pay for something, because we don't want syncing, though.  Maybe I should just give Spend Tracker another chance.  I tried to track everything, and even that simple platform (much simpler than Quicken) got too complicated because our income is so varied. If I only track certain spending categories, and forget income, it would give me the charts I want.

There are three things here: Planning where money will go, observing where it went, and how much we have today.  The planning where it is to go ahead of time, and sticking to that, is the only way we survived college expenses.  Money seemingly crawled out of the woodwork when we strictly followed a plan laid out ahead of time.

Balancing the checkbook doesn't give much of a snapshot of how much we have today w/CC use anyway. For checking on accuracy, I can see it is obsolete - too little, too late.

 

 

You can add as many categories as you want. Under flexible, I have groceries, pets, household, medical, entertainment, and all the things that shift around a lot.  You can run a report covering as many months as you want to see how much was spend each month and what your average was for the total of the months.  You can allot an amount each month to those categories or do like me and just track it.  I don't put in a budgeted amount in the beginning, I simply adjust it to match what I've spent (when I balance it).  I do allot an exact amount for fixed expenses.  If that makes sense?

[Familia]

Sent you a PM @Attolia 😀

[Just Kate]

1 hour ago, MeaganS said:

We use the ynab software. And record all our purchases in all their forms (credit cards, checks, etc) immediately. YNAB imports credit card and bank info and syncs the two. 

 

We also use YNAB! We have been using it for a year now and it has completed transformed our finances. I’m working now, so short on time. But happy to talk more later if you have questions. 

[Jentrovert]

I love the idea of ynab. In practice, it has been very frustrating because the import feature fails to work and I have to re set them up quite often. There are also a lot of features I need to research, and haven't had time, so I don't have the actual budgeting part set up. 

Those who use it, do your imports consistently work?

[vonfirmath]

1 hour ago, Familia said:

This is driving me bonkers.  Budget writing for the first time in years.  With our financial goals, using a HELOC as our only mortgage with every inch of income going into it immediately, a complicated pay structure, and use of a credit card (paid in full each month) you may not be able to help me figure out how to get a solid snapshot of our finances in one moment in time, but...

How do you balance your finances in this cyber pay/check-less world?  In my past, I was responsible for keeping finances in tight line at work and at home.  But, I don't do that professionally anymore, nor have i kept up with the old 'balancing the checkbook' personally, either.  I just figured out how to balance the HELOC each month: checking for the few direct withdrawals, check credit card payment from HELOC for that time period, check that our multitudinous reimbursements went in and out as needed, and a few other items.  But, what is the point of 'balancing' it anyway?  The credit card bill is paying one months + old charges, direct withdrawals went out immediately.  

Is there a new system or term for balancing one's finances as a snapshot in time?  Or, do those so inclined just log-in and check credit card/bank withdrawals every day or so?  What have you taught your young adults to do?  What do they do, if anything?

 

If you use YNAB, then you spend money this month that you earned last month.  This way, you record money you spent as you spend it. And it doesn't matter if it is spend using a credit card, or automatically drafted from your bank, etc.

[Ann.without.an.e]

YNAB has a 34 day free trial. I say, try it!  

 

https://www.youneedabudget.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=(roi) branded&utm_content=ynab&utm_term=ynab&ar_clx=yes&ar_channel=sem&ar_campaign=36195583&ar_adgroup=1420857373&ar_ad=168915753796&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_5rtBRDxARIsAJfxvYA_V7t-lxIjh6ylDESwKkOAxf3ygBFTef0cb1_tt-nk5kAZaf2uCfIaAiXeEALw_wcB

[theelfqueen]

We use the Mint app. We've been using it for several years and really like it. 

[Familia]

Oh.my.goodness!  I am super excited about the YNAB.  

The heart of YNAB being taking your income and assigning it right away to your bills/savings/rainy day funds.  Spending just 'what we had' each pay was how we miraculously made our part of college payments (student paid tuition, we paid room & board, but anyway...) - I am happy to see it work that way...so different than any other budgeting app we have looked at.  Makes our variable income completely workable and makes the timing actually irrelevant.  They offer free webinar workshops that are super short, and you can ask questions.  Worth the money for the free trial so far=)

And, @Jentrovert, I am wondering about the syncing as well.  Is your problem that it only partially downloads transactions?  The webinar was so easy to attend (I have never done a webinar in my life!) and easy to type my personal questions as I went, maybe that could help you get going better with it.  Hopefully others with experience will let us know how their syncing goes...

[scholastica]

9 hours ago, Jentrovert said:

I love the idea of ynab. In practice, it has been very frustrating because the import feature fails to work and I have to re set them up quite often. There are also a lot of features I need to research, and haven't had time, so I don't have the actual budgeting part set up. 

Those who use it, do your imports consistently work?

For the most part, syncing works for us. The banks have been tightening up and every once in a while we have to re-enter our credentials. I'm actually glad, even though it's a pain. Other than that syncing is helpful. My dh and I try for a weekly budget meeting and it doesn't always happen. The more we do it, the better the finances are.

[Ann.without.an.e]

25 minutes ago, Familia said:

Oh.my.goodness!  I am super excited about the YNAB.  

The heart of YNAB being taking your income and assigning it right away to your bills/savings/rainy day funds.  Spending just 'what we had' each pay was how we miraculously made our part of college payments (student paid tuition, we paid room & board, but anyway...) - I am happy to see it work that way...so different than any other budgeting app we have looked at.  Makes our variable income completely workable and makes the timing actually irrelevant.  They offer free webinar workshops that are super short, and you can ask questions.  Worth the money for the free trial so far=)

And, @Jentrovert, I am wondering about the syncing as well.  Is your problem that it only partially downloads transactions?  The webinar was so easy to attend (I have never done a webinar in my life!) and easy to type my personal questions as I went, maybe that could help you get going better with it.  Hopefully others with experience will let us know how their syncing goes...

 

6 minutes ago, scholastica said:

For the most part, syncing works for us. The banks have been tightening up and every once in a while we have to re-enter our credentials. I'm actually glad, even though it's a pain. Other than that syncing is helpful. My dh and I try for a weekly budget meeting and it doesn't always happen. The more we do it, the better the finances are.

 

I don't sync.  Maybe I should try it too?  I am just a little too much of a control freak I suppose.  Typing it myself feels more like I am control 🤣 

[Just Kate]

10 hours ago, Jentrovert said:

I love the idea of ynab. In practice, it has been very frustrating because the import feature fails to work and I have to re set them up quite often. There are also a lot of features I need to research, and haven't had time, so I don't have the actual budgeting part set up. 

Those who use it, do your imports consistently work?

 

There are several banks that have stopped syncing well with YNAB, due to their enhanced security features. One bank that I know of is capital one. We have a capital one credit card and those transactions don’t import. However, even with transactions with my banks that do sync, I always manually enter the transactions and then match them when they import into YNAB (there is typically a 2-3 day lag). Many YNAB users never sync their bank accounts and still find the app/website to be worthwhile. 

Fyi there is a very active YNAB group on Facebook that I would highly recommend - YNAB (You Need a Budget) Fans!

[Just Kate]

10 hours ago, vonfirmath said:

 

If you use YNAB, then you spend money this month that you earned last month.  This way, you record money you spent as you spend it. And it doesn't matter if it is spend using a credit card, or automatically drafted from your bank, etc.

 

I believe one of the previous versions of YNAB may have required users to spend money this month that was earned last month, but the current version does not require it. It is still one of the four goals of using the program, however if you don’t want to budget that way (or if you can’t budget that way yet), don’t let it keep you from trying YNAB. 

[Just Kate]

46 minutes ago, Attolia said:

 

 

I don't sync.  Maybe I should try it too?  I am just a little too much of a control freak I suppose.  Typing it myself feels more like I am control 🤣 

 

You can do both (that’s what I do)!

[WendyLady]

My husband and I are working through a budgeting/finance class.  We started the first few weeks with just tracking our spending, and this week we set up an actual budget plan.  

I've done various different things in the past including YNAB, but it's been a while. Last spring I started tracking my spending on the "Fudget" app - that's been really helpful for me to just see my spending. I'm really really careful about putting my spending in before I leave the register at the store.  It's helped my spending to not be invisible.  But we are ready for the next step of actually having a plan for spending.  Google Sheets has a basic budget template right in my google drive that I've been using, I'm assuming it's in everyone's google drive, but doing a quick search shows there are actually lots of different budget templates available in google).  I track each transaction in that google sheet (from my fudget app and anything else that my husband or I spend, bills, etc) and have also set up a budget plan there. It's nothing fancy, but it is making us more aware of our money and where it goes.  

We moved a couple months ago, so we are still sort of figuring out exactly what our expenses are in this area, but the tracking has helped start a pattern, and it's been good to have a budget written down and sticking to it...

We use our credit card for most things (pay off the balance every month), and I'm tracking all the things in my budget as if they are cash.  

It's been really nice to be on the same page with our finances.  My dh was deployed last year, so it had been helpful as part of the "living together again" transition.

I'm enjoying this discussing and I think I'll try ynab again in the next few weeks...

[kbutton]

12 hours ago, happysmileylady said:

And then this month, DH's workplace has changed payroll providers which gave me the ability to split up his paychecks into mulitple direct deposits.  So, I went and set up most of our envelopes as separate bank accounts and just spread the deposits out among those, with the balance of the check going into savings, and then I automated all the bills to come out of where they are supposed to come out of.  NOW, having said that, our spending money is still in cash. 

Everything else like car repairs or school spending, it will come out of the bank account that is set up for that purpose.  Then, that bank account will basically just track itself, and I can log in any day at any time to see how much we have in there.   It's still like having the envelopes, but they are basically all online now rather than cash sitting in our safe.

I do something very similar to this. Day to day spending is mostly cash, check, or debit. I do balance the checkbook, but not to the penny anymore. I have alerts set up in case I make mistakes. Our multiple accounts are broader than our envelope system was--we don't track quite as closely as we did many years ago. We also don't really budget formally--we found that broad categories actually work better for us than being super picky. 

While my DH's income is not super variable, nearly all of our biggest expenses are due in a six month span, so we have a fund that we put money into each month anticipating those far in advance, or else we'd be in a pickle half the year. It fills for six months, and then it's like someone pulled a plug, lol! 

DH's direct deposit is unreliable--they may or may not fund each account in the same order every month, so I might have to go back to transferring money myself every month, but that's okay. As long as they keep putting something in our mortgage account, I can make most anything else work out the right way.

[Slache]

I use and recommend YNAB. I think I habe a referral link. I am a numbers person. After your free trial expires ask for a free month. They'll give it to you.

[scholastica]

1 hour ago, Attolia said:

 

 

I don't sync.  Maybe I should try it too?  I am just a little too much of a control freak I suppose.  Typing it myself feels more like I am control 🤣 

We try to enter everything, but we don’t always get around to entering bills we pay electronically or automatic payments. Those get pulled in. It’s a good doublecheck for us. I also use another financial software that has more functionality for investment accounts, so we’re actually keeping up two programs. And I do balance all our statements, too! 

[Slache]

Referral link for YNAB

[Slache]

I have...

• Weekly Expenses: Gas, Groceries and Stuff (haircuts, pet supplies)
• Monthly Expenses: Bills
• Irregular Expenses: Giving, School, Gifts, Clothing and yearly bills (the same amount goes in each month but expenses are irregular)
• Savings: Furniture, Travel, Emergency

 

[Slache]

It's also my checkbook. 

[Familia]

1 hour ago, Just Kate said:

 

You can do both (that’s what I do)!

That is exactly one of the questions I asked in the webinar - whether you could enter manually if you are a sync-er.  

If anyone is considering, take a free webinar, they are offered the same day, multiple classes scheduled.  Although my class was about variable income, I was welcomed to ask any questions, and I did.  Watching him work with the program was perfect and led to questions about the general use of YNAB.  He graciously answered every one.

[Jentrovert]

3 hours ago, Familia said:

And, @Jentrovert, I am wondering about the syncing as well.  Is your problem that it only partially downloads transactions?

When it works, it seems to work well. But almost every time I use it, I have to reenter the account info on a credit card plus one or two other accounts. And often, simply reentering doesn't work. I have to log into the accounts manually, log out, then go back to ynab and reenter and try again. It's a pain. 

It's also a pain to manually import all my bank transactions, but I expect that with anything because I use a local bank. 

[Suzanne in ABQ]

I still balance our checkbook regularly (several times a month).  I go into the online bank site, and record all of our online payments into the checkbook, along with ATM withdrawals, transfers, etc.  We still write about seven checks per month to music teacher, airplane mechanic, favorite restaurant that doesn't take credit cards, garbage pick-up, propane, etc.  Since some of these checks are sizable, and not always cashed in a timely manner, I like to keep my checkbook register balanced so I know how much money we actually have.  I also make sure each transaction is categorized correctly.

As for an instant snapshot of our finances for budget purposes, I used to enter each transaction in Quicken, but I gave up on that when I realized that dh wasn't the least bit interested. I gave up trying to have that all in one place.  The bank website will break down our spending by category, but we put almost everything on our Discover card.  Discover will do the same thing, but they're not always correct in the categories (favorite restaurant always shows up as general merchandise, for instance).  But, if I do the spending analysis on both the bank and the credit card, it gives a pretty good estimate of our major spending trends.

[Jentrovert]

2 hours ago, Just Kate said:

 

There are several banks that have stopped syncing well with YNAB, due to their enhanced security features. One bank that I know of is capital one. We have a capital one credit card and those transactions don’t import. However, even with transactions with my banks that do sync, I always manually enter the transactions and then match them when they import into YNAB (there is typically a 2-3 day lag). Many YNAB users never sync their bank accounts and still find the app/website to be worthwhile. 

Fyi there is a very active YNAB group on Facebook that I would highly recommend - YNAB (You Need a Budget) Fans!

Yes, Capital One is a card that never works for me.

Many of our transactions will never be manually entered, bc it's not a priority for my husband. We use cards for almost everything (paid off every month), and there are a large number of transactions. So syncing or manually importing is the only practical way for me to use it, I think. 

It's frustrating because the main reason I'd like to use something like ynab is for the ease of viewing everything in one place, without having to log in to each account manually. 

To be fair, I have not spent adequate time working wih ynab. I might find that other benefits make it worth the hassle of syncing/importing.

[HomeAgain]

I use a budgeting app instead of balancing my checkbook - Everydollar.  I just add items to the categories as we go.  We have very few auto debits (insurance, Netflix, Prime) so I know what I'm coming across monthly.  Every few days I make sure I enter what dh has spent, or what we've written checks for, or whatever, and keep it up to date.

[Carrie12345]

I basically keep a checklist, which just made me giggle. CHECKlist, lol.

I have an account that’s only for the checks I write, which are very few. I literally transfer the funds to it when I write the check, so it’s always either a zero balance or has exactly what’s needed for my outstanding payments. It’s very easy to see what’s been cashed and what hasn’t.

For regular bills, I keep an account with the amount needed plus $200 just in case.  I’m a paper lover, so I keep a small binder with all of my bill budgeting and bi-weekly lists of what needs to be paid in each pay period.  They get checked off when paid online and another check mark when they’ve cleared.

Everything else goes to an assigned spot. Balances are tracked in my binder.

Almost all of my non-bill spending goes on my credit card, which gives me notifications each time it’s used and always has my balance handy in its app.  I don’t always track my spending categories in real time, but I am at the moment, so I list charges in my binder at the end of most days to keep tabs.

ETA: Dh has his own debit account for spending, so I don’t have to deal with tracking his random stuff.

I did teach my financial lit class HOW to balance a checkbook, just to emphasize that their account balance online is not always in real time. (This was an issue I had as a teen, when debit cards were fairly new, and I didn’t always track details.). I actually made a purchase at a place I don’t often frequent, and their charge didn’t show up on my *credit card (even as pending) for several days. If it had been a debit account, I might have forgotten it was coming and overspent.

Edited October 17, 2019 by Carrie12345

[Just Kate]

7 hours ago, Jentrovert said:

Yes, Capital One is a card that never works for me.

Many of our transactions will never be manually entered, bc it's not a priority for my husband. We use cards for almost everything (paid off every month), and there are a large number of transactions. So syncing or manually importing is the only practical way for me to use it, I think. 

It's frustrating because the main reason I'd like to use something like ynab is for the ease of viewing everything in one place, without having to log in to each account manually. 

To be fair, I have not spent adequate time working wih ynab. I might find that other benefits make it worth the hassle of syncing/importing.

 

Below is the link to the YNAB website that lists out any issues they are having with direct imports. 

https://status.youneedabudget.com/

My dh and I also use credit cards (paid off each month) for all transactions. In addition, dh works out of town, so I don’t always know what he’s doing. I pull up my credit card each morning and log any transactions that may have been missed (dh rarely enters them himself). For me, this helps me to be more in tune with our budget and stay on track. I will admit that prior to YNAB, dh and I had no system (we also had credit card debt that we couldn’t seem to pay off because we really didn’t know where our money was going). YNAB has helped us so much, and I’ve become a bit of a YNAB nerd...so I enjoy my 15 minutes each morning making sure that everything in YNAB is up-to-date. 🤓 

[ScoutTN]

I keep our budget and "checkbook" on the computer using YNAB. I check our bank balance and posted transactions every few days and keep YNAB up to date. I have the old, pre-subscription YNAB.

Our statements come by email, but they are outdated before they arrive. 

I do write some checks and write them in a register and mark when they've cleared.

Edited October 17, 2019 by ScoutTN

[mlktwins]

I still keep my checkbook up to date.  I'm old school :-).

I do pay most bills on-line, but only have 3 of them on auto-pay.  I log my payments in my checkbook when I pay them.  And...I still reconcile my checkbook every month (to the penny).  I do this for my dad too.  I'm an old accountant/auditor and this works for me.

I put most everything on my credit card and pay that off every month, which makes it easier.

 

[historically accurate]

I have a register on Excel which I reconcile with the bank every morning. That Excel spreadsheet has tabs for Retirement (updated quarterly), savings accounts, medical savings account, debt payments, etc. 

I've tried YNAB and Quicken over the years as I'm a former accountant, but our tech is old and none of them were just what I wanted, so I built my own. 

[Jentrovert]

2 hours ago, Just Kate said:

I enjoy my 15 minutes each morning making sure that everything in YNAB is up-to-date. 🤓

Lol See, I think that is my problem. I want everything to happen automatically so that I only look at it weekly (or even monthly! 🤦‍♀️). 

[KrissiK]

I keep a detailed account of our spending on an Excel spreadsheet. There are line items for about 20 different categories and I save receipts. It actually doesn’t take that long. Once a month I enter our spending from both Visa accounts and my checkbook and I check my bank statement once a week or so on line,

[vonfirmath]

43 minutes ago, Jentrovert said:

Lol See, I think that is my problem. I want everything to happen automatically so that I only look at it weekly (or even monthly! 🤦‍♀️). 

 

Budgetting doesn't work on automatic though. You really need to check in at least weekly to stay on top of what your money is doing.

[Jentrovert]

42 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

 

Budgetting doesn't work on automatic though. You really need to check in at least weekly to stay on top of what your money is doing.

 I think I'm trying to use the wrong tool for the job I want to do. I don't need to stay on top of every dollar (although I do realize that would be ideal). Right now, I just want to very easily import, categorize, and view reports.

[scholastica]

Are you on Mac or PC? Banktivity is for Mac and will do that. Similar to Quicken, but I like it better than Quicken

[Random]

16 hours ago, Suzanne in ABQ said:

I still balance our checkbook regularly (several times a month).  I go into the online bank site, and record all of our online payments into the checkbook, along with ATM withdrawals, transfers, etc.  We still write about seven checks per month to music teacher, airplane mechanic, favorite restaurant that doesn't take credit cards, garbage pick-up, propane, etc.  Since some of these checks are sizable, and not always cashed in a timely manner, I like to keep my checkbook register balanced so I know how much money we actually have.  I also make sure each transaction is categorized correctly.

I just want to say I think it's super cool that you 'have' an airplane mechanic.  And that you actually pay for that service on a regular basis. That's awesome!  😎

[Familia]

10 hours ago, Jentrovert said:

 I think I'm trying to use the wrong tool for the job I want to do. I don't need to stay on top of every dollar (although I do realize that would be ideal). Right now, I just want to very easily import, categorize, and view reports.

This addresses the question that I ultimately needed to answer - WHAT do I want to see/know/do about our finances.  

When I realized that the old-school balancing the checkbook was obsolete for the way we now handle money and transactions (electronically), I no longer needed to make sure that everything balanced once a month...I realized that I needed to be checking every day or two in ALL our accounts (checking, CC, HELOC) to make sure there were no errors.  I hadn't been doing that.  I do not want to rely on the CC co or bank to alert me to trouble, I want to check for ourselves.  

I also know that DH wants to see charts or reports that show where our money went, like you want to know @Jentrovert, but I want to see what I need to pay and have coming up.  Recently, I had set up a plain hardcopy doc that shows 4 charts on one page - our monthly, flexible, 6 month, and yearly spending.  I love looking at it all on one sheet - so when I realized yesterday that YNAB shows me that same sheet online and shows me LOUD and CLEAR on that same one page sheet whether it is paid or not/how much is left to fund that bill...I was blown away!  I could see how that is just overkill if you do not want to see that.  For a 'where your money went' chart or list, another program probably does that better.  I think Mint has good charts to see spending trends, from what I remember.

Edited October 18, 2019 by Familia

[frogger]

I've used an excel sheet, mvelopes, and YNAB. Due to my lack of finesse the excel sheet got long and cumbersome.

 

Mvelopes seemed glitchy and sometimes didn't save after I entered things but overall worked excatly like I wanted it to work. It tracked everything and I could easily see which envelopes went red.

 

YNAB drove me insane. It doesn't allow for categories to roll to a new month negative. I would have to tag things and go back to previous months to doctor them because it would automatically pay off categories and assign it to debt. I like to be able to transfer to other categories but still want to see whether the long term amounts are on track. My husband also travels a lot and adding 2 weeks of hotel stays etc. to a debt category because his reimbursement happened to fall after the month rolled over was frustrating to fix.  I needed to see that the reimbursement check matched the things assigned to that envelope not go weed it out from "debt" especially since it wasn't really debt for us since it goes on a c.c. and we live off the previous months income so we have what boils down to a 2 month lag time. If we didn't get reimbursed for 2 months then it would turn into actual debt since we might not be able to make the payment and might owe interest. 

If you need a budgeting software and are worried about overdrawing etc. It is great. If you want specifically tracking though it becomes more complicated.

[Jentrovert]

2 hours ago, Familia said:

This addresses the question that I ultimately needed to answer - WHAT do I want to see/know/do about our finances.  

When I realized that the old-school balancing the checkbook was obsolete for the way we now handle money and transactions (electronically), I no longer needed to make sure that everything balanced once a month...I realized that I needed to be checking every day or two in ALL our accounts (checking, CC, HELOC) to make sure there were no errors.  I hadn't been doing that.  I do not want to rely on the CC co or bank to alert me to trouble, I want to check for ourselves.  

I also know that DH wants to see charts or reports that show where our money went, like you want to know @Jentrovert, but I want to see what I need to pay and have coming up.  Recently, I had set up a plain hardcopy doc that shows 4 charts on one page - our monthly, flexible, 6 month, and yearly spending.  I love looking at it all on one sheet - so when I realized yesterday that YNAB shows me that same sheet online and shows me LOUD and CLEAR on that same one page sheet whether it is paid or not/how much is left to fund that bill...I was blown away!  I could see how that is just overkill if you do not want to see that.  For a 'where your money went' chart or list, another program probably does that better.  I think Mint has good charts to see spending trends, from what I remember.

Well, I spent some time getting reacquainted with ynab this evening, as well as setting up apps for credit cards and bank accounts to make things much easier to check quickly. (Like you said, I don't rely on the bank and cc to catch things, and I need to be checking more often than I am.)

After doing the "fresh start" on ynab and setting things up again, I find myself a little . . . dare I say, excited(!) to actually use the budgeting part. Lol It IS overkill for what we actually need, but there are a couple of categories I always want to reduce spending in.

The help section seems much more clear and organized than last time I reviewed it, and I was able to clarify a few things in my mind that I had trouble with before. 

I'm committing to a few minutes each evening. If after a few weeks it still seems like much more than I want/need, then I think I'll try something like Mint or go back to spreadsheets.

ETA: I'm really glad you started this thread. It's been very helpful for me. 

Edited October 18, 2019 by Jentrovert