Financial Software

JWood · Post by **JWood** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 8:35 pm

What do you use to keep track of your total worth, expenses, income, and investments?

Post by **jacob** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 8:58 pm

A simple spreadsheet. Well, actually 3 spreadsheets.

M · Post by M » Tue Jan 18, 2011 9:20 pm

Several spreadsheets in Google Docs.
If I didn't trust Google (which may happen someday), I would have several spreadsheets in Open Office.

JWood · Post by **JWood** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:20 pm

Care to share your setups?

M · Post by M » Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:45 pm

@JWood
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. I basically have a Google Docs spreadsheet that has a break down of my income sources/amounts, with a graph, my monthly expenses break down, with a graph detailing what expenses and how much are currently covered by dividends from investments, an investment break down, with estimated appreciation and dividend yields, a future spreadsheet detailing how my networth, dividends, income/expenses, etc are anticipated to change over time given my current situation (with a graph that tells me my current anticipated FI date, etc), and a spreadsheet that helps me determine if something that I'm buying for the purpose of saving me money is actually worth buying or not (takes into account expected depreciation expenses, savings adjusted by expected inflation, capital amount of the item, and compares this to the expected total return of a traditional investment over the expected time period.)
I like spreadsheets.

Mo · Post by Mo » Tue Jan 18, 2011 11:01 pm

I write a planned budget out in Word, and then track my accounts and spending in a single spreadsheet, Excel 2003 version. I back the file up about every 4 days.
I bought Quicken on 3 separate occasions (different OS each time), but couldn't really get into it. I'd like to get into some form of more comprehensive software so that I can track my net worth a bit more easily, but at the same time the last thing I need is another recurring expense (updating budget software), or my financial data stuck in some form of proprietary data format.

jakio · Post by **jakio** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 11:13 pm

Mo,

Gnucash is both free and open. I have played with it, but it's a bit more horsepower than I need.
www.Gnucash.org

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 12:53 am

I use mint.com for tracking my spending, both personal and business. I also use a spreadsheet on Google docs to track my budget, networth, savings ratio, my rental property, and my time to FI. At the end of the month, I update the spreadsheet with the data from mint.

AlexOliver · Post by **AlexOliver** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:14 am

@Jacob: I'm really interested in how your spreadsheet's set up, could you post it? You could put fake numbers in if you want.

S · Post by S » Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:21 am

I use a combination of Mint for a view of net worth and overview of all my accounts. I do budgeting in Google docs.

DividendGuy · Post by **DividendGuy** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 2:29 am

I use Mint for income/spending tracking. I use Networthiq for tracking net worth month to month. I track my investments through my brokerage tools.

Mo · Post by Mo » Wed Jan 19, 2011 3:08 am

@Jakio, thanks man. I'll look into it.

Surio · Post by **Surio** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 5:06 am

@JWood,

Use the Search bar to look if a relevant thread on the topic is already present. This topic was extensively discussed in this thread recently.

Post by **jacob** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 5:48 am

My spreadsheet is like 8th grade math.
Column one has the names of various accounts.

Column two has the amounts with a sum.
I use this sum to do extrapolations. Say 2011 = 100000 and expenses = 10000 and income = 1000 (these numbers are made up). Then I pick an average growth rate (6%) and and average inflation rate (3%).
Then

A B C D E F

2011 100000 6000 1000 10000 95000

2012 95000 5700 1030 10300 91430

2013 91430 ...
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what the columns are and how they're calculated ...
Incidentally my net worth column (B) is increasing just so nobody draws any wrong conclusions.
Income is much easier. I budget "historically", that is, I just keep track of what I've spent. There's no need to budget future expenses as they are assumed to be similar to the "trailing average" and otherwise corrected for by inflation.
Keep in mind that these are financial projections ... not a rocket launch. I'm only assuming a precision of 50% in my calculations!

Marius · Post by **Marius** » Sun Jan 23, 2011 7:14 am

Jacob, could it be that the 95000 in your example should really be 97000?

miyatarama · Post by **miyatarama** » Mon Jan 24, 2011 6:53 pm

I use homebank:
http://homebank.free.fr/
It's free and it accepts quicken qif files and csv files and can easily export csv files. At this point, I'm all about being able to transport my data in a non-proprietary format.

zrooster · Post by **zrooster** » Wed Mar 23, 2011 2:46 am

I like YNAB (You Need A Budget). It also teaches a really nice method for living off of last months income. It also has an iPhone app for those of you with an iPhone.

SkaraBrae · Post by **SkaraBrae** » Wed Mar 23, 2011 3:32 am

YNAB was a great idea to get started -- the buffer was a crucial concept for us that made our financial lives infinitely easier. However I found that for budgeting and tracking, nothing quite matches the power and flexibility of Excel...All my spreadsheets are there now. For the present this includes a year-long expected budget, a frequently updated snapshot of the remaining budget for the month, and a spreadsheet and graph showing current total debt and expected paydown dates.

JohnnyH · Post by **JohnnyH** » Wed Mar 23, 2011 4:03 pm

Building investment spreadsheets is fun, so I have several... Building spending tracking spreadsheets is boring and I never did it. Seeking a temporary solution, I've been using clearcheckbook.com for years. It's an easy input and I can export the data at any time.
I input all the transactions from my wallet register every month. Categories I can improve on I record on the new month's wallet register, along with updated credit card % category rewards and any other qualifications needed (10 transactions for rewards checking)... Sounds complex, but takes about 5 mins a month.

Less_Is_More78 · Post by **Less_Is_More78** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 3:11 pm

I have a mac so I use ibank 4 which I really like. I can track "every cent that comes into and out of my life" quoted from the book "Your life or your money" and the report generating tool is awesome.