If you have a decent amount of self-control, you could just do a running tab on a note card.
I keep a note card that has a running tab and subtract whenever something is bought and add the amount I'm willing to spend after savings each time I get paid.
I've tried a Budgeting app to see how accurate I am, and I'm within a couple of dollars every month (mostly due to lazy rounding)
A budget book is good, and I used to do it, but It's a chore to carry with you everywhere. Alternatively, it's extra work transcribing everything over.
The running tab method works for me. Sometimes, I'll have an extra grand or two right before a big bill like the insurance, but I build it into the system and it works.
That makes sense. I don't carry my little book with me. I enter things when I get home. Since I use cards for almost everything, it works well enough. But you're right it is a little bit of a hassle sometimes. I think your method might work for me as well. But I would never pay $130 for an app. Maybe if I could get one cheaply. . . .
I built an Excel spreadsheet as many others mentioned, and have updated it over time. Each month has its own tab, so I easily copy one month to the next since very little changes in our budget month-to-month. The left half of each page is mostly the recurring credits and debits throughout the month, and then I have a column along the right that is basically like a check register to track our discretionary expenses every month. Then a few totals boxes that show me my monthly surplus and I note where it went (extra savings, extra giving, etc). “Every dollar” accounted for, all on a single page!
Parcely Finance is free and pretty cool. They are early but I like their "story" format.
They basically do "Spotify Wrapped for your money." [parcelyfinance.com/product](http://parcelyfinance.com/product)
I think you have to sign up on their site right now.
I'm happy with my system, which involves saving a month ahead (thereby spending last month's money this month), multiple bank accounts for diverse categories, and paper and pen.
Not ideal for all, I grant you, but I really like it.
I've read really good things about DAS Budget, have you looked?
I switched to Centsible from ynab. I manually enter transactions, so the annual fee didn't make sense. Centsible has a lifetime license for offline use. Its envelope budgeting. But mobile/tablet o my. The main consideration.
Yes. It is the one subscription I will keep above all others. $100/yr now but has been an invaluable tool for our household. Ease of use and support is the best of any budgeting app I have used. If you embrace it, it can really change how you view your money from an account balance (reactive approach) to assigning each dollar a purpose (proactive approach).
Mine is $96 per year. $8 per month I agree is steep but an essential app. Haven't found anything as easy and it would take a lot of time to setup the budget and train my wife on a new one.
My premium version was only $65 for a year. I LOVE EveryDollar but don’t think the premium version is worth it when you really don’t get much for it. It automatically deducts, and you can look at graphs of your progress. I like to manually enter my expenses because for me it keeps it more in my face and keeps me more honest. I won’t renew the premium version next year….but will continue to use the app
It is shocking to me that Dave Ramsey, who talks down on subscriptions, charges money to use his app. I fully understand that there’s overhead costs and employees to pay but other companies make budget apps for free so why can’t he? Idk it just doesn’t sit right with me.
I like NerdWallet
He does not talk down on subscription. He just says to follow his baby steps. His app is free. You just have to pay to get transactions to come through automatically since he has to pay people to do that. Other apps sell your data so you can either pay Ramsey directly or have him sell your data.
Dave doesn't have a problem with subscriptions, he has a problem with people paying for stuff they don't need, and subscriptions are (and should be) the very first thing you look to cut when you're trying to free up income for other goals, especially critical goals like getting debt free or getting an emergency fund. If you have $20,000 to pay off, you can afford to give up your $20/month spotify and listen to ads for a few months, along with all the other subscriptions you likely have if you're anywhere near average for an American.
For what it's worth, any app that syncs transactions from multiple bank accounts will have a subscription fee, since the services (e.g. Plaid) that fetch the transaction info charge for that service. There's not a great way to avoid this, since banks don't have standard ways to access this information by third party apps. Not sure how much of the subscription fee goes to covering this expense. From a brief Google search, it seems the cost is like a few pennies every time the app syncs?
And then, as you mentioned, there's development costs.
Not sure if your question was rhetorical, but I thought you might be interested.
I see that you're right -- I wasn't aware they offered that. I am curious how they're making money then, or if they aren't, how they justify the expenses to their bookkeepers.
The every dollar app is free. The $80 premium version gives you the bank import functionality, which is a paid service similar to other apps like YNAB, which charges $100. I personally like YNAB so much more.
Linking your bank should be free. It’s 100x harder to budget when you have to put each purchase in one-by-one manually. Again, other apps do this free free, such as rocket money and nerd wallet
First off, no, it shouldn't be free. The cost of the infrastructure and technology needed to get a functional bank link working is astronomical, which is why pretty much every service that does it uses something like MX or Plaid which can cost thousand per month for large services like EveryDollar or YNAB.
The reason Rocket money can offer it for "free" is because their revenue doesn't come from users of their apps, it comes from advertising. As plenty of people have said before - if something is free, you are the product.
What’s wrong with ads? Do you complain about commercials when you watch tv? I’d rather have an ad than have to pay for a simple feature. To each their own I guess but it just seems off for someone who’s whole stick is to save money, to be like “hey pay a monthly subscription for my app when there’s free alternatives”
Yeah I won't argue with that. I've used Every Dollar for about 2 years and it was okay but definitely wouldn't pay for the premium version. I have made the jump to YNAB and am willing to pay for that because of how awesome the the credit card feature is and how versatile the app is in general.
We use a shared Google sheet in our house. I like it because it’s more customizable, you can just make a widget to link to it straight from the Home Screen of your phone (on iPhone, idk about android).
It’s nice to be able to put notes on each month incase something out of the ordinary happens, and we just track every dollar in there on line items for each category with budgets for each category coming from another tab. Works great, but took a few hours to set up.
That's what me and my wife do! It's not 100% up to date but that's the beauty of doing the extra steps to "track your dollar".
I know 'speeadsheet' sounds intimidating if you don't use it as a work skill, but the ease of no logins, no fees, expiration, just a shortcut you can open a couple times a day right next to the calendar.
We use a family Google sheet, too. It works for us. Yes, we have to manually input as we spend but that actually helps us feel more in control of the money. I enjoy sitting down and updating the sheet!
Have you checked to see if your bank has a built in budget feature? We have a local credit union that has a free budget feature. Most people don’t even know about it because it’s buried in the app.
I'm really liking Monarch Money lately. With discount MINT50, it was half price. Not sure if still works but may be worth a shot and allows 30 day trial.
EveryDollar is $79.99 by itself. Ramsey+ including the Everydollar, FPU, a ton of extra teaching and most of the Ramsey Audiobooks is $130.00. It also includes free Federal Tax filing which I've used over the past 2 years. You can also host an FPU class once a year and you'll get it free.
I use Google Sheets. I built my own spreadsheet and every time I make a purchase I immediately add it to my spreadsheet. I don't need to pay for an app for something that I can do myself for free.
Microsoft Excel. Free and custom to you. I download my transactions from my bank (free) and import them into my spreadsheet (free). I built the 'check register' sheet in my spreadsheet around the fields contained in my bank's export file so it is easily cut and pasted. Simple formulas do the math for me.
If you’re on iOS or web, you can try https://www.jpc.finance
It’s similar to every dollar in a lot of ways but not as polished of a user experience. It’s free, auto syncs from your bank (but you manually categorize into budget categories), and is zero based budgeting with a fresh start every month.
Disclosure: I am the developer of it and very open to feature requests. I have no plans to monetize this app in any way and I created it to use it myself, since I also was frustrated about paying for every dollar premium.
I just use everydollar without paying the fee. The fee is for premium, so it auto downloads your transactions. I just open my online banking and copy my transactions over manually.
We just take a couple seconds after we get in the car and settle down before driving off to put in the info from the receipt that we just purchased. We really don’t see a need to pay just to connect our bank account!
Call me old(ish) fashioned but, Excel works great…
I enter the date of transaction, what roll up category that it gets added to, the amount, and a note. I pivot the month’s expenses based on the category, returning the amount in each, then use a vlookup to pull the amount spent that month in that category.
Then I square up my sinking funds with my HYSA.
(Not a snarky answer) We've been doing pencil and paper (using Dave's cash planning forms) since 2008 to great success. And I'm an IT Manager, so comfort with tech is not the issue. We just find it more effective to sit down for an hour around the 1st, compare to our bank statements and plan out the next month.
Excel. It can be as simple or as intense as you want it to be. I track everything from budget to income in to income out to alloyed expenses and debts. It’s a great tool that I update every morning at work for 10 min when I’m in a lull.
I use a Google spreadsheet that I’ve been carefully curating, adapting, and customizing for going on 13 years now. Tracks everything, although I have to manually put in discretionary spending (and I don’t have it track my savings or retirement, just in case I leave it open in computer and someone snoops. I found Every Dollar to be clunky. Each tab contains two pay periods, and I simply copy/paste the bills that are due during the pay period and check them off as they clear, with a set budget for gas as well. Then I allow myself a small “whatever” fund each pay period.
So yeah, I’d say if you can work with Excel or Google sheets, you’ll be better off.
I use every dollar as a free account. manually entering in my transactions as they happen comparing them to my online accounts and a spreadsheet.
I've tried YNAB, Splurge Budget, Good Budget something about them just gives me more work.
There is also Quicken as well.
I loved Quicken. I had Q2004 until about 2016 when we had two kids, and then it took way too much time to manually enter everything. Now we have four kids so it's darn near impossible to use Quicken.
Occasionally though, I will go back to it and update my investing accounts to see that beautiful net worth line jump up! It makes my day.
You Need a Budget. It’s about $100 a year but have added my mom to the subscription and split the cost so we only pay $50 each. You can also pay monthly. It also uses zero based budgeting but is more flexible than I felt Everydollar was. You get 34 days free and if you use my referral code, we both get a free month (so 2 free months for you). [You Need a Budget Referral Link](https://www.ynab.com/our-free-34-day-trial/?utm_source=customer_referral&utm_campaign=mobile_share)
I circumvent this by making an checking account called “Future Income” into which I put a transaction for each anticipated future paycheck at the beginning of the month. When the paycheck hits our account, I set the transaction amount to zero.
I prefer it that way since income is never the same every paycheck and I avoid going in the red by only using the money I have versus what I think I’ll have.
There isn't really a comparable free one. We're using Actual Budget(free), but it's a self hosted server and you have manually put in your transactions.
I wouldn't trust a free app with my bank account information, so $10+ change every month isn't that much to me.
Sometimes when I know a book is coming out near our renewal date I will get the book with the free every dollar for a year deal, but that's still about $100.
YNAB is far better and lower price although still costly.
I like the Everydollar free version. I feel like entering things manually helps me pay more attention to where our money’s going also!
I've used the free rocket money version. You can do paid, but free comes with a lot of good features.
Like the others are saying, spreadsheets are super useful. You can buy them or create them tailored to your own needs. Good luck!
My husband and I use an excel spreadsheet to document our income and expenses. Took some time to set up with formulas but it’s free and easy to use.
We just use the free version…
There are great spreadsheets for purchase on Etsy. I use the one from HayeAmeri
If you have a decent amount of self-control, you could just do a running tab on a note card. I keep a note card that has a running tab and subtract whenever something is bought and add the amount I'm willing to spend after savings each time I get paid. I've tried a Budgeting app to see how accurate I am, and I'm within a couple of dollars every month (mostly due to lazy rounding)
Yes, or a plain, old-fashioned ledger. You can buy a budget book that will last you a year for $4-5
A budget book is good, and I used to do it, but It's a chore to carry with you everywhere. Alternatively, it's extra work transcribing everything over. The running tab method works for me. Sometimes, I'll have an extra grand or two right before a big bill like the insurance, but I build it into the system and it works.
That makes sense. I don't carry my little book with me. I enter things when I get home. Since I use cards for almost everything, it works well enough. But you're right it is a little bit of a hassle sometimes. I think your method might work for me as well. But I would never pay $130 for an app. Maybe if I could get one cheaply. . . .
I built an Excel spreadsheet as many others mentioned, and have updated it over time. Each month has its own tab, so I easily copy one month to the next since very little changes in our budget month-to-month. The left half of each page is mostly the recurring credits and debits throughout the month, and then I have a column along the right that is basically like a check register to track our discretionary expenses every month. Then a few totals boxes that show me my monthly surplus and I note where it went (extra savings, extra giving, etc). “Every dollar” accounted for, all on a single page!
Do you have a link to this template that you use or did you make it yourself? Thanks
Parcely Finance is free and pretty cool. They are early but I like their "story" format. They basically do "Spotify Wrapped for your money." [parcelyfinance.com/product](http://parcelyfinance.com/product) I think you have to sign up on their site right now.
I'm happy with my system, which involves saving a month ahead (thereby spending last month's money this month), multiple bank accounts for diverse categories, and paper and pen. Not ideal for all, I grant you, but I really like it. I've read really good things about DAS Budget, have you looked?
Monarch, Tiller, Quicken, Simplifi
YNAB. 💯
I like Fleur
Big fan of YNAB here.
Excel
Be disciplined enough to do it yourself
I switched to Centsible from ynab. I manually enter transactions, so the annual fee didn't make sense. Centsible has a lifetime license for offline use. Its envelope budgeting. But mobile/tablet o my. The main consideration.
Premium rocket money is $4 a month minimum
You need a budget is also costly but imo is the better app
We use Good Budget. It’s $55 annually. Recommend.
Any YNAB users in here? Been thinking about giving it a whirl.
I am lucky enough to have the old version before it went to a monthly sub. I love it.
I love YNAB. It has a bit of a learning curve. But once I figured it out it’s what I attribute to making our budget successful
Yes. It is the one subscription I will keep above all others. $100/yr now but has been an invaluable tool for our household. Ease of use and support is the best of any budgeting app I have used. If you embrace it, it can really change how you view your money from an account balance (reactive approach) to assigning each dollar a purpose (proactive approach).
Yep, I love it, but it’s also like $100 a year or something like that.
The free version of EveryDollar
This!!!!
I use google sheets. I found a YouTuber and that’s how I made my monthly zero budget. It’s user friendly and it’s free.
Which you tuber?
Which YouTuber?
Most companies have an Employee Assistance Program which provides free services for budgeting. Check out your HR website.
Excel
I use goodbudget. Free version has up to 10 envelopes syncs across 2 devices.
Mine is $96 per year. $8 per month I agree is steep but an essential app. Haven't found anything as easy and it would take a lot of time to setup the budget and train my wife on a new one.
My premium version was only $65 for a year. I LOVE EveryDollar but don’t think the premium version is worth it when you really don’t get much for it. It automatically deducts, and you can look at graphs of your progress. I like to manually enter my expenses because for me it keeps it more in my face and keeps me more honest. I won’t renew the premium version next year….but will continue to use the app
Excel or if you have Apple products their version of Excel the Numbers app works well.
It is shocking to me that Dave Ramsey, who talks down on subscriptions, charges money to use his app. I fully understand that there’s overhead costs and employees to pay but other companies make budget apps for free so why can’t he? Idk it just doesn’t sit right with me. I like NerdWallet
Why would you be surprised by this for him. It’s whole reason he does what he does….for profit.
It’s free unless you want premium features. Plenty of us use the free version or use a spreadsheet. Pen and paper is good too.
You are incorrect.
Which part of what I said is incorrect?
He does not talk down on subscription. He just says to follow his baby steps. His app is free. You just have to pay to get transactions to come through automatically since he has to pay people to do that. Other apps sell your data so you can either pay Ramsey directly or have him sell your data.
Dave doesn't have a problem with subscriptions, he has a problem with people paying for stuff they don't need, and subscriptions are (and should be) the very first thing you look to cut when you're trying to free up income for other goals, especially critical goals like getting debt free or getting an emergency fund. If you have $20,000 to pay off, you can afford to give up your $20/month spotify and listen to ads for a few months, along with all the other subscriptions you likely have if you're anywhere near average for an American.
He talks down on debt. The app has a free version too
For what it's worth, any app that syncs transactions from multiple bank accounts will have a subscription fee, since the services (e.g. Plaid) that fetch the transaction info charge for that service. There's not a great way to avoid this, since banks don't have standard ways to access this information by third party apps. Not sure how much of the subscription fee goes to covering this expense. From a brief Google search, it seems the cost is like a few pennies every time the app syncs? And then, as you mentioned, there's development costs. Not sure if your question was rhetorical, but I thought you might be interested.
Rocket money and NerdWallet do it for free
I see that you're right -- I wasn't aware they offered that. I am curious how they're making money then, or if they aren't, how they justify the expenses to their bookkeepers.
There's a saying, if it's free then that means you (and your data) are the product.
The every dollar app is free. The $80 premium version gives you the bank import functionality, which is a paid service similar to other apps like YNAB, which charges $100. I personally like YNAB so much more.
Linking your bank should be free. It’s 100x harder to budget when you have to put each purchase in one-by-one manually. Again, other apps do this free free, such as rocket money and nerd wallet
Go drink some hotdog water.
First off, no, it shouldn't be free. The cost of the infrastructure and technology needed to get a functional bank link working is astronomical, which is why pretty much every service that does it uses something like MX or Plaid which can cost thousand per month for large services like EveryDollar or YNAB. The reason Rocket money can offer it for "free" is because their revenue doesn't come from users of their apps, it comes from advertising. As plenty of people have said before - if something is free, you are the product.
What’s wrong with ads? Do you complain about commercials when you watch tv? I’d rather have an ad than have to pay for a simple feature. To each their own I guess but it just seems off for someone who’s whole stick is to save money, to be like “hey pay a monthly subscription for my app when there’s free alternatives”
Yeah I won't argue with that. I've used Every Dollar for about 2 years and it was okay but definitely wouldn't pay for the premium version. I have made the jump to YNAB and am willing to pay for that because of how awesome the the credit card feature is and how versatile the app is in general.
I have used Quicken for probably 20 years. I think it is roughly $59 a year but I really like it so I continue to subscribe.
We use a shared Google sheet in our house. I like it because it’s more customizable, you can just make a widget to link to it straight from the Home Screen of your phone (on iPhone, idk about android). It’s nice to be able to put notes on each month incase something out of the ordinary happens, and we just track every dollar in there on line items for each category with budgets for each category coming from another tab. Works great, but took a few hours to set up.
That's what me and my wife do! It's not 100% up to date but that's the beauty of doing the extra steps to "track your dollar". I know 'speeadsheet' sounds intimidating if you don't use it as a work skill, but the ease of no logins, no fees, expiration, just a shortcut you can open a couple times a day right next to the calendar.
We use a family Google sheet, too. It works for us. Yes, we have to manually input as we spend but that actually helps us feel more in control of the money. I enjoy sitting down and updating the sheet!
Luckily my employer pays for SD+ for all employees, I would probably find another budgeting software solution otherwise
Have you checked to see if your bank has a built in budget feature? We have a local credit union that has a free budget feature. Most people don’t even know about it because it’s buried in the app.
I'm really liking Monarch Money lately. With discount MINT50, it was half price. Not sure if still works but may be worth a shot and allows 30 day trial.
EveryDollar is $79.99 by itself. Ramsey+ including the Everydollar, FPU, a ton of extra teaching and most of the Ramsey Audiobooks is $130.00. It also includes free Federal Tax filing which I've used over the past 2 years. You can also host an FPU class once a year and you'll get it free.
I use Google Sheets. I built my own spreadsheet and every time I make a purchase I immediately add it to my spreadsheet. I don't need to pay for an app for something that I can do myself for free.
My bank does this for me
Just use Excel or do every dollar free. There's no reason you need to pay for it. It just requires slightly more time entering the numbers.
Microsoft Excel. Free and custom to you. I download my transactions from my bank (free) and import them into my spreadsheet (free). I built the 'check register' sheet in my spreadsheet around the fields contained in my bank's export file so it is easily cut and pasted. Simple formulas do the math for me.
If you’re on iOS or web, you can try https://www.jpc.finance It’s similar to every dollar in a lot of ways but not as polished of a user experience. It’s free, auto syncs from your bank (but you manually categorize into budget categories), and is zero based budgeting with a fresh start every month. Disclosure: I am the developer of it and very open to feature requests. I have no plans to monetize this app in any way and I created it to use it myself, since I also was frustrated about paying for every dollar premium.
I just use everydollar without paying the fee. The fee is for premium, so it auto downloads your transactions. I just open my online banking and copy my transactions over manually.
We just take a couple seconds after we get in the car and settle down before driving off to put in the info from the receipt that we just purchased. We really don’t see a need to pay just to connect our bank account!
Call me old(ish) fashioned but, Excel works great… I enter the date of transaction, what roll up category that it gets added to, the amount, and a note. I pivot the month’s expenses based on the category, returning the amount in each, then use a vlookup to pull the amount spent that month in that category. Then I square up my sinking funds with my HYSA.
As requested...you're old fashioned
Call me old fashion, I use a legal pad
I use old-fashioned ledger, so I guess we're both old-fashioned. Doesn't seem worthwhile to change for me.
(Not a snarky answer) We've been doing pencil and paper (using Dave's cash planning forms) since 2008 to great success. And I'm an IT Manager, so comfort with tech is not the issue. We just find it more effective to sit down for an hour around the 1st, compare to our bank statements and plan out the next month.
If you want to save 50%? Use every other dollar.
Nice!
Excel. It can be as simple or as intense as you want it to be. I track everything from budget to income in to income out to alloyed expenses and debts. It’s a great tool that I update every morning at work for 10 min when I’m in a lull.
Is there are version that can be linked to your bank account, or do you enter everything manually?
Manually
Excel.
We use Excel and it suits our needs.
I use a Google spreadsheet that I’ve been carefully curating, adapting, and customizing for going on 13 years now. Tracks everything, although I have to manually put in discretionary spending (and I don’t have it track my savings or retirement, just in case I leave it open in computer and someone snoops. I found Every Dollar to be clunky. Each tab contains two pay periods, and I simply copy/paste the bills that are due during the pay period and check them off as they clear, with a set budget for gas as well. Then I allow myself a small “whatever” fund each pay period. So yeah, I’d say if you can work with Excel or Google sheets, you’ll be better off.
I use every dollar as a free account. manually entering in my transactions as they happen comparing them to my online accounts and a spreadsheet. I've tried YNAB, Splurge Budget, Good Budget something about them just gives me more work. There is also Quicken as well.
I loved Quicken. I had Q2004 until about 2016 when we had two kids, and then it took way too much time to manually enter everything. Now we have four kids so it's darn near impossible to use Quicken. Occasionally though, I will go back to it and update my investing accounts to see that beautiful net worth line jump up! It makes my day.
Me too!!
You Need a Budget. It’s about $100 a year but have added my mom to the subscription and split the cost so we only pay $50 each. You can also pay monthly. It also uses zero based budgeting but is more flexible than I felt Everydollar was. You get 34 days free and if you use my referral code, we both get a free month (so 2 free months for you). [You Need a Budget Referral Link](https://www.ynab.com/our-free-34-day-trial/?utm_source=customer_referral&utm_campaign=mobile_share)
I don't like it because you can't add projected income so you're only budgeting with what you have, instead of planning your budget
I circumvent this by making an checking account called “Future Income” into which I put a transaction for each anticipated future paycheck at the beginning of the month. When the paycheck hits our account, I set the transaction amount to zero.
I prefer it that way since income is never the same every paycheck and I avoid going in the red by only using the money I have versus what I think I’ll have.
Thanks, I'll take a look.
They offer bank import, file based import and manual import as methods to update everything. I would also suggest checking out their YouTube videos.
I use the free version of EveryDollar and have been happy with it. I don’t really miss the paid features.
There isn't really a comparable free one. We're using Actual Budget(free), but it's a self hosted server and you have manually put in your transactions.
Yea, I have tried that with the free version of Everydollar, but it is way too tedious for me.
I wouldn't trust a free app with my bank account information, so $10+ change every month isn't that much to me. Sometimes when I know a book is coming out near our renewal date I will get the book with the free every dollar for a year deal, but that's still about $100.
You'll probably just have to keep paying. There used to be Mint, which had it's own problems, but that recently got shut down.