My wife and I are considering moving to a different system for managing our family finances (i.e., budgeting) in 2019. Perhaps you’re thinking along the same lines — a new year, a new approach.
Years ago, we started out with an old-fashioned big green ledger book, then switched in the 1990s to Larry Burkett’s Financial Planning Organizer. In the early 2000s, we finally moved from a pencil-and-paper approach to an Excel spreadsheet, and then, a few years ago, to another spreadsheet system using Google Sheets.
Because each of these systems has required "manual" entry (by hand or via typing), I’ve spent a good bit of my life going through receipts and bank statements, making sure our income and expenditures were recorded and applied to the correct budget categories!
I’ve thought about moving to some type of web/app-based system that eliminates (or greatly reduces) the need for manual entries. Such systems import transactions data directly from one’s bank account, credit card account(s), etc.
I’m not quite persuaded, however, that the relative ease of using of a web/app-based system is worth giving up my tailor-made spreadsheet approach. Automated importing would be nice, but I like having a system that I designed — one that matches the way I think about money management.
Many options
The number of systems with automated transaction-posting is proliferating, and now includes (among others):
Polling the SMI staff today, I found that the majority of us are using unique, "home-grown" spreadsheet set-ups, while three of us use Mint.
What kind of system are you using? What do you like about it? Have you tried others?
