Can you all recommend a cheap or free app that helps be build a budget and see where my money is going and how I can save? Something very simple and easy to use. Do you all use them? I am new to being frugal and saving money and the advice in this sub has been wonderful. I just want to see what and where I can save money. What are some of the other ways you keep track of money? I wished I learned this log ago. Thanks and Please
What's a good budget app to start tracking spending
byu/Danwphoto inFrugal
Posted by Danwphoto
7 Comments
Rocket money is free or very cheap and it is good enough. The caveat is the entire app is an advertisement (not inside the app, just the name of the app) for rocket mortgage. I don’t recommend getting your mortgage from rocket mortgage by recommending this app
We use the free EveryDollar. I don’t want any paid tracker anyway. Just a data breach waiting to happen… As soon as we’re in the car, I just enter the reciept manually.
I use Google Sheets to track spending. I write the categories down the side and dates across the top, and then write a formula to total each row, and then total everything at the bottom. I also make a separate budget to track actual spending versus budget, totals, and difference between income and spending. A bit of work up front but very worth it.
Do me a favor take five minutes to think of everything you spend money on pick anything you are willing to cut out or replace with something cheaper. Give yourself credit for making the change and do it again. The app is fine but no one I know who used it actually made the changes they needed to to improve their financial situation. I want to see you succeed not just go through some motions filling your data into an app.
I use Bluecoins.
My bank actually catoegorizes my spending and I can set a budget for each category.
Make your own system with Google Sheets and Google forms for input. A double-entry bookkeeping setup is what I do, where the first page of the form asks what kind of transaction it is (expense, income, or transfer), and then the second page is built based on that answer. For double entry bookkeeping you need to keep track of the “from” and the “to” for every transaction, as well as the amount. Ask an LLM for how to make it.