Budget program

Does anyone have recommendations on a good financial program to keep track of our bills? I'm drowning in keeping track of all the new bills for the house and when they're due, plus trying to figure out when I can pay what based on payday. Help!

[DCJenn]

I use Quicken- I've used it with windows and mac and have had no problems. I can download nearly every account we have to quicken, and it's easy to manipulate. The only account that I can't get to download is my 403 (b) from Fidelity which doesn't do Quicken for mac.

I am obsessive about it, and it works well for us. It is a pain to load all of the information up front but that will be the case no matter what program you use.

Jenn

I think Quicken is pretty good, especially since it came free with my computer. The cost of purchasing it might factor into my enthusiasm (but what are the other options -- MS Money?). I don't use Quicken for our stuff but use it for all of my MILs financial info. It is very easy to download her bank statements which include all her debit card spending. Hmm...actually, it was a PITA to set up the download with her credit union so I just download a file and import -- very easy to do that.

What I have found it most useful for is compiling reports for specific time periods and dates. It gives a nice snapshot of where spending goes over a year or quarter.

We used Quicken for several years, but about a year ago we switched over to Microsoft Money. My husband likes it because he's able to sync it with his Ipaq (Quicken probably has this feature as well). Keeping track of our finances in Money makes things a whole lot easier when tax time rolls around because I just print out a report of all of our business expenses, charitable contributions, etc. instead of trying to sort through a year's worth of receipts.

Keeping track of our finances in Money makes things a whole lot easier when tax time rolls around because I just print out a report of all of our business expenses, charitable contributions, etc. instead of trying to sort through a year's worth of receipts.

Hmmm...I didn't think about that. That is another plus.

[spotty_dog]

We use Quicken kind of like a check register, and I don't want to mess with DH's system but I do want to do a little analysis to see where I can cut corners. Any suggestions for doing a basic budget spreadsheet in Excel?

I think Excel would work, too. Either for setting up a budget or taking a look at expenditures. I have imported files from the credit union to Excel with no problems. You will still need to manually classify expenses but could probably start having fields that automatically populate based on the "pay to the order" line (Trader Joes always equals groceries). Then I would use the Data, Sort feature. If you want to get fancy about it, try some pivot tables.

[spotty_dog]

Ooooooh.

I thought I was an Excel whiz but I'd never heard of pivot tables! They look SO COOL!

Now I'm totally excited to make my little spreadsheet, LOL. Thanks, Nellie!