Money Tracker Online

We attended money management classes through the local credit agency when we were trying to get debt free many years ago. One thing that I still catch myself doing today is keeping every receipt.

They told us to get a receipt for every purchase, even a pack of gum. Then track it on a sheet of paper for at least one month.

It becomes obvious rather quickly where your money is going. The teacher mentioned a couple of things, when you see in black and white that you are spending $100.00 per month on that wonderful coffee down at the Quik Trip and you could just make your own for about $30 per month then you know you can have an Extra $70 to pay on a bill that is bothersome. Or that you are spending $100.00 per month to eat lunch out at McDonalds when you could spend $50 eating at some other place or even take a sandwich lunch. I have to have a hot lunch, I just can't stand cold food....

Keeping receipts is easy, take them out of your purse or pocket each evening and put them in a shoe box on the dresser, then on the weekend log them on the paper or in the computer, 1-2-3 is a good program for tracking purchases too. We still use it on our older computer.

we use a program called You Need a Budget, it charts and graphs everything. you can try it for free, the cost is $60 and it also has a iphone/android app to use while your out and about.

I also use Mint and love it. No junk e-mail or anything like that. I've been using it for over a year and it's been fabulous. I used to use Microsoft Money (5 years on that) and Quicken (8 years) and this is by far my favorite. I like it so much that I would pay for it if they added a few more features. I would really like for it to track my paycheck in detail - Mint can track my net pay because it's a deposit, but to add in things like gross pay and all of my deductions I would have to manually edit each paycheck. I would also like to add the tickers of the funds in my 401(k) plan. But neither of those are critical - having all of my balances in one place automatically without having to download each financial institution and being able to access this from any computer are HUGE bonuses.

We use Mint, and it's awesome!

I have used a couple....not free though.Mvelopes was inexpensive but was a great software program. You could make budgets and make envelopes that you drag your expenses to. It was pretty cool. They have some great budgeting spreadsheets which I may have if you want them. They make you think about the expenses that only come once a year or quarterly which are the ones I think you forget about and then they sneak up on you. :)

The one I use know is PRICELESS to me. It's a software that does it all for me. I don't have to make any decisions which is what I needed. It's an interest cancellation software that gets you out of debt as quick as possible. It's AMAZING. So far (in about a year) I have saved over $10k in interest by paying things off early. I have never been able to do that but with this software I actually have a savings account. It's great for those struggling and even for those that are doing well and just want to pay off debt quicker. I have a video on my log on page if you want to learn more about this one.
:)

I use Mint, and I'm not bombarded with anything. They offer this free program, I think, in the hopes that you will purchase their more complicated programs (Quicken and such).

Mint is very cool and easy to set up, it does take some thinking to manage it month to month, unless your money is very fixed. We just went through an unusual month with a bonus from work and a gift from my parents, and we had to figure out a lot how to organize the budgets to deal with it. BUT anything that makes you think more and pay closer attention to your money is great, right?