MSE needs your help! New Online Budget Planner needs testing

PROLIANT

Very good, slick and simple - have the web developers AJAX'ed the application?

Little_Miss_Saving_Money

Hi,
Yes this worked for me too. I found it very user friendly and I am sure it will be a "hit" with all MSE ers:j

gizmo111

Worked for me and I thought it was great - every single category you could think of, even down to your own funeral:eek:

Former_MSE_Dan

Thanks for all your help on this folks - we are now ready for launch in the weekly email!

Cheers!

LesD

MSE_Dan wrote: »

Thanks for all your help on this folks - we are now ready for launch in the weekly email!

Cheers!

Well done for fixing the bug on the pension income!

Jo_anne_2

Seem to work well. Only comments are:

"You spend most money in the 'In Your Home' and 'Savings & Investments' categories, so pinpoint these to make the biggest savings." - I am not planning to cut back on savings and investments to make savings! Doesn't make much sense.

I'd like to see tabs along the top of the form for each of the 10 spending categories so you can see at a glance what you have completed and what is still to come, while you fill it in.

Also it would be nice to see, on the spending analysis graph at the end, what % of income spent in each category. Thanks though - this is a very useful tool. :T

clairey22

I really liked this, it was easy to use and liked all the links for each section....
only thing I didnt like was how long it took at the end for the total spends to display as the numbers kept increading.......the numbers stopped and I thought "oh its not too bad" then they started again!

chalkysoil

I like it, it's quite quick to do and useful.
But...
it said I'm overspending by £93 a month, yet I'm saving a lump sum of £5000 a year - I don't think it understands about having a cushion for peaks & lows of expenditure.

the writing in the final piechart is unreadable on the yellow savings segment being white.

Did I miss the bit for regular nhs prescription costs @ £7 odd per item per month?

some of the petrol costs are refunded from mileage claims at work - did I miss that bit?

moo2moo

Its fab apart from the savings category. I fall within the 2% margin of under/overspending on my annual income but am told to cut back despite investing a significant proportion of my income each month. Perhaps the tool would be more useful without the saving section with "you have x amount available to invest each month... how much do you actually save" being a suggestion on the final page. If I didn't have this surplus I wouldn't be investing it and since I am investing it I do have it available to cover anything unpredictable.

The bit allowing you to add a category is v. useful as it allows aditions for alternative fuel sources and anything else.

tortoisesaver

worked for me - on Firefox and Vista.
One comment though - I found that if you don't click through to the frequency box (i.e. if you leave it as monthly) then it doesn't register the amount entered. Luckily I discovered this on the first page - otherwise I would have looked like a money saving saint!!

14% less spent than earned - yippee!! Now I've just got to figure out how to manage my bank accounts to reflect that....
Useful tool though, cheers MSE

Edit:
Just tried to add a subcategory after Total spend had already been worked out - and it took a few clicks on "save subcategory" before it worked (not sure if this is a bug or not)