Keeping Track of savings etc - Spreadsheet or Software ?

Heedtheadvice

For lots of data and complex info including metadata with ledger type processing then a relational database and possibly spreadsheets to do some analysis.....or specialised software is really the best way.

However......
For what Darren describes a workbook of spreadsheets sounds more than ample!

One sheet can be made to hold the basic data as a list i.e. be the basic database and include time elements so that tax years are easy to use in any analysis or automatically filter out. Most people do not have a huge number of accounts or investments so are usually easy to accommodate.

I just use spreadsheets to cover every period/asset of interest and the odd paper copy and find that easy, cheap, simple and more than adequate.

Edit: just read Dilbert's post.....and it strikes me that a spreadsheet would seem ideal for what is described. A common mistake is to group basic data (such as was described) but if all data is held in the data list, irrespective of order of data entry, the spreadsheet is the ideal too to do the grouping for you as part of the analysis portions....and can be made to do more than other specialised software tools that are often inflexible...where you might wish 'it just did that' a bit differently or better!

mhoc

My excel sheet was worked well - it included a separate sheet for maturity dates and also what account the money actually came out of - joint or singular accounts

I have since been working on doing forward projections - working out what is going out each month in total to the various regular savers and adding in the predicated closure balances with a running total of what will be in the base account - the idea being to figure out what months I will have insufficient in the base account to feed all of the regular savers - as I don't have a regular saver maturing in each month yet.

Another complication of this forward projection is that its not a set figure going out each month of the base account each month to feed the RSs - as a regular saver matures or a new one is added to the list the amount varies.

But for now though its working well and I am working on figures up to 14 months ahead

TheTracker

In_For_A_Penny wrote: »

Vote for Banktivity. OS X only though.

Ah, so that’s the old iBank? +1 to the name change. I used it, and MoneyDance, until 5 years ago when I switched to MoneyWiz. No doubt they’re all good quality now. Somewhat surprised there is no software as a service that does the same thing in 2017. Perhaps there is?

wiseonesomeofthetime

AceMoney for me after moving to Apple from Windows where it was MS Money from 1997-2017!!

Both programs hold similar features.

Eco_Miser

Open Office Calc spreadsheets for me.

darren72

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I'll look into some of the options suggested and see what works best for me.

Thanks again

Pennywise

I use software called "VT Cashbook" - free from vtaccounts. I find it far simpler than a spreadsheet and far easier to keep track of transfers etc so fewer errors (it's "double entry" so money out of one account must be matched against money in to another, so it always balances). It's a business book-keeping solution but has a "household" chart of accounts specially written for home use.

Wizard_of_Id

jimjames wrote: »

Still using Microsoft Money, now free and still works well

same here, I've been using it since 2001 and never had a problem even after automatic updates stopped, I always did the updates myself anyway.

ChesterDog

A simple Excel spreadsheet for me.

Consists of a Balance Sheet listing all values, a P and L Account showing all income and expenditure, and annual surpluses (or deficits...) and an archive detailing old accounts and where their proceeds went.

TonyMMM

Microsoft Money .... never found anything to match it