Best Budgeting Software?

Earnshaw24

Hi people,

I'm ready to sort my life out

My question is, what budgeting software would you recommend? Ideally I'd like one that links to UK accounts and has the same functionality of YNAB but I don't know if this exists.

I'd love to hear your thoughts,

Thanks all!

Gareth

middleclassbutpoor

There are a couple of other products out there...

- Money dashboard - https://www.moneydashboard.com/
- Money Wiz https://wiz.money/features/

If you have a mac and want really detailed and advanced tools

- https://www.iggsoftware.com/banktivity/

YNAB seems to be the popular choice on here - I use a spreadsheet personally and daily monitoring of my accounts - I find it simple enough to do and find these apps/software quite complicated in a sense of trying to categorise everything etc.

My personal recommendation is probably to do a budget on a spreadsheet and then maybe find an app that allows you to record your spending.

-taff

YNAB links to UK accounts

datlex

Personally I don't think you can beat spreadsheets for planning your budget. Sticking to your budget is a different matter. What is your strategy for keeping to your budget?

middleclassbutpoor

I think UK banking is mainly file imports rather than the automatic feeds

The below suggests that they are working towards it but I recall I couldnt get it to work with my bank automatically.

https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/q5plv9/open-banking-for-direct-banking-in-the-uk

Debtfreeforever

YNAB

However I personally think you can buy and read the YNAB book and then create a spreadsheet.

I create a spreadsheet for every month, what I want to spend on = budget and what I actually spend on = actuals.

Why a budget and actuals?
There is no shame in adjusting the budget !!!55357;!!!56841; that is also what the book says.

Willing2Learn

YNAB because the methodology is zero-based budgeting...

A spreadsheet is cheaper though, but you have to learn the method independently.

-taff

middleclassbutpoor wrote: »

I think UK banking is mainly file imports rather than the automatic feeds

Works with mine.

MrsSave

I use a mixture of YNAB and spreadsheets. I use my spreadsheets to work out how much I need to budget for each category, and then use YNAB for my budgeting.

Mumoffourkids

I’ve set up a spreadsheet similar to YNAB. I like YNAB but got me it didn’t work as I get money in at various times of the month. For example I get my wages in the first week of the month, my tax credits and child benefit weekly on a Monday, one lot of maintenance weekly on a Friday, one lot of maintenance monthly in the 25th and my housing benefit fortnightly on a Friday. I couldn’t get YNAB to work in weeks and months at the same time as my bills are monthly but my spending money I track weekly. So I now have a spreadsheet with many tabs. I have a tab for each month which is a summary and I play around with that to see how I can make savings or if any of my bills change. I have a weekly tab for my spending money for food, petrol and general. I also gave a weekly allocation tab where I put my income into another spreadsheet and then I allocate the income to the categories just like YNAB. It sounds complicated but it works for me.

tempus_fugit

Another vote for YNAB here but I also agree with the posters saying to use a spreadsheet based on the YNAB principles. YNAB is not cheap but the methodology it uses is what is useful. I use it in conjunction with spreadsheets and for that I would highly recommend using Google Sheets, which is free and handles all the financial calculations that I throw at it, plus I can access them from my laptop and my iPad, which is very handy.