How do you keep track of your spending

Trickytree2

Moneydance and before that Quicken. All expenditure and investment performance tracked for at least 20 years. It comes in handy when you want to know when the dishwasher that just packed up was bought. It's a good way of recording assets and liabilities as well.



A detailed analysis was also useful when working out how much income we would need to live on when retired and estimate where costs would change.


I could have done it in excel but with 5 investment portfolios and several current accounts plus credit cards, savings accounts, p2p with multiple sites, rental properties where the capital cost needs to be captured etc it would be very complicated.



Now my executors would only need to open moneydance up to work out what needs to be recovered for my beneficiaries. Much easier than tracking back through the paperwork (which is limited in some cases as everything is done online).

jsinc

Quicken, and spreadsheets for investments. Don't know how I managed without it now (other similar accounts programs exist).

cloud_dog

MS Money for me (over 20 years). Couldn't live without it.

I am intrigued by a number of post(ers) who have indicated that they do not track expenditure, as this is one of the most useful benefits I get from using MS Money.

Obviously, not every transaction is recorded, as most daily spends plus food etc go on the CC (and I monitor that for any anomalous entries), but within MS Money I know roughly what we usually spend each month on the CC. Obviously this does vary and I use MS Money to then help identify if I have excess money in the account or need to transfer from savings (when required).

I have to caveat the above by saying that this is our 'bills' account (we have our own personal accounts which we use/spend as we wish) but I could not budget (appropriately) without using a forecast system, MS Money in my case as we usually have no more than £10 in the bills account over and above what is required to pay the ongoing bills.

(of course I may just be a bit excessive)

atush

I used to use Quicken back in the day. That really helped me( like a spending diary) to get a hold of where the money was going. Then went on to using a spreadsheet. I dont do it anymore, as I have a handle on things in the main,

The biggest thing is to get a hold of where cash is going- even if you soend one quid it should be recorded.

I myself use cards now, not cash in the main.

Fatbritabroad

I use money hub an app that links to all your bank accounts. I know some don't like this but same grade security as banks own log ins. This tracks everything automatically

Mothman

Used to use Quicken which we loved but the copy we had wouldn't work with the later versions of Windows and so changed to MS Money which is OK. All transactions are recorded and we do a full account reconciliation once a quarter to make sure everything agrees.

At the year end everything is exported into a spreadsheet so I can analyze our annual spend in preparation for my retirement, which hopefully will be in the not too distant future

MallyGirl

I have a spreadsheet for day to day - has mortgage tracking as our one account is basically a bank account with a big overdraft, also has tabs for regular savers and the accounts they are tied to, sharesave info, P2P, credit cards including when the 0% expires, a snapshot of pensions and ISAs, a view of fixed costs in a month, a pay off mortgage predictor and one tab for DD's various accounts.
I also have a spreadsheet for investments and retirement planning.
I use categories in the bank account software for big items like building work, holiday, school, etc but most stuff comes under the general heading of bills. Nearer to retirement I might track spending a bit closer.

droopsnoot

Another vote for MS Money.

Linton

MsMoney again. I dont use a credit card and any expenditure over £10 is made by debit card. Once a week I download my bank transactions into Money, most are allocated to categories automatically. One can generate Money reports or graphs of expenditure over time, expenditure against income etc etc

JohnRo

Spreadsheet, monthly audit.

Ongoing and new expenses, current valuations, bank balances, total.

Chart to show me how much if any financial progress I've been making.

Takes me about 10-15 mins to update each month.