Budgeting App - Multiple Income

SD449

This looks quite good, do you use it personally?

colsten

SD449 wrote: »

Reading reviews it seems it doesn't integrate with UK Bank Accounts

That's the least of your issues. YNAB doesn't run on MacOS. AceMoney does.

AceMoney essentially does what MS Money(*) does - it even looks much the same. MS Money is vastly popular with longstanding MSE users. It's not flash and has no bells and whistles - it's just a solid personal finance manager that has withstood the test of time. But it also doesn't automatically "integrate" with UK bank accounts, although you can manually import extracts from your bank account(s). It's probably faster, though, to do it manually. I think there's a 30-day trial version of AceMoney so you can try it out for yourself..

*MS Money doesn't run on MacOS. Needs Windows.

SD449

getmore4less wrote: »

Its not really a budget problem==the plan of how you want to spend your income.

Its a tracking/cashflow problem to get the timing of when you can spend the money

One simple solution is build a buffer so the timing of income does not matter and is detached from the spend cycle.

if you can't have a buffer immediately you can build it up slowly and adjust the amount going into longer term savings to manage the ups and downs

As said MSMoney has all the tools built in to plan, track, report, forecast

This sort of stuff is so much easier on big screen once set up and the projections done it does not have to be real time, as long as you are keeping close to plan the review updates can stretch out as you get more comfortable you are keeping on track.

Weekly updates can go out to monthly fairly quickly and if the data set is good the forecast(year is good) will let you know if you are on track to not run out of real cash.

Other products can probably do it as well.

Yes I think you're 100% right in that I want to be able to see a live cash flow for my money and to mange it better to stop it being so month to month

SD449

central wrote: »

The Emma App would suit you I think

Do you have any personal experience

central

Yes I've only used it for about a week though but I really like it. It excludes transfers between your own accounts - which you can adjust if it misses something, picks up every last bit of income through integration with current accounts and credit cards, and also integrates your predictable regular spends monthly. I'm on the free one - the paid one allows non linked accounts for an overall view of your finances, but that's easy enough done with a spreadsheet updated monthly.
For oversight of a budget and actual spend against it - this is really good.

blue.peter

It may be too late to be useful, but I've just learned something that looks relevant.

MS Money only comes in Windows flavour. However, its big advantage is that it's free. SD449 has a Mac. Apparently, there's a version of Wine for OS X. I understand that it's also free. So if MS Money will run on Wine, that might be a viable solution.

SD449

I am trying the Emma app but not providing what I am looking for in the cashflow department.

What does Wine do? Is that VMware?

blue.peter

SD449 wrote: »

What does Wine do? Is that VMware?

It provides a compatibility layer that makes a Windows program that's installed through it think that it's running on Windows, even though it's actually on another system. I have no knowledge of the OS X version, though I do use the Linux version. (Inter alia, I use it to run AceMoney on a Linux computer. That works well.) I found it a simple matter to install Wine on my computer (it's included in my distribution's Software Manager), and not difficult to install Windows programs to work with it. Sorry, but my lack of Mac experience means that I can't say anything directly relevant to your o/s.

There's a bit more info (including a download link) at https://www.winehq.org/ . I expect that Google searches will reveal a lot more information than I have.