Which Personal Finance Software to use?

colsten

You can put forumites on your ignore list, you know.

gsmh

colsten said:

You can put forumites on your ignore list, you know.

I've tried that, but the posts still pop up but without content. I prefer the FaceBook approach where if you block someone they are effectively invisible to you and vice versa.

olbas_oil

colsten said:

 I have many, many current accounts to monitor, plus credit card accounts, investment accounts and many savings accounts on top of that, a total of 132 active accounts at the last count.  I hasten to add that not all of these accounts are in day-to-day use but they need monitoring nonetheless as they are part of my total portfolio of savings and investments. 

I'm not sure I understand how AceMoney would help  in this situation. Surely you still have to login to the 132 separate accounts to check the balances against AceMoney, or to download the statements?
I have done a trial install of AceMoney but it seems very US-centric. I see you can configure currency and dates, but the list of account providers is all US, and it has never heard of Santander.

colsten

olbas_oil said:

colsten said:

 I have many, many current accounts to monitor, plus credit card accounts, investment accounts and many savings accounts on top of that, a total of 132 active accounts at the last count.  I hasten to add that not all of these accounts are in day-to-day use but they need monitoring nonetheless as they are part of my total portfolio of savings and investments. 

I'm not sure I understand how AceMoney would help  in this situation. Surely you still have to login to the 132 separate accounts to check the balances against AceMoney, or to download the statements?
I have done a trial install of AceMoney but it seems very US-centric. I see you can configure currency and dates, but the list of account providers is all US, and it has never heard of Santander.

I don't have 132 providers, only 132 accounts. With some providers I have a dozen or so accounts. Only a handful of the accounts are for day-to-day use - others are fixed term, or once-a-month accounts.

Having experimented with auto-downloads in various account aggregators, I decided it was much easier to continue to manually record my transactions. I believe that the auto-download functionality is vastly oversold, as you still need to manually confirm that all is in order, and you also still have to manually record your expected regular SO or DD payments. 

I have AceMoney on my laptop, and either my phone or iPad with the apps, which cover most of the providers I have accounts with. I log into my apps with FaceID, and for some banks even ask Siri to open the app (works brilliantly for e.g. Santander). I don't have to wait for syncing of data, and I don't have to re-authorise access to accounts every few months. I only go into accounts if the expected balance in AceMoney doesn't tally with the actual balance in an account.

The biggest benefit of AceMoney is that allows me to monitor all my accounts in one place. One look and I know precisely what the current worth of all my money is. None of the new-fangled, syncing, glitzy graphs etc apps allows me to do this. Nor will any of it allow me to import my existing data.

As I said before, one of the newer apps might be perfectly ok if you just have a few accounts; and good luck if you ever have more accounts, and/or accounts they cannot cover because the provider doesn't have an Open Banking API, and no plans for it.

F1001

Hi sorry to interrupt in the techie discussion (didn't really understand much of it!) - regarding the software options again, I have now checked out AceMoney and it looks good but I am a PC not Mac user for my laptop, but have an iphone so need something that also has an iOS app (I am ok to have to upload via the laptop but want to view data on my mobile).
I also tried the MS Money software (thank you Blue Peter!) but it seems really intimidating and it wasn't recognising my CSV files (I prefer something that takes CSV because I think I will need to categorise my transactions outside of the app as it is annoying to do it manually one by one in the app - unless I am missing something?)
I tried but ruled out MoneymanagerEX, Buxfer (looks really good), and Gnucash as they are cloud based and I prefer to hold the data on my devices (very paranoid about security). Moneydance therefore seems a good choice - anyone using it or has some other views on this?
Separately, it would be really nice to hear about how people manage / decide on number of accounts and banks they use etc and what works for them - never really had anyone show me a good way to manage PF and seems like there are many different preferences - still trying to figure out what works for me... is there a post on this subject where people have discussed their different approaches? 
Thank you all!

blue.peter

F1001 said: -

Separately, it would be really nice to hear about how people manage / decide on number of accounts and banks they use etc and what works for them - never really had anyone show me a good way to manage PF and seems like there are many different preferences - still trying to figure out what works for me... is there a post on this subject where people have discussed their different approaches?

OK, what follows is a combination of some suggested rules of thumb and what I do. It is, of course, entirely for you to decide how this fits with your circumstances and attitudes.

1. Don't open an account unless it either (a) meets a defined need, or (b) offers a defined benefit.
2. The more money you have, the more accounts you'll find you can benefit from. At one end of the scale, you might only need a single current account. At the other (or somewhere near to it), you might find a use for 132. I'm somewhere in between, and think that my 17 (IIRC) is a lot. The more accounts you have, the more you need to track. But a lot of the movement of money between them can be automated by standing orders and direct debits. (For example, my credit cards are paid in full each month by DD and my regular savings accounts are funded by standing orders.)
3. Current accounts: I have two, and reckon that this is worthwhile for resilience - one bank might have an IT meltdown, or lock me out for some unknown reason. Both pay me interest at a rate higher than I can obtain on an easy-access saver on a certain amount of cash retained in the account. I could, possibly, benefit from the perks and/or additional resilience offered by one or two more, but don't want the added minor hassle. YMMV.
   
4. Always weigh the benefits of a current account (interest, cashback or whatever) against the obligations (monthly fee, minimum monthly deposit or whatever) and ensure that you can meet the obligations. Minimum monthly deposits can usually be met by inter-account transfers. In my case, I have two sources of income and have one paid into each current account. Outgoing payments are divided between the two accounts on a more or less arbitrary basis. There are some DDs and some standing orders set up on each. Even so, I have to transfer some money from one to the other to meet the minimum deposit requirements.
5. A very personal one: don't bank with RBS unless you can withstand the Chinese water torture that they'll give you (without breaching their Ts & Cs or policies). I had an account with them from July 2019 to May 2020, and found it a horrible experience. YMMV.
   
6. PayPal is useful if you sell on eBay, or for buying online. For example, my local Indian takeaway gives a discount for online orders and accepts PayPal. Using PayPal allows me to pay by AmEx - and so get cashback - when the takeaway doesn't accept AmEx over the counter. So I win twice by using PayPal there.
   
7. Credit cards. Always have at least two, one of which should be either MasterCard or Visa and the other should be different. Ideally, these should be not issued by the banks that hold your current account. This is for added resilience. If your main credit card is AmEx (as mine is - it offers a useful amount of cashback), a Visa or MasterCard is a necessity for the few places that don't accept AmEx. (I actually have two MasterCards and two Visas in addition to my AmEx. I don't need five cards, but a couple exist for historical reasons and I have minor reasons to keep them all ticking over.)
8. Easy-access savings. One account should be enough. Keep an eye on the MSE best buys. Don't be afraid to dump an account in favour of another as interest rates fluctuate. In practice, you might want to do this as frequently as six-monthly. I have two, because they are both linked to a single current account each. One is my main savings account, while the other just holds a bit of cash to tide me over if I have problems elsewhere.
9. Regular savings. These often offer better interest rates than easy-access accounts. But only use them if you can meet the commitment. If you've got the money sitting in an easy-access account, you can gradually shift it to one or more of these over the course of a year, and then send it back at the end of the year. Rinse and repeat. (I currently have half a dozen, with different start and maturity dates.)
10. ISAs. Cash ISAs are generally not worth having at the moment because (a) interest rates, and hence potential tax charges, are very low, and (b) interest rates on ISAs are even lower than for easy-access savings. (Nonetheless, I have a couple for short-term and very personal reasons.) S&S ISAs are great if (a) you have enough money to make use of them and (b) are willing to accept the associated risks.

HTH.

cloud_dog

gsmh said:

cloud_dog said:

I do chuckle when people (not picking on you) post saying that they don't like the UI or UX, or that it is unsupported (in this case), or that it doesn't have a app, and therefore why would anyone use it etc etc.  I did some work for a large healthcare provider where their own technology stakeholders were pushing for an app.  What benefited the end users in the end was an editable PDF accessible across a range of hardware and technologies. 

I chuckle a lot at the responses some people make too (not picking on you). Those of us who have worked in IT certainly don't all think the same. The comment attributed (probably incorrectly) to Henry Ford that if you asked people what they wanted, they'd say faster horses is apt. I would go so far as to say that true innovation is achieved without customer input. Sometimes customers or end users can muddy the waters, especially when they think they know what they want, based on what their often somewhat limited experience.

Oh dear.

Too many people 'solitionise' (yuk), especially developers and end consumers.  I have no idea of your experience but, I've witnessed two technical solutions (that cost many hundreds of thousands of ££££) that were brilliant at the technology level and yet failed to address the underlying requirements.  Focus on what you need to address, not how you will address it, as that is the easiest part.

Just to bring this back on track... We are talking about personal finance here; it needs to deliver on the users functional requirements, for some a google sheet is sufficient.

I'll use a non software analogy, Graphine; it is probably the answer to virtually everything (I exaggerate), has been in existence for well over 10 years, has been proven to excel and beat currently utilised componentry, and is currently in production usage exactly no where.  Why is that?

blue.peter

blue.peter said:

OK, what follows is a combination of some suggested rules of thumb and what I do.

PS - another good reason (for some people) to have a second current account is financial control. I found it useful for this purpose for about ten years (1985 - 1995). As I got paid into one account, I'd transfer an amount (representing the next month's expected bills and a proportion of less frequent bills)  to the other account. "Less frequent" in those days included phone and electricity (payable quarterly) and my mortgage (payable half-yearly). This segregated committed spending from money available for ad hoc spending and, later, saving.

gsmh

cloud_dog said:

Too many people 'solitionise' (yuk), especially developers and end consumers.  I have no idea of your experience but, I've witnessed two technical solutions (that cost many hundreds of thousands of ££££) that were brilliant at the technology level and yet failed to address the underlying requirements.  Focus on what you need to address, not how you will address it, as that is the easiest part.

I'm not suggesting companies shouldn't be absolutely aware of what their users would find useful. Steve Jobs took a pretty geeky product, the mobile smartphone, owned only by a niche, and he turned it into one of the most successful products ever, the iPhone. He knew by whatever means how to develop and market a phone which the public would find very desirable. He was definitely not working in a vacuum but he had incredible foresight. Microsoft Windows was on mobile phones before the iPhone, but the user experience was not good at all. The UI reflected the desktop paradigm and there was clearly little thought outside the box. It was unfortunate that when Microsoft got its act together and developed Windows Phone it was too late and, IMO, the best mobile phone OS died for lack of developer support. It often takes something of an inspired person at the top to push through concepts, rather than a committee constantly asking people what they want. Whether we like it or not people like Jobs, Dyson et al are what it takes. 

cloud_dog

You're still missing the point.  It is not about asking or even listening to what they want, it is about listening to what problems they have and then you identifying the solution, i.e. Steve Jobs (although iPhones are not the most popular mobile phones so, you could argue he failed capitalise on his insight)

Re Steve Jobs, I'll just say he  was in the right place and at the right time regarding lithium ion batteries and touch screens.  Elon is in exactly the same position wrt EVs and EV technology.