Any free savings tools

first78

My wife and I are in our 40s, we both have good jobs but never have much spare cash at the end of the month and only have £1000 in savings. We are soon to move house and will be paying double the mortgage we have now. I really want to get smarter with my money and wanted to ask if there are any free tools online that are easy to use which may help me manage our money better. Thanks in advance

IvanOpinion

A tool in itself does not help you manage your money, you also need to take control and make active decisions on what you spend money on and what you don't spend money on.  The only real tool you need is a spreadsheet - I still use the spreadsheet I started over 20 years ago (although it has evolved as necessary).  There are other tools available and some of them even give you fancy graphs and pie-charts that you can ooh and aah over.

blue.peter

I'm not sure what you mean by "tool" in this context. If you're looking for personal finance software, there are several options available.

1. As already suggested, you could set up your own spreadsheet and develop it as necessary. However, you might find this a bit daunting initially, because you'll need to define exactly what you want to achieve and how before you start. For this reason alone, it might be worth looking at other available options first, just to get an idea of how to go about things and to see what you think you might be able to do better.
   
2. I use and like AceMoney, though this isn't free. the publisher offers a 15-day money-back guarantee, so you can, in effect, try before you buy. (Windows or Mac OS. The Windows version works with Linux + Wine.)
   
3. Microsoft Money is no longer developed, and the final UK version of is now available free of charge. You can download a copy from my Dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/s/qirvcp46ytswe1s/Money2005-UK-QFE2.zip?dl=0 if you'd like to try it. (Windows only.)
   
4. Another free option worth looking at is Money Manager EX. (Multi platform.)
5. GnuCash is also free. (Multi platform.)
6. Pen and paper still works. Back in the 1980s, I used Filofax bank account pages. There's no theoretical reason why I couldn't go back to that. AceMoney is just a bit more convenient for me.
   

HTH.