Help budgeting & spreadsheet templates

BikingBud

baldeagle09 said:

Microsoft Money is an old program that I use which helps to track income and expenditure. Not perfect but useful, especially if you have a number of accounts. You can compare budget and actual income and expenditure.

I'd vote for MS Money again.

We've been using it for probably 15+ years.

Keep track of numerous types of account; saving, banking, asset, credit card etc. Also multiple currencies. Easy to transfer between pots.

No account limit, we have any number of closed accounts including credit cards when stoozing was worthwhile. It's interesting to look back at what things used to cost.

Set up categories and sub categories such as: wage (self and wife), house purchase (SDLT, conveyancing, mortgage and mortgage overpayment), utility bills, mobile phone bills, car expenses (for differing vehicles), groceries, clothing, eating out, socialising and anything else you may wish to track.

You can then build a budget going forward including regular bills/direct debits as well as one off payments.

Currently using the budget planner to forecast forward using historic expenditure and aggressively focussing on the mortgage repayments to max out the over pay (10% per annum) and see how early we can pay it off, currently showing a reduction from 10 year to 5 years 3 months and an interest saving of over £15k. And if you want to change and see what might happen just chop something out or add something into the budget, ie if it seems like it might be tight early next year do not pay the 10% overpay and see how that pans out. This is the real beauty and makes it powerful to see where you could be as you play with the figures.

You can also give yourself budget goals so if you have excess of say £35 or £3500 left at the end of the month you can nominate and build a pot, eg holiday or car replacement and see when you will reach your target.

Only problem, we run it on a Win98 standalone netbook, (not connected to the WWW) and I just keep hoping it won't crash as I might then have to buy another machine  

Real shame it's no longer available. See here for other options: https://www.thebalance.com/when-replacing-microsoft-money-1293812

Perhaps consider: "If you can do without automatic transaction downloads and a few other features that require internet access, Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe is still an option. Although it doesn't have all the features that you enjoyed in Money, Sunset Deluxe is free. There's no Mac version, so those users will have to choose a different alternative."

B0bbyEwing

Rich1976 said:

Absolutely it’s all about balance and priorities and I do agree to some extent. It’s only when you sit down and write down everything you want to save up for. You’ve identified a list of wants. So need to identify how much each thing is going to cost and then how long it will take to save up. 

You say it took years to save up 10k for an emergency fund but how much is a new roof and how long will that take?
it really did blow my mind when I did it for our circumstances as there is  never enough money and many of our wants may well just remain as a want.
I don’t like debt and don’t ever want to be in a position where a car has to be paid for on finance or we can’t afford to replace the windows because we have a debt payment to make. So my attitude is everything has to be saved for and paid that way. But that does mean less goes into our pensions 

I think this is one of those topics we could discuss all day long & we'd basically just agree with the other person, or at least see where they're coming from, but we'd just go round in circles. 

In an ideal world, we'd earn mega-money where we could put huge chunks to retirement & bills would be taken care of easily & we'd have this massive wedge left over for FUN.

But not many of us live in an ideal world so therefore we need to make decisions. 

I could just put everything in to cash savings. Have a pot of 80k because roof will cost 5k, new kitchen may be 20k, bathroom 10k, garden 10-20k so on & so forth. But then I've nothing in retirement & I'm working until I die in a job I now struggle to do because I'm old and falling apart & I just have a miserable existence. 

Or I can put <an amount> aside, get that bathroom because it's needed, make do with the kitchen and garden as they function as they are, put in to retirement (or at the very least accessible investments) as much as we can while not leaving ourselves short elsewhere & then we may be able to retire at a reasonable age where we can still enjoy the time left we have. We wont have had that new kitchen or new roof but we still ate & stayed dry.

Just comes down to the fact we can't have everything so need to balance out.

B0bbyEwing

BikingBud said:

Perhaps consider: "If you can do without automatic transaction downloads and a few other features that require internet access, Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe is still an option. Although it doesn't have all the features that you enjoyed in Money, Sunset Deluxe is free. There's no Mac version, so those users will have to choose a different alternative."

@BikingBud - What's the difference between Sunset Deluxe and "Money"?

I imagine none of them pull info from your accounts any longer. Just wondered what Money can do that SD can't?

cloud_dog

B0bbyEwing said:

BikingBud said:

Perhaps consider: "If you can do without automatic transaction downloads and a few other features that require internet access, Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe is still an option. Although it doesn't have all the features that you enjoyed in Money, Sunset Deluxe is free. There's no Mac version, so those users will have to choose a different alternative."

@BikingBud - What's the difference between Sunset Deluxe and "Money"?

I imagine none of them pull info from your accounts any longer. Just wondered what Money can do that SD can't?

Sunset Deluxe was the last version of MS Money issued and can be used free of charge.  This version was a US focused release.

I have a copy of MS Money 2005 UK edition if you are interested in having a look. 

I still use it and TBH can't find anything that impresses me sufficiently to move.  Others on here have moved to different, supported products, like Acemoney etc.

cloud_dog

BikingBud said:

baldeagle09 said:

Microsoft Money is an old program that I use which helps to track income and expenditure. Not perfect but useful, especially if you have a number of accounts. You can compare budget and actual income and expenditure.

I'd vote for MS Money again.

We've been using it for probably 15+ years.

Keep track of numerous types of account; saving, banking, asset, credit card etc. Also multiple currencies. Easy to transfer between pots.

No account limit, we have any number of closed accounts including credit cards when stoozing was worthwhile. It's interesting to look back at what things used to cost.

Set up categories and sub categories such as: wage (self and wife), house purchase (SDLT, conveyancing, mortgage and mortgage overpayment), utility bills, mobile phone bills, car expenses (for differing vehicles), groceries, clothing, eating out, socialising and anything else you may wish to track.

You can then build a budget going forward including regular bills/direct debits as well as one off payments.

Currently using the budget planner to forecast forward using historic expenditure and aggressively focussing on the mortgage repayments to max out the over pay (10% per annum) and see how early we can pay it off, currently showing a reduction from 10 year to 5 years 3 months and an interest saving of over £15k. And if you want to change and see what might happen just chop something out or add something into the budget, ie if it seems like it might be tight early next year do not pay the 10% overpay and see how that pans out. This is the real beauty and makes it powerful to see where you could be as you play with the figures.

You can also give yourself budget goals so if you have excess of say £35 or £3500 left at the end of the month you can nominate and build a pot, eg holiday or car replacement and see when you will reach your target.

Only problem, we run it on a Win98 standalone netbook, (not connected to the WWW) and I just keep hoping it won't crash as I might then have to buy another machine  

Real shame it's no longer available. See here for other options: https://www.thebalance.com/when-replacing-microsoft-money-1293812

Perhaps consider: "If you can do without automatic transaction downloads and a few other features that require internet access, Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe is still an option. Although it doesn't have all the features that you enjoyed in Money, Sunset Deluxe is free. There's no Mac version, so those users will have to choose a different alternative."

MS Money runs quite happily on W10.

Haven't tried it yet on W11.

B0bbyEwing

cloud_dog said:

Sunset Deluxe was the last version of MS Money issued and can be used free of charge.  This version was a US focused release.

I have a copy of MS Money 2005 UK edition if you are interested in having a look. 

I still use it and TBH can't find anything that impresses me sufficiently to move.  Others on here have moved to different, supported products, like Acemoney etc.

Thanks for the offer and I may take you up on that.

I was just wondering what the difference was between "Money" (2005?) and Sunset Deluxe. Rather than being a "US focused release". I'm talking about the actual differences. 

MovingForwards

On the subject of food and cooking, my OH did most of it and a while back just stopped cooking us meat based foods, at that point I said when he reverts to eating meat I won't be; I was a veggie when we first got together. 

It's rare I'll buy plant based mince, sausage etc due to cost.

I put an order in for a delivery of goodies, then found a localish grain shop where I can buy as much or as little of something as I want, taking my own tubs to fill. Those meals take planning as I have to soak beans etc.

For quick meals I've got tins of various beans, lentils, chickpeas and tomatoes etc with herbs and spices and all it takes is cracking open a few tins, draining, throwing in a saucepan with whatever spices, getting rice or pasta on the go at the same time and 20 minutes later I'm eating.

There's plenty of good veggie and vegan cookbooks on eBay, I've the student vegetarian nosh book and a few Asian ones, I adapt to my taste.

cloud_dog

B0bbyEwing said:

cloud_dog said:

Sunset Deluxe was the last version of MS Money issued and can be used free of charge.  This version was a US focused release.

I have a copy of MS Money 2005 UK edition if you are interested in having a look. 

I still use it and TBH can't find anything that impresses me sufficiently to move.  Others on here have moved to different, supported products, like Acemoney etc.

Thanks for the offer and I may take you up on that.

I was just wondering what the difference was between "Money" (2005?) and Sunset Deluxe. Rather than being a "US focused release". I'm talking about the actual differences. 

I've never played with the Sunset addition, but there were different editions.  For example the Deluxe version (as far as I can remember the differences), would have been things like having a tax return module and a section for home inventory module, in addition to the usual ability to manage a range of financial accounts 

Standingstrong

There is a MSE spreadsheet on the website if you want to take a look? 

(Tried to add it but wouldn’t let me! ) 

blue.peter

Standingstrong said:

There is a MSE spreadsheet on the website if you want to take a look?

Yeah. If you look back, you'll find that the first response - mine - included a link.