How do you track your finances?

Organgrinder

Recently, I've been playing around with various different means of tracking my expenditure, my pension planning etc.

I tend to use three main methods.

My go to, is my own spreadsheet, with all planned expenditure, every investment etc. The downside is it's quite a manual procedure and it's easy to make a mistake. It also assumes increases due to inflation are offset by pay rises/pension rises. That said, it seems to have tracked well in the years I've been using it.

I also use guiide and a great tool from James Shack (a retirement planner spreadsheet) 

https://james-shack.co.uk/retirement-planner-download

I use the guiide and the retirement planner as a kind of long term overview and my spreadsheet as a day to day.

They are all within a few percent of each other long term and whilst my own doesn't factor in growth in my pension pot with regard my day to day figures, it nevertheless has various growth scenarios such as 0%, 3% with a 2% take etc.

What does everyone else do?

Auti

Very modest income so use notebook and pen. Use my banking apps to the max to sort income and outgoings etc and same for savings and I find that they give enough info for me. The book is kept with my important papers so, if needs must, others know at least where my money is stashed - I do have several stashes so I can get best savings rates.

Farway

I use MS Money, but I'm only tracking expenditure & income & balances, not trying to forecast ahead, although I think Money does / did have that ability

It's manual input, except for share price updates where I use an add-on.

Albermarle

Despite my reasonable knowledge of personal finance, I have to ( shamefully) admit I am a bit of a 'on the back of a fag packet ' type. Probably two main reasons for that.
1) Although when working, I had lots of interaction with IT, Microsoft Office etc. I was a passive user rather than an active one. So for example I never designed my own spreadsheets, and my Powerpoint presentations were a bit basic. 
Getting away from all that stuff was one of the benefits of retiring.

2) I probably worked longer than I needed to, and have ended up with more than I need. So do not see the point of calculating to a fine degree, what may or may not happen in future to interest rates, inflation etc. 

Of course in reality I do check pension pot values, cash savings, stock markets, review portfolios , economic news etc regularly, but mostly I just keep it in my head. I worked in a commercial role so  being good at mental arithmetic was second nature, and I also I have quite a good memory for figures.
Every 6 months or so I do update a couple of tables, but that is as much about leaving info behind if I suddenly drop dead, than for myself. 

MayDogsandCoffee

Fairly basic excel spreadsheet - I have had it since 2016.  I was recently surprised to find that I could reduce from f/t to 28 hours and still save (not as much will still accumulate).  It is also interesting to look back on expenditure - eg I used commute each day but petrol was much cheaper, i work from home but spend more on hobbies these days.

DiamondLil

I use excel for budgeting and for the macro function which tracks the stock market; it just needs updating if and when dividends come in and expenses increase (or decrease...)

louby40

I use excel for my day to day in and out spending.  I also use YNAB, which you have to pay for (£70 for a year) this helps me so much to keep my spending in check.

Hoping to use it to even greater effect when I retire in July.

Beeblebr0x

Fortunately we have more money than we need due to good company and full state pensions, so don't have a need to plan. The only thing we keep an eye on is savings interest rates and energy costs.

Lord_Mattenly

I have recently decided to simply stop tracking spending so closely. I know my income and basically it only changes in April each year and will never go down. I just ensure there is enough in the annual bills/commitments account to pay out as necessary.
I know what I can spend on myself each month, plus some fuel for the car.
For the next 10 months I will concentrate on replacing savings that were used to buy a newer car and building up some savings for travel. This will be complete by Christmas. 

Last month I set up a S&S ISA. Plan to send £100 a month to it just to see how it goes. Not really fussed about returns.

I have  a spreadsheet, but enter and work out figures manually as more interesting than having it automated. May sometimes use the auto-sum function if I am feeling a little tired lol!
However, I do enjoy writing things out in a good quality notebook with a decent fountain pen.
Not into switching stuff around except occasionally for car insurance and home insurance.
Never been into maximising this and that, especially if too much time is involved.
In recent months, if I am spending more than thirty minutes to one hour a week thinking about money stuff I tell myself off lol.

Savvy_Sue

I have a spreadsheet which lists all our accounts including a total (at the time I last updated it), the interest rate and any T&C. 

Then it lists all our regular income. 

And then all our regular payments, including which account they go out of. 

DH keeps track of all irregular spending on an App called Spendee. My part is to give him any receipts, or send him a message when I didn't get one. I tried using it too, but the second time it just lost all my transactions for the month I gave up. He gets a monthly spreadsheet. 

What we don't do is then look at the spreadsheet and see how we're doing... he relies on me to tell him if it's all going t!ts up. So far, we've survived. 

MarzipanCrumble

Excel - I have more than enough coming in via DB, SP (I worked over retirement age and deferred it with 10% interest), annuity, widow's pensions etc.
I don't plan, but, for peace of mind, need to know where the money goes; also do IHT403 simulacrum in Excel to prove that regular gifting to sons comes out of surplus income.  The latter is pulled from my main Excel worksheet, so not much extra work.