Personal Finance

5028 readers

61 users here now

Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances!

Note: This community is not region centric, so if you are posting anything specific to a certain region, kindly specify that in the title (something like [USA], [EU], [AUS] etc.)

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

WandererLagomorph799@lemmy.ml

nieceandtows@programming.dev

nieceandtows@lemmy.ml

What do you use for keeping track of expenses and income (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 day ago by vurr@lemmy.today to c/personalfinance@lemmy.ml

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So I'm considering just using excel to keep track of all my expenses and income, but is there a better solution? What do you use to track how you spend money? I want something from which I can freely export the data if need be so excel is tempting.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Otherbarry@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

Just a spreadsheet, nothing fancy. Right now using Google Docs but it could easily be some other spreadsheet app (LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, etc.).

These sort of things just need to be something you understand and follow for your own use. Way back I started out trying to track finances with Quicken but in the end I found it way too complicated for what I needed and hated the idea of my data being locked in their specific format. And I didn't even need any of the fancy stuff like syncing with bank accounts/credit cards.

Mine is pretty simple, the main columns represent each month of the year, top group of rows represent different income sources, followed by a group of rows representing non-discretionary expenses, followed by a group of rows representing discretionary expenses. Then totals at the bottom. Works for me.