Household Budget Software

Household budget software decreases the amount of time you spend rewriting, calculating, and adjusting your monthly worksheets. Good personal finance software will also help you control your spending because it gives you up to the minute views of where your money is going, and what you have left for the month. Taking the time to get your finances under control will go a long way to helping you find debt relief. Use this debt guide to get you on the right track.

An extra software feature offered in some money management software may offer you the ability to synchronize your PC with your handheld or offer online budgeting. Both help to keep the information at your fingertips all day long. Features to look for include the ability to coordinate and update the software with your bank accounts, credit cards and investments as well as pay all of your bills online.

Quicken Money Manager Software

If you don’t anticipate the need for retirement and investment planning for a few years, you may not need all the features of the Premier version. Optional features are fee based, and you can add those as you need them.

However, since Quicken usually comes out with new versions every year, you may want to save some money and start out with the Starter or Deluxe versions.

I am very much a fan of Quicken for keeping track of my expenses. I am a medical student living on financial aid, so it is really important to be able to easily track the balance of my accounts so that I can determine the amount of financial aid I will need to borrow at the beginning of the semester.

As most of us know, the less financial aid needed to borrowed, the less that will need to be ultimately paid back! Additionally, Quicken helps you to understand your spending habits by displaying them in easy to understand formats, while simultaneously helping the user to create a debt reduction plan that they can start on right away.

As a student, having all of this information at my fingertips on my laptop was a total blessing, because I did not need to spend time looking for the bank book with my savings account balance, the bank book with my checking account balance, or the log in information for miscellaneous federal lender websites to keep track of my financial aid balances. It is all right there in easy to read charts and displays.

Posted by: Adelle

I recently purchased Quicken Deluxe 2013 because I am just now starting to manage my money effectively after college, and from what I can tell so far, it is great!

I was a bit wary about purchasing it at first due to all of the negative reviews that were floating around on the internet, specifically Amazon. But many of these issues appear to be with the mobile integration of Quicken 2013, but I can confirm that these issues have been updated and fixed.

I was able to download the app on my iPad and successfully synched my cloud data on to it. The fact that these issues are fixed is very encouraging. Software always tends to be buggy when first released but the fact that they patch it so often and fixed the problems shows the dedication to the consumer and to delivering a quality product, which they have indeed!

The user interface of Quicken is also fairly easy to get accustomed to, and from what I have read, they also don’t change the UI drastically between updates. I appreciate that since I won’t have to relearn the program every update. Overall, I would highly recommend this product. It has made financial planning much simpler!

Posted by: Danica

Quicken Home & Business is very easy to set up and track expenses and revenue. It allows me to connect to my 3 bank accounts which is very useful, especially to pay bills online. The list of banks it supports is quite comprehensive.

The user interface gets better and better with each version. They have made a lot of improvements and short cuts to improve my workflow. The graphs and generated reports are fantastic. They allow me to quickly wrap my head around my overall finances. The expense reports are also very helpful to me when I am preparing my taxes.

One thing I don’t like about Quicken is that they come out with a new version every year. If you wait too long in between versions, then it can be really hard to seamlessly upgrade your data files to the latest and greatest version. One time, I found it easier just to start fresh, but that was a few versions ago. This process has been somewhat improved in recent years.

Posted by: Paige

I like using Quickbooks for all of my budgeting needs. For managing my business for both intake and a budget it is great, simple to train people on, and does everything I need for a pretty good price.

There are a ton of certified experts around to help me if I run into an issue which is something that a lot of other business software applications do not have. Take for example a site like Peachtree that only has a couple local people, but Quickbooks has over 100 and much better online support as well.

One other thing that I have found is that a lot of other businesses use Quickbooks as well so it is easy to take my information from one place to another to have it evaluated.

It also integrates well with various third party apps and companies to make it pretty easy to use. It’s also easy to expand with a couple different versions, so since I did have my business grow a few years back I just upgraded my version and it was more then enough to take care of what I needed.

I also like the fact that I can scan in receipts and it sorts things out for me, and even past that it can forecast things like spending into the future estimating changes so it gives me an idea of what kind of a budget I need going forward and ways to adapt to it.

Posted by: Becky

You Need A Budget (YNAB)

YNAB budgeting software can help you track your spending and make better decisions so you can get out of debt. We like software you can try first as it can save you money in the long run. You get to test it out and decide if it works for you the way you need it to. You download and install the software on your computer or tablet. This is easy to use software with a free trial.

Get the free trial here.

Easy Envelope Budget Aid (EEBA) Budget Software

Easy Envelope Budget Aid (EEBA) is my budget software of choice. You can access the tool on the go using either Android or iPhone and from home, using the web application.

The application is based on the envelope budgeting system, this means that your income is divided and put into envelopes at the beginning of each month. So, there are envelopes for rent/mortgage, groceries, healthcare, etc.

Instead of looking at your checkbook balance, which can be misleading, you check your envelope balance and spend from the envelope only. You either stop spending once the envelope is empty, or you can stop before and save money.

All transactions can be entered into the application regardless of web-connection. Another great feature is that the budgets can be shared with other people in your household. It’s extremely convenient and handy. I’ve cut my spending by almost $1000 a month using this application. I plan on using this application for a long time.

Posted by: Rachelle

Click here to read more about EEBA.

Inex Finance Software

I’m a big fan of inexfinance money management software. We’ve been using it for around a year to keep tabs on our family finances and it’s been doing a pretty nice job. Why exactly I like it? Well, because it’s not overly simplistic yet quite easy-to-use, offers some great functionality and delivers smooth performance.

Posted by: Caroline

Mint.com Budget Software

I use a few budget software tools online, many to help monitor my credit, but the budgeting tool I have continued to use for years now is Mint.com.

It has just about everything I am looking for, I can categorize all my transactions and see where my money is going. The only thing I wish it had was a way to see my credit score, but that is no big deal cause there are other free services out there for that.

Mint isn’t overwhelming with the ads, but there are many recommendations that push you the way of the sponsors, but not to an annoying level.

I have been using Mint for about four years now and don’t see that changing after the amount of debt they have helped me get out of.

Posted by: Caitlyn

I use Mint.com and I absolutely love it! I’ve gotten a lot better about my spending because of Mint.

It’s easy for me to categorize all of the different things I spend my money on monthly. I can even break down my food category into groceries, restaurants, and fast food sections!

They provide helpful graphs so I can visually see how my spending has increased or decreased from month to month. They alert me when I am getting close to a budget, and provide me with a mobile app so I can always check my spending even if I am on the go.

I love that if at first it doesn’t know what to categorize one of my purchases as, once I set it, it will auto categorize it from that point on.

The only drawback that comes with this software is the small monthly fee that you may incur depending on what bank you have in order for the software to be helpful for you. It’s worth it in order to be able to track the spending in all of my accounts at once though.

Posted by: Georgia

I like Mint.com budget software.

It is easy and any one with computer and net will be able to use it, with some guidance.

In a few steps you can setup your online account. Add to this the monthly budget sections that you can make while using Mint.com. So when you do a transaction related to food for example, the system will automatically index it in the food section. That is super nice.

The problem is that I’ve had to wait a long time for customer service to respond.

Posted by: Aimee

Click here to learn more about Mint.com

Moneydance Budget Software

Moneydance is my favorite budget software.

When I was looking for budget software, it was the most reasonably priced and it also works on Mac, Windows and Linux so I don’t have to worry about which computer or where I am.

It works well with my bank and many other banks. The homepage makes it very easy to use and have an overview of your bank account charges and credits. Makes keeping track very fluid and efficient.

It has all the feature of all the popular and more expensive software out there but for half the price. Highly recommended.

Posted by: Taryn

Read more about Moneydance here.

Pocket Smith Budget Software

I use Pocket Smith as my budget calculator for my personal and professional needs. It is a smart budget planning software.

It keeps record of all your data and helps you plan. It also gives calender planning facility to users. A major thing is it’s free for the basic version. If you use it for your personal tracking, you can go for the free version.

If you find your needs increasing, you may want to upgrade. I use the paid version as it provides me several other features like my future planning budget for next 10 years, and history of my budget from last five years.

There are many budget applications that provide various features but this is the only software I found that gives me calender projection ability, also it’s very user friendly.

I don’t have much knowledge about this field yet I do use it every day.

Posted by: Faith

You can find Pocket Smith here.

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