Budget seems to be a dirty word for some people, but like it or not? Have a budget is a necessity in life. If you don’t tell your money where to go? You won’t have it for very long. I’ve noticed though that a lot of people don’t have a budget simply because they are confused by how to properly manage one. Luckily though? There are a few awesome tools available to use that make budgeting as easy as pie.
Mint.com –
Mint is one of the most well-known, free budgeting tools available. It also happens to be one of the most trusted. Owned by Intuit (the same company that owns Turbo Tax), you have the ability to connect your bank accounts, categorize them, watch your debt be paid down and more. When you first start using the program, they will walk you through every step to make sure you really know what you’re doing with it.
Budget Simple is one that I came across a year or so ago while looking for a very simple budget format for a friend. Budget simple works with 2 factors. Income and expenses. That’s it. When you first start, you’ll add your income and how often you get paid. Then you’ll move onto expenses and how often you pay them. That’s it! The system then tells you whether you’re over budget or not. As you start paying for things, just enter your transactions and go! For this one, there is a free and a paid version, but from what I’ve seen, the free version is just as good as the paid one.
YNAB as it’s often called, is by far, my favorite tool of the 3 listed here. It is a paid program, but they offer a fully functional, 34 day free trial with no credit card needed to allow you to really try out the program. To get started with this one, you’ll download the program and enter all of your expenses in to the budget section. Once your income starts coming in, you will enter that as well. You can also schedule income and expenses with YNAB too, something that I haven’t seen on other budgeting tools. I think what I like best about this one is that it works like a check register/budget combo making it really easy to update my budget as I’m balancing my checkbook.
Which budget tool do you use? If you don’t have one, check out these! You won’t be disappointed!
