If your New Year’s resolution was to take back control of your household finances, perhaps to stop having to struggle with scraps of paper or an unwieldy spreadsheet, then you’ve probably thought about using some software to get an overview of your position.
There’s plenty of advice on offer when it comes to budgeting, and there are lots of different packages available to help too.
Ditch the Envelopes
If you take the traditional approach to budgeting of putting money in envelopes or jars to pay for specific bills, then Mvelopes may be what you need to drag you into the digital era. It lets you set up a series of virtual envelopes to assign money to different tasks. You can also link it to your bank and credit card accounts, allowing you to track spending and allocate payments. Mvelopes is available for both Windows PCs and Macs, and there are Android and iPhone apps too.
If you like to know where every penny is going, then You Need a Budget (YNAB) allows you to understand your spending. It can help you plan to pay off debts and get you out of living from one pay day to the next. It’s a browser-based system so will run on any computer, and you can import data from bank accounts. It won’t track investments, though, so it’s no substitute for IFA software from the likes of https://www.intelliflo.com/.
Track Your Spending
If you need software to help you understand where your money is going, then it’s worth taking a look at Mint. It can let you know if you’re overspending in a particular area and alert you when bills are due for payment. It can help you track your credit rating too. This is another browser-based system, and there are smartphone apps too.
For those that prefer an all-singing, all-dancing solution, Quicken Premier offers a way of handling all of your budgeting and personal finance needs in one place. You can import transaction data from your bank, pay bills, track spending and more. The Premier version has modules for retirement planning, debt reduction, managing an investment portfolio and more. The software needs to be installed on your computer, and there are iOS and Android mobile versions that sync back to the desktop.
