Personal finance software

[Stan_Lite]

I need to sort out my finances. I'm hopeless with money and keep getting myself in trouble and messing things up. I think some sort of budget software would help me but I'm not sure which would be best.

I'm looking for something basic. I only have two bank accounts with all of my regular outgoings covered by direct debits/standing orders. I don't have a fixed salary, I have a fixed daily rate, so the ability for it to calculate my monthly earnings from the number of days I work would be an advantage but not essential.

Anybody have any suggestions? Free would be nice, if not, the cheaper the better.

[Wossi]

I just use a spreadsheet in excel, not sure how much it helps but it's nice to see how much I should have free every month.

[Stan_Lite]

Originally Posted by Wossi

I just use a spreadsheet in excel, not sure how much it helps but it's nice to see how much I should have free every month.

I thought about that but I thought that if I could pick up free or cheap, purpose built software, I might find it easier.

[vix]

I don't know of anything for personal finances. I too use Excel.

[Will]

I use excel as well. It took a little while to setup (i.e. setting up regular, incoming/outgoing, and taking the initiative to keep receipts, cross check them on my statement etc...).

If you use an iphone I have a good bit of software called "account tracker" wasn't too expensive, and means every time I spend money I type it in, then upload it to my spreadsheet monthly which makes reconciling more simple.

I've had to do that owing to the different bank accounts I have (in different countries too). I don't like being ignorant about my money!

[LeperousDust]

These probably won't help but i read them recently...
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/04...business-soho/

[vix]

From looking at those, DSbudget looks the best thing for the job.

Anything that's aimed at businesses will have to have ledgers set up and sorted out which is lots of hassle for a personal program!

[Joe 90]

I used to use MS Money, worked great for importing statements that I could export from my online banking app. It was really good, and showed spending over time in various chart forms to help keep track of things etc.

Yesterday I was watching BBC Click who had a feature on mint.com - looked like a decent application providing you dont mind storing details in the cloud, but I had a look at it and it seemed as though its US only. Made me wonder why the BBC had such a big feature on it at that point, but maybe I was missing something :/

[Daz]

Not used it personally but I know of GNUCash. It's open source so at least worth a look

Big list of free ones here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...nting_software

[Stan_Lite]

Thanks for all the suggestions folks. I've had a look at all of them and a few more I found and I'm leaning towards the good old Excel spreadsheet. Looking at all the software, they all have loads of features and useful stuff - the downside of which is that I could spend ages trawling through loads of stuff I don't need to find what I do need (and run the risk of not finding exactly what I need).

The Excel spreadsheet is ultimately configurable, in that I can add or leave out as many features as I want. It would be nice to find something ready made with a pretty UI which was tailored exactly to my needs but it's not going to happen so my best bet is to do it myself. I won't get the pretty interface but I will get something that does what I need it to do and nothing more. All I need to do is to get used to keeping it up to date.

Hopefully the act of manually inputting my spending will allow me to keep better tabs on what I'm doing with my money and encourage me to be less wasteful.