Do you have trouble keeping track of your finances? Does it seem like too much work to track everything, reconcile your bills every month, check up on your bank accounts and investment accounts?
Well, there is help out there. There are a ton of different solutions for tracking your finances and making sense of all the information. Too many people see it as impossible. It is not. Money really is a simple concept and should not be overly complicated.
Check out the solutions below for tracking your finances. I have researched and tested all of these programs below for tracking your finances. I bet at least one of them will be the right fit for you.
Without further ado:
1. Personal Capital
Personal Capital is an online financial account aggregator. It allows you to connect all of your accounts under one platform online and analyze it to your heart’s content. The best part of Personal Capital is that it is all automated. Once you connect your accounts, all of your financial transactions get pulled together, so you can see where your money is going. All you have to do is log in a few times a month to categorize your transactions and make the most of it by reviewing the data.
You can use all of the new information to improve your financial situation and make decisions on what to cut out to pursue the dream of financial freedom. Best of all, Personal Capital is free, so it fits in well with our frugal nature. Many free programs are missing functionality, but Personal Capital brings everything you need under one online platform. I love Personal Capital and use it to track all of our personal finances.
- Check out my review here.
- Cost: Free
- Apps: Online, Mobile
- Financial Account Linking: Yes
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: Yes
- Budgeting: No
- Multiple Currencies: No
2. Mint
Mint is another fantastic online financial account aggregator. Mint is backed by Intuit, the makers of TurboTax and Quicken, so we can know and trust it to be a very secure and powerful platform. I have used Mint since I started tracking my finances back in 2012 and it has done a fantastic job. Mint is able to pull all of your financial data together and display it in a logical manner.
The benefit of Mint over Personal Capital is the integration of budgeting. Mint allows monthly budgets. The budgeting app also displays your progress along a budget throughout the month, so you can watch your progress and make adjustments. This is very helpful if you are struggling to reign in your spending in certain categories. It also helps you initially set your budgets by displaying previous month expenses in each category.
Mint is also free making it another great choice for tracking your net worth. To pay for itself, Mint offers solutions for credit cards, insurance, bank accounts, and investing accounts. These suggestions are sponsored, but they are quite useful in the pursuit of financial freedom.
- Cost: Free
- Apps: Online, Mobile
- Financial Account Linking: Yes
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: No
- Budgeting: Yes
- Multiple Currencies: No
3. GnuCash
GnuCash is my personal financial software of choice that I use on my computers at home. GnuCash is free open source software (FOSS) designed for personal and small business finances. You can even take care of inventory, billing, taxes, and payroll with GnuCash. It offers all the functionality you need for building as complicated an account tree as you desire.
GnuCash is different from many other financial software solutions in that it uses the double-entry accounting principle that accountants use. In other words, there are no categories. When one account is debited another account is credited in an equal amount. So income and expense “categories” are actually accounts. Once you get used to this functionality, it works very well and is very powerful. There is a learning curve for Gnucash, but it is worth it for the advanced budgeting and reporting available.
- Cost: Free Open Source
- Apps: Desktop, Linux, Windows, Mac, Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Android
- Financial Account Linking: Yes
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: Yes
- Budgeting: Yes
- Multiple Currencies: Yes
4. KMyMoney
KMyMoney is similar in functionality to GnuCash. It has a prettier interface than GnuCash making it more akin to Quicken. From their website their goal is:
- Accuracy. Using time tested double entry accounting principles KMyMoney can help ensure that your finances are kept in correct order.
- Ease of use. KMyMoney strives to be the easiest open source personal finance manager to use, especially for the non-technical user.
- Familiar Features. KMyMoney intends to provide all important features found in the commercially-available, personal finance managers. The current release is closer than ever to that goal and more improvements are already planned or being tested.
I would recommend KMyMoney as a good option for free software.
- Cost: Free Open Source
- Apps: Desktop, Linux, Windows, Mac
- Financial Account Linking: Yes
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: Yes
- Budgeting: Yes
- Multiple Currencies: Yes
5. Moneydance
Moneydance is often compared in functionality to the gold-standard of Quicken. It offers all of the professional level reporting that Quicken does along with the ability to automatically download your transactions. Moneydance is also able to auto-pay your bills for you once it is all configured. It even manages to improve on Quicken in the speed department. Responsiveness of the program is very good and allows you to really dive deep into your personal finances and analyze it as much as you want.
One major benefit over Quicken is Moneydance is available for all operating systems.
- Cost: $50
- Apps: Desktop, Linux, Windows, Mac
- Financial Account Linking: Yes
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: Yes
- Budgeting: Yes
- Multiple Currencies: Yes
6. Quicken
Quicken is brought to us by the same company as Mint, Intuit. It is pretty much the gold-standard personal finance software out there. This is not because it is necessarily the best software, but it is one of the oldest, most mature pieces of software and it is highly used in industry. It contains all of the required features of a good financial program and has very robust reporting. It also easily imports your financial transactions. Since it is the standard, all banks allow you to download your transactions in a Quicken supported format.
The one gripe most people have about Quicken is that they release a new version every year requiring a paid upgrade.
- Cost: $75 Deluxe, $40 Starter
- Apps: Desktop, Windows, Mac, Mobile
- Financial Account Linking: Yes
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: Yes
- Budgeting: Yes
- Multiple Currencies: Yes
7. Microsoft Money Plus Sunset
Microsoft Money is the old standby for many personal finance gurus. It offers all of the required analysis tools and quick account linking expected of a professional level program. However, the financial linking is gone since Microsoft discontinued development of the software in 2009. In 2010 Microsoft released Microsoft Money Plus Sunset to open legacy Microsoft Money files and to allow users to continue to use the software without auto-linking of accounts. Not linking accounts is more secure for your financial information, albeit not as convenient.
- Cost: Free
- Apps: Desktop, Windows
- Financial Account Linking: No
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: Yes
- Budgeting: Yes
- Multiple Currencies: Yes
8. You Need A Budget
You Need A Budget is an excellent program brought to us for all of our budgeting needs. You Need A Budget is not nearly as complicated as Moneydance and Quicken, but it thrives in its simplicity. You are able to link your accounts to the software and it helps you to create budgets that you can stick by. If you are having a hard time committing to a budget, this may be the software for you. You Need a Budget is completely designed around budgeting and lacks features around general personal finance. However, this software can lead you down the right path to reach financial independence.
- Cost: $50/yr
- Apps: Online
- Financial Account Linking: Yes
- Advanced Finance Reporting: Yes
- Advanced Investment Reporting: No
- Budgeting: Yes
- Multiple Currencies: No
Conclusion
There are personal finance software solutions out there for everybody. Start using one today and start tracking your finances. You will quickly be on your way to financial independence just through the act of tracking.
What platform do you use for tracking your finances? Do you track them at all? Let me know in the comments below.
Original article and pictures take atypicallife.org site
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