Mamas & Papas-
Can any of you flip me a link for, or recommend a good personal/ family budget spreadsheet, the kind that crunches numbers for you. Categories which come to mind include- mortgage, student loan, tuition, utilities, car, insurance, credit card, maintenance, clothing, food etc. I am sure someone way better than me at excell has already done such a thing.
Anything which is sophisticated enough to also address interest payments, minimum due, pre-payments, amortization etc would be excellent.
To date, we had been using a handwritten sheet on which I had the different vendors, and I would write amnt due, due date and paid, It helped me realize that the Oct phone bill didn't get to my house for instance, so I could avoid fees and penalties. would like to up the ante and go beyond just tracking due and paid to trimming fat, and paying down wisely.
Thanks for your help,
F. B.
In excel, on the ribbon, formulas tab, financial, insert formula. Problem solved.
They practically walk you though the inputs.
It's not a spreadsheet per se, but we've used Quicken to keep track of our finances for years.
Like TF from Plano, I use Quickbooks (because we own a business and I have to keep our books somehow... so might as well keep personal finances, too). However, it is probably easier for a family to use Quicken. Same company, more user-friendly. It can connect directly with your bank(s), balance your checkbook for you, and has tons of great, useful reports.
We started with Dave Ramsey's worksheets when we were trying to pay down our debt quickly. But now we use Mint to keep track of my business expenses and our household budget. I like it because I can pull up ALL of my accounts or just one, and if I have to pay for a business expense with my personal account, I can still label it for business and then pull up all of my business accounting on one screen, even if the line items are from more than one account. Ramsey's will help you with amortization, pre-payment and interest payment questions, Mint will help you keep your spending in check.
mint.com
hellowallet.com
Waaaaayyyyy better than spreadsheets. Both programs take your on-line banking info (which you provide) and use screen scraper technology to update your transactions into one "check register" - it will learn your categories, automatically categorize your transactions, can track your interest rates, help you figure out what debts to pay off first.
The personal version of Quicken is currently awful - Intuit owns Mint and they seem to be pumping all of their support into Mint and away from Quicken personal versions. So I would avoid Quicken because what you get now is much worse than what they were selling 5 years ago.
Mint is free and it's what I use. HelloWallet may have a fee but it's very good. My company actually offers it to employees and pays the fee for us. My colleagues really like it but by the time we added it, I had been using mint for several years already and didn't want to go through the hassle of switching again.
Daveramsey.com
But if you're good with excel, it can do all that stuff.
I don't use anything for our personal budget such as a spreadsheet, etc. I reconcile with the bank almost daily since I am there daily with our company as well.
However, while I do all the finances for our company, I LOVE QuickBooks. I use QuickBooks Pro 2013 which is directed toward businesses but I believe there is one for household budgeting as well.
I also rely on Excel spreadsheets. As hubby sends me an invoice to prepare, I prepare it in QB and then add any AP that will be necessary for the invoice. THEN, I go to my excel on AP and note expected invoices, amounts, where the shipment went, what I paid for product plus transportation, what we sold it for and net profit.
Then, I go to Excel AR and note all invoices and cross check with supplier, transportation, costs involved and when the customer pays the bill.
This way, I can quickly shoot an email with excel reports to hubby with AP and AR and he can see upcoming expenses and projected incoming payments. We also keep track of any late payers and those who take advantage of our discount of 1% 10 net 30 terms.
I am super detailed with this work and trying to explain it here sounds much harder than it really is. My invoicing is just a 3 step process.
I can see where it would benefit household budgets as well. The QB program is easy to use. I had never used it when we started our company and I love the ease of it. Like I said, my specific program is probably too detailed for a household budget but they have programs geared toward household.
Good luck
To do the things that you are requesting, I created my own spreadsheets in Excel.
not sure if this will help but in your bank account info (if you do banking online) there are a few different options to sort your money. excell, etc and also a bill pay option so that you can send the payments right from your bankaccount. maybe check there. good luck I also hate bill time....
Also check out some of the freebies on Dave Ramsey's website.
