I don't use any tool.

Auto max out my fed 401K
Auto pay all monthly bills
Auto pay mortgage
Bi monthly deposit to 529 and mutual fund.
Keep X amount of emergency money in checking account
1 reward card that's paid of monthly, but we buy what we want. Neither my wife or I are big shoppers but we have some nice stuff.
Then as the savings amount grows I move some to my brokerage accounts to buy or trade.
I keep the max per year to contribute in Jan to my wife and my Roths.

 

I use mint to track everything. Have been for over 2yrs. Very key to go through and properly categorize everything when you first set it up. I love that it can give me a full picture of everything in one easy place. Checking, savings, student loans, brokerage, 401k, and ira all at once. Used to use a xls to track recurring expesnse, but now its just all on autopay and i never even look at it. It doesnt change so i dont worry about it. I know i dont over or under pay expenses because i have my monthly budget on mint setup to account for my reoccuring expenses within a few dollars. I see that right on the front page. Just have the budget setup to be a little more so i dont get annoying emails about going over budget...

Since we are comparing size... My savings rate is an obscenely high number. I'd venture at over 90%. I work in Iraq though, so i currently have very low living expenses.

 

yeah you cheat.

 

Mint is - suprise surprise - not available outside the US and Canada. Gee thanks.

 

Time for you to start a copycat. I hear greece could use some money management.

Too soon?

 

yodlee.com is the backend behind mint and others. is that available outside the US?

 

In the year 2006 I went through all my expenditures and categorized them. I pay for almost everything with my credit card (Free money1!!!!) so categorizing is easy.

I saw that I spent $460,381 on eating out and about $100,000 more in cash on booze.



After that I stopped reviewing my expenditures to avoid the shock of seeing how I spend my money.

 

eating out....



.... high dollar vip call girls!

 

I have a crab collection.

 

Well, you'd get a crab collection from eating out high dollar call girls, Faeflora.

 

So I am bringing this back.

Show some screenshots of your Excel files for those of you that have them. I am trying to setup a very good excel file with ideas refrenced from others. I think i have a pretty good basic setup here but others may have a better system. All of my cells that refer to other cell in the workbook (in other worksheets too) are referenced so updating it will be cake when things change.



I hope to set this up to look alot like MINT once I am done as I have more freedom to analize my data my own way with my own excel file.

To get this started, here is my current setup.





As I have time from completing some papers that im required to have to become certified as a C.E.T i will start going back in my online history and backlogging my budget tracking even though I wasnt working on a budget at all... should show some of my spending habits beyond what i can see in the last month.

Cheers,
Matt