What are /r/budget's favorite Products & Services?

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They are a great way to start budgeting, or at least to see where the money is going.

When I started managing my own finances I followed a Kakebo book for a few years. I can recommend this one (Spanish version). Other people swear about that one.

Most Kakebo books out there explain how you're meant to fill it out and are pretty straightforward to follow. The key here is consistency and motivation.

• You'll need consistency when annotating your expenses. I used to do it daily (the longer you leave it, the more likely you are to forget some expenses).
• Be truthful to yourself when you make guilt-purchases. It's never nice to look at an unbalanced budget because you spent some ridiculous money on a particular something. But those are precisely the purchases you have to include. At the end of a month, seeing an unbalanced budget where you spent more than you earned will make you more conscious about the necessity of making certain purchases.
• Motivation will come once you are able to get your spending under control and start seeing more money in your balance.
• You'll learn how to treat yourself responsibly. You only live once, after all.

With time you'll likely switch to other platforms that offer more possibilities like Excel spreadsheets. I do however look back fondly to the times where I had my Kakebo.

Enjoy it!

If you don't mind using an app on Android, this is what i have been using for years. Backs up to Google drive if you like as well. No syncing accounts or anything.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appxy.checkbook2

Dave also has an Irregular Income budget template. It is essentially a list of your budgeted expenses listed by priority. When you get paid (or know how much you will be paid in that pay period) you go down the list until you run out. I realize that payment due dates and the like may cause this to be difficult, so I might also suggest upping his suggested $1000 starter emergency fund to one month's worth of expenses so that you don't end up in a pickle if you wind up with two less than stellar paychecks in a row. I would highly suggest reading his Total Money Makeover book if you haven't already as it goes into much more detail. Hope this helps.

This may not help in your situation but after I sat down and reviewed everything I was spending my money on I realized I was spending a huge portion of my household budget on paper towels and cleaning sprays and disinfectant wipes. I ended up getting the reusable paper towels and Dazz cleaning tablets https://www.amazon.com/Cleaning-Tablets-Whole-House-Starter/dp/B0170RW9D6/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=dazz+cleaning+supplies&qid=1668646485&sr=8-3#

These all smell good, last for a long time, and a packet of the tablets are the same price as one spray cleaner. This has saved me money personally. I also buy toilet paper in bulk and set aside money each paycheck for the next time I have to buy.

If you don’t mind going to different places for groceries then you can price compare different stores and get things cheaper rather than getting all from one place. Less convenient than getting all at one store but more bang for your buck.

This might be overkill but there are 2 courses you might be interested in :

https://www.coursera.org/course/uffinancialplanning

https://www.edx.org/course/finance-everyone-smart-tools-decision-michiganx-fin101x

Both start in ~2 weeks are are free (yay!)

Or if you just want a simple spreadsheet to begin using straight away, let me know and I can send you one...

You might want to try Journally, it has simple finance tracker that might help you. You can search it in Google Playstore or click the link.

EveryDollar App or https://www.youneedabudget.com/ Are two good options for you. You can link bank accounts for helping track. I prefer the manual way but I get wanting some automation!

If part of your goal is to help your child with budgeting - I have found success using the Mint App / and would be glad to give you a demo

It allows you to track all of your spending and income in real time - it connects all of your bank accounts. It even gives you your credit score for free and allows you to set goals (savings / retirement).

Good luck - parenting is a challenge. I have a 2 year old daughter and my son is due any day now. I admire your love for your children and wanting them to have a good future!

This is something I made and is being used actively. It is close to excel (you’ll need to signup to airtable) and I hope it serves your purpose:

https://airtable.com/universe/exphMzKdgAuuJ4cci/budget-it

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I have this budget planner and I love it. It's big and has a lot of pages / lines for entries.

It's just getting off the ground, (no scheduled/repeat transactions yet) but Actual shows real promise. Right now there's a problem with the sync-to-mobile option for new users, but it should be fixed soon.

You can try it for free, and it has the ability to upload YNAB4 files. In my case that was nearly flawless: only two split transactions involving categories and a transfer had to be fixed to reflect that happened.

https://actualbudget.com/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0863QD9XB?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

It's about as basic as it gets but it keeps me on track every month as far as what is due. If you are looking for more of a checkbook style to balance your account I do that a little different. Its taken me a while but I've found my own way after some trial and error.

I'm also really bad about spending a lot on food. I didn't realize how much I was spending until I put some effort into tracking it. I actually made a budgeting app for this lol (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tech.crystalco.crystal.pro). Generally I try to stay under $300 per month for food. Sometimes I still go over (make sure not to stress too much if you go over once lol), but I find that cooking a few meals per week goes a long way in keeping the cost down.

Thanks for the feedback. I released an update just now that removes the subscription page until the 1-month trial ends. If the app doesn't update itself, you can visit the store page and press update. Let me know if you run into any more issues and I should be able to fix it.

rebuild the budget app is good but login and store it on the cloud is very dangerous, consider this is personal financial data and should be keep it privacy, store locally. If you need a powerful budget, My sister has been using this jMoney App, so I suggest you can use this jMoney. It let you configure the budget base on various account(bank, cash, credit card), categories, target amount range, weekly, monthly, specify month, and date range.

And it has balance chart to let you see your balance flow across monthly, yearly, and even custom date range. and it was simple to use and all functionalities are free, my favourite app,

recently I just bought a new house, and need to pay house instalment every month , I've learned a lot of knowledge from youtube video, and my sister has been using this jMoney to manage the money, and she introduce it to me recently, and now I started to manage my money too, and I can create 4 layer of sub category to manage my money, really helpful to me, and I use it every day now, just share it to you https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=budget.money.manager.expense.tracker.spending.free

This has been a major frustration of mine for a long time... and I think it contributes to the wealth gap. Expecting parents to teach personal finance means that those parents who 'get it' are likely to pass that on to their kids and parents who 'don't get it' don't have much value to pass on to their kids in this department. I feel so strongly about this, I've done some research on how to bring personal finance education to kids... but it seems I'd need some strong financial backing.

I recently purchased Finance 101 for Kids and have been reading it with my kids at night before bed - then we discuss it each night as well. It provides some value, but there will need to be some next steps to follow it.

https://www.amazon.com/Finance-101-Kids-Lessons-Children/dp/1634139437/

I had a Haier HLP21N Pulsator Portable Washer for the last 2 years and it was a lifesaver in my NYC apartment. I got it on Amazon. I'm not sure that model is still available, but I think Haier in general is a good brand. I air dried everything with this drying rack.