Be Excellent To Each Other

I am after advice for budget applications.

I am incredibly bad with money, and I want to sort it out, clear a few debts and start saving.

It is quite embarrassing to admit as a 40 year old man...

My friends use something called You Need A Budget and after looking at loads of options say that it is the most amazing budgeting tool they’ve ever used.

I’ve not seen it myself, but they are some of the most ‘together’ people I know, and the fact that I’ve seeb them talk about it so emphatically several times makes me think it must be great.

Thanks, I will look

For savings, particularly when saving towards a goal, I use Bucket. Just a simple, free app to track savings and record payments towards a goal.

I think I've figured out the problem!!

Pennies is a good app. I’m using it in the new year!

Yes indeed

Will have a look.

I use Chip for automatic savings. It's an app - I have the android version. And you have to trust it, and give it access to one of your accounts - as in, type in your full details there, which gave me pause.

But otherwise, it looks at your balance, spending habits etc., and then takes money out regularly (prompting you each time, in advance, so you can cancel any individual transaction). You can set it to take out a "low", or "high" (which has never been above £25 for me, even though I just have a set amount sitting in the account, nothing moving, so if it were totally dumb, it would go "right, you're not using that, I'm going to yoink most of it") amount.

So long as it's not pushing you into trouble, it gradually builds up a balance.

I should have a referral link somewhere, but never mind that - https://getchip.uk.

I've used 'You Need a Budget' and Money Dashboard and both are good.

Any products that link directly to your bank account shouldn't need your full online banking details anymore. It's been a requirement since the start of this year for banks to support an oauth based method for delegating API access to third parties.

It may be because they have to take money out? Or I am misremembering, and only had to login once (which wouldn't give full details, because it would only have a selection from my memorable word).

I figured the fact the thing exists is because of the open banking stuff, though.

Yeah, a one time login would make sense

I expect the pulling money out is just a direct debit, as those can be for varying amounts and varying frequencies.

Trying money dashbaord. YNAB is $83 a year..

I signed up for this (forgetting to use the referral, sorry!)

It seems neat and has saved me £60 over the last few weeks - but unfortunately I've started using it in a particularly sticky month for big outgoings, so I've been having to dip into savings anyway. So I've paused it until things are a touch more even.

Have you tried just spending less money?

I'm not being facetious (for once), but I found just asking myself "do I need this" in relation to every single thing I spend money on created a bit of a paradigm shift

Waiting a day before buying things works well for me.

That must suck when you're getting a bus ticket.

Yes.

I just need a ‘tool’ to assist with working out. How much i am spending. Without having to use spreadsheets.

I suspect it would if I got a bus to 2005

I over spent last year and put more money than I should on credit cards. I want to get out of the debt and have savings.

Happily changing to being a lot more frugal. Been through all my household bills and reduced them, cancelled sky etc and gone on to freeview with netflix. etc

I have cleared the arrears I got myself into (yes I fucked up). The small payrise will help, as I will save that each month.

Just glad to see it might be helpful. And wise to manage it - if it gets you to think about managing money, then all to the good.

It's good to wait, or even sometimes just to deny oneself a purchase - I do that quite often.

The problem is.... I'm not really the one that spends the money on things. This may take some careful approach. There's a popular book out here called the 'Barefoot Investor' that a lot of people rave about, which I think we will try (the book has already been bought, so...)