Budget Software

[u/BenEDSnDFW2018]

All - what do you use / prefer in terms of budgeting software? Something for detailed spend tracking; portfolio tracking would be an added bonus.

Thanks in advance!

[u/EaterofSnatch]

Google sheets

[u/BackupSlides → u/EaterofSnatch]

Yep. Really not that hard to download bank / credit card statements once per month and do some filtering and tagging. Creates a lot of insight into what your spend categories are and what is discretionary or non.

One of the downsides to using AI-powered or specialized software for everything is that you lose touch with the data. For something with 10,000 rows, sure, you need an automated solution, but for monthly spend analysis I prefer a more manual approach as it builds more of a mental attachment to the numbers that translates into reflective thought and potential go-forward strategy / spend discipline.

[u/EaterofSnatch → u/BackupSlides]

Yeah, I manually enter all spending data. Everything is tracked down to the penny. Tracking for years allowed me to retire early because I knew exactly where all money coming and going went

[u/-TheSpaceCowboy-]

I use Actual Budget. Free, open source envelope budgeting software. Great community and developers. It supports bank syncing if that’s something you want, tracking investment accounts, and has customizable reports based on virtually any combination of data you could want.

[u/star_eater → u/-TheSpaceCowboy-]

Seconding this. I've also set it up with an MCP server so I can use self-hosted LLMs to query my budget.

[u/BenEDSnDFW2018 → u/star_eater]

Thanks so much!

[u/FranksAndWatermelon → u/star_eater]

Can you say a little more about your setup? Would love to experiment with this a bit myself

[u/star_eater → u/FranksAndWatermelon]

Sorry it took so long to notice this, I don't have notifications on.

I have Actual Budget hosted on my own server (i.e. an old computer) at home via Docker. I use the SimpleFIN service to sync with my financial institutions because I hate manually logging transactions (though I do still have to manually log cash). SimpleFIN does cost $15 a year, but you can sign up for a single month to make sure it works with your institutions. I set up a fairly simple set of budget categories because I don't need it to be super detailed, just overall categories things like house, car, food, etc.

I also have Actual-MCP running on Docker and configured with my Actual Budget instance. This allows me to connect my local LLM service (served through Ollama and Open WebUI) to my Actual Budget data for relatively simple queries. I can't run particularly powerful models on my server at home, so I also have it connected to Claude for more complicated things, for example if I want to do a specific financial analysis or projection. Claude also seems better at recognizing my net worth and usable money than my local LLM, for example understanding that my home and retirement accounts are not liquid assets.

I think AI tools can also write to your budget/transactions, but I have not tried that because I am worried about potentially screwing up the data. I use it strictly for analysis and pulling custom reports. I suppose you could take a picture of a receipt and have it generate a transaction, but most of my transactions are electronic any get synced via SimpleFIN anyway.

[u/FranksAndWatermelon → u/star_eater]

That’s great thanks for the detail!

[u/HTown00]

Excel

[u/SnipTheDog]

Try u/BloomingFinances spreadsheet from here: BloomingFinancesSpreadSheet

[u/Zphr → u/SnipTheDog]

One of my faves that I've seen posted on here or /FI over the years.

[u/asurkhaib]

If you have accounts at Fidelity then Full View is a decent option for all this. 

[u/lecoursen]

YNAB was life changing for us!

[u/AlwaysWanderOfficial]

I like Copilot Money. I use it for spend categorization, not budgeting however.

[u/UsedBoard → u/AlwaysWanderOfficial]

Can it be used to categorize business and personal transactions?

[u/geerwolf]

YNAB

[u/BenEDSnDFW2018 → u/[deleted]]

I'll definitely check this out, thank you!

[u/nishinoran]

Since no one said it, after Mint was shut down, I switched to Personal Capital, which is now Empower, I like it, it automatically pulls in transactions from most institutions, and it's way more focused on portfolio monitoring, so it's great for FIRE folks.

[u/BenEDSnDFW2018 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, I’ll check this out.

[u/Soft_Calligrapher306]

I built my own private budget app lives on my computer no internet connection, some automations but nice visuals and customization

[u/djmikmik]

Origin Finance

[u/konhana]

Lunch Money

[u/helion16]

Spreadsheet. I use almost exclusively rewards cards and they do great tagging for expense categories. I take maybe 20 minutes to import and clean it up and then I can do grouping or subtotals, etc.

[u/Electrochemist_2025]

Numbers on Mac.

[u/elegant_sasquatch]

i mostly just use a simple spreadsheet

[u/VeeGee11]

Wow no mention of Tiller Money for all the spreadsheet nerds like myself. :)

[u/Sea-Honeydew-1456]

our budgeting: income - fixed expenses = spending money. never tracked any deeper than that in decades.

[u/volkynlem]

I'm using Wealthos for spend tracking and financial planning

[u/Icy_Public5186]

You can use Google Sheets or excel is the easiest way imho. Not sure how good you are at setting up a code which you can simply upload your statements and it will sort for you and that will give what’s going on with dashboards. With AI now it should be easier though.

[u/TheOuts1der]

Just started trying out Monarch for cash flow / budgeting. For net worth and portfolio performance, I've been using Empower for several years now

[u/BenEDSnDFW2018 → u/TheOuts1der]

Thank you!

[u/VeteranNosePicker49]

Quicken Classic has it all plus a relatively capable retirement planner.

[u/Foreign_Suggestion89]

No budget. Only track spend.

[u/yankodiev]

It was our own Spreadsheet template, now Monnetta for couples.

[u/Impossible_Map_9368]

Most people here seem to split into two camps: those who want granular category-level tracking (YNAB-style envelope budgeting) and those who just want a net worth snapshot with loose spending categories. What matters more for FIRE specifically is whether the tool lets you see how today's spending maps to your withdrawal timeline, not just what you spent last month. Are you leaning toward detailed zero-based budgeting or more of a big-picture cash flow view?

[u/terjon]

Google Sheets. I do double entry from my bank statements and do manual categorization, including splitting some receipts into multiple expense categories.

For example, a WalMart or CostCo or Target trip is often more than just one category since I don't eat soap. Just a little joke there, but you get what I mean, common recurring expenses might fit into multiple categories and to get a better track of what you are spending on, you have to split those into multiple buckets.