Cory Ryan Burnell on Financial Budgeting Tools

Utilizing a monthly budget is an excellent way for a person to stay financially sound and understand exactly where their income is coming from and where they are spending their money each month. To help with budgeting, an individual can use specialized tools or a good old-fashioned spreadsheet.

Utilizing A Spreadsheet

Spreadsheets have been around for a number of years and never lose their functionality. A person can easily use a spreadsheet to track each income stream that they receive each month and expenses that they make. Sure, they will have to categorize each expense if they truly want to see where their money is going, but this allows them to customize and create a budget that’s truly personalized. Both Google Sheets and Excel have free templates for budgeting if a person searches for them on the web.

Using Mint Online

This online tool is owned by Intuit, Inc. A person can link their investment accounts, credit cards and bank accounts to the platform. It has the ability to provide an individual with budgets and information on their spending habits.It will also track their net worth, liabilities, assets and income. Mint can be used for free as the website utilizes an advertising model to create revenue. This means that a person will probably see offers for financial products such as credit score monitoring or brokerage accounts.

Quicken

This is one of the original budgeting tools. It has the ability to help with paying bills, monitoring investments and setting up a budget. Quicken has the capability to connect to financial institutions that a person uses. This allows them to download transactions that they made in those accounts. It has a number of plans that offer different benefits. One of the plans allows a person to keep track of both their home and business finances.

YNAB

This is another handy budgeting tool that a person can use to set up their budget. One of its features encourages a user to create a budget based on their income for the last month. By doing this, it forces a person to account for every dollar and give it a job. This helps end the agony of living from paycheck to paycheck The tool offers great graphs and reports. These help a person understand where their money is going each month and allows them to make adjustments when it’s necessary.
Whether it’s a simple spreadsheet or a more complex budgeting tool that allows a person to link to their online accounts, a person can choose which option works best for their circumstances.