This is not strictly speaking an app, but it is a thing; if you can do most of your spending using a debit card or paypal or somesuch, I’ve found making a once-a-month habit to copy last month’s expenditures onto the end of an ever-growing CSV gives me a really nice pile of data that can be fed into all sorts of other programs. Excel or Google Spreadsheet alone lets me arrange it in ways that can be helpful. I’m sure budgeting programs can do sorting or analysis that a basic spreadsheet can’t, but most of my ‘huh, I’m curious about X in my budget’ moments can be solved with some basic excel.
The most important benefit for me is being able to simply ask it to make a line chart of the total; that gives me a gut feeling for whether I’m gradually saving more or if I’m losing money over time, and lets me look for regular patterns. Being able to sort last month by cost is also great for just being aware of what’s hitting me the hardest so I can prioritize.
(Actually, the most important benefit to me is this nice steadily growing line that feels like winning on a gut level. By some magic I have turned numbers into a motivation that’s stronger than my desire to order pizza, and this is very useful voodoo. YMMV.)
This is not strictly speaking an app, but it is a thing; if you can do most of your spending using a debit card or paypal or somesuch, I’ve found making a once-a-month habit to copy last month’s expenditures onto the end of an ever-growing CSV gives me a really nice pile of data that can be fed into all sorts of other programs. Excel or Google Spreadsheet alone lets me arrange it in ways that can be helpful. I’m sure budgeting programs can do sorting or analysis that a basic spreadsheet can’t, but most of my ‘huh, I’m curious about X in my budget’ moments can be solved with some basic excel.
The most important benefit for me is being able to simply ask it to make a line chart of the total; that gives me a gut feeling for whether I’m gradually saving more or if I’m losing money over time, and lets me look for regular patterns. Being able to sort last month by cost is also great for just being aware of what’s hitting me the hardest so I can prioritize.
(Actually, the most important benefit to me is this nice steadily growing line that feels like winning on a gut level. By some magic I have turned numbers into a motivation that’s stronger than my desire to order pizza, and this is very useful voodoo. YMMV.)
Nice, cool, thanks for the suggestion!