After years of Mint I’ve decided to look for other options. Im considering doing it myself in a spreadsheet but before I go that route (not ideal) I thought I’d see if anyone had recommendations on good basic family-budget apps. Would be great if it could link with bank accounts but I’m open to anything at this point.
Actual Budget looks like a promising self-hosted option. Don’t think there’s any bank linking, though it’s been on the roadmap for a while. I’ve looked around and haven’t found anything else that I’d believe isn’t selling all of your financial data to advertisers.
This looks really good and does look like they have account linking. I’m bummed by the subscription fee…lol it looks so promising I’m sure if I do the free trial I’ll end up loving it.
Subscription fee? Actual is self hosted and “100% free” according to their docs.
They used to have a paid SaaS plan, but they discontinued it a few years ago.
I signed in from my computer and you’re absolutely right. I was wrong; for some reason the iOS mobile app leads to a subscription authorization for $8.
Now I just have to get my head around the tech side of this. Wish me luck!
Europe only :(
Also this requires exposing all your financial data to Nordigen, which defeats (in my opinion) the largest selling factor of Actual: not giving any 3rd parties access to your financial data.
Yeah. I’m not a fan of services like Nordigen neither.
+1 for actual. I’ve been using it for the past 2 months and so far I love it. It’s not the most complex tool so it’s easy to manage. If you can export your operations to CSV or one of the main proprietary softwares, actual can import that and it works pretty well.
For more complex things like making forecasts I just excel on the side and it’s enough.
+1 for YNAB.
Or, also, I do a lot in custom built spreadsheets, but YMMV.
Alternatives to classic YNAB? Paid for the original, don’t want to pay for subscription to New YNAB
I’ve been using YNAB. I like the product but it is quite expensive. I’ve looked at Buckets as an alternative and now looking Actual Budget. My YNAB just renewed so I’ll be waiting a year before I change.
I feel like YNAB is backwards to how I think about money but it’s the only thing that makes sense for my wife, tried every other budgeting program/app and she says it matches the way her brain works and makes sense to her. She has ADD and has trouble with impulse spending. So we use it. As the data guy (I work on the computer all day typing) I reconcile the accounts and transactions…we assign the money together. For the most part it does what it does fine. It is too expensive for sure and I think there is much opportunity for better features, improvement to apps and the website considering how long it’s been around and how many subscribers they have.
That’s interesting…I’ve also been diagnosed with ADHD. Hmm…
The only budgeting system that has worked for us is YNAB. It includes account linking.
Personal capital, and monarch if you’re on iOS
I’m interested as well. I hope there’s something that will allow me to import 7 years of data from Mint
DAS Budget.
Copilot is great but it’s only on Apple devices.
On iOS that is really simple but still nice is Nudget. I think it is great for just general budgeting. However, if you are actively trying to pay down a lot of debt I would say YNAB tackles this better and is worth the money!
