Don’t autopay when possible, keep your credit cards down to one or two and itemize at the end of the month so you can catch things adding up. Things like groceries, budget roughly around the same amount each time, things like eating out, door dash etc that’s where the itemization comes in, do the math or use an app to help add it up. Put money into a savings account whenever you have extra. Do not, I repeat do not look at your bank and go “sweet I have an extra $300 this month, time for a new [whatever]”, put it in the savings
I use a spreadsheet. When I need to budget, I download my transaction history as a CSV and a couple of simple sumif formulas give me all the info I need.
I’m not aware of a good FOSS solution software-wise and frankly I don’t want my entire financial history to be accessible to a data mining firm.
I just use my notes app and the letter “x” Two denote whether that thing has been paid already. I use a method called the Dave Ramsey every dollar method where every dollar has a purpose and you budget in such a way that absolutely every single dollar you get has a job. So, I get paid, and then my bank account is nearly empty two days later, but every dollar has done its job. I know that there are unexpected expenses, so a few dollars are miscellaneous, and their job is just to cover the $5 subscription that comes out quarterly, I forgot, etc.
Maybe a bit basic but at the beginning of every month I clone this Google Sheets template, set goals in each category, and manually log receipts as I spend. Then at the end of the month, I “audit” my budget against my credit card transactions, pay off credit, and create the next month’s budget with any adjustments learned from the previous one.
For bigger view, long-term, I just linked all my accounts into Quicken and look at it sometimes.
My bank has some neat online banking features that break down where my money comes from and where I spend it on. It also compares my current expenses to my monthly average so I can see if I’m spending more. I’m sure I can do better by doing it on my own, but for someone lazy like me, it’s a good starting point to get an overview of my finances.
We have a retroactive Google Sheet which pulled from Reddit years ago where we put our transactions in and categorise them. Lets us see where we spent money
There are apps that can automatically track in- and outgoing payments for your account, as well as classify them to give you an overview. I use Finanzguru, though I suspect that’s only available in Germany.
If you’re struggling with money, here’s my approach: If it isn’t absolutely necessary to have, sleep on it at least once before buying it, no matter how cheap it is. Works quite well, its weird how much your perspective can often change within a day.
I write all my expenses and incomes down onto app called Wallet by budget bakers. I don’t set any monthly budgets or anything however, because I find that keeping track alone already makes me much more mindful consumer. I already have records of my finances for almost 3 years so it’s pretty interesting to get to monitor my spending across a long timeframe.
20% off the paychecks directly to registered retirement account. Use a cashback credit card for everything, pay it off every paycheck, and watch carefully that the balance doesn’t exceed what you can pay off. This is key, never pay card interest. Nice hefty reward from that every year. For things that can’t be charged to the card, annualized payment from a high interest savings account which I replenish every paycheck just enough to ensure all the annual payments can be drawn when the times come, all tracked with a spreadsheet for each bill. Extra goes in there for emergency funds, avoids paying interest when unexpected costs come up.
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