We used to use Quicken for our budgeting. Over the years, our income grew, online banking became more powerful, and we stopped using checks. So for the past few years, our budgeting process has been something like this:
Step 1: Sock away a portion of each paycheck in savings
Step 2: Spend the rest as we may throughout the month
It's a system with a lot of advantages, and has worked well for us, but it also has some disadvantages, such as we have no clue where we are spending our money. Some months I will look at our statement and see, for example, $1,000 spent on 10 trips to Target, and I think to myself, "Well, that's odd".
So I am looking for a new method. Are there any good, free alternatives to Quicken out there? Or non-free software that works better than Quicken? I suppose we could just use Excel (as I think some of you do), but I am under the impression that we could get more powerful budgeting, categorization, and tracking features with an out-of-the-box solution.
Step 1: Sock away a portion of each paycheck in savings
Step 2: Spend the rest as we may throughout the month
It's a system with a lot of advantages, and has worked well for us, but it also has some disadvantages, such as we have no clue where we are spending our money. Some months I will look at our statement and see, for example, $1,000 spent on 10 trips to Target, and I think to myself, "Well, that's odd".
So I am looking for a new method. Are there any good, free alternatives to Quicken out there? Or non-free software that works better than Quicken? I suppose we could just use Excel (as I think some of you do), but I am under the impression that we could get more powerful budgeting, categorization, and tracking features with an out-of-the-box solution.
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