Looking for Advice

[c9]

As I've complained already, houses are expensive, etc etc. I need to more carefully track my money than I have in the past, and I'm looking for suggestions on what tools / approaches you fantastically intelligent friends of mine use.

Basically, the spreadsheet method I use will demand too much effort for too little return. I'd like to track two accounts containing about 4-5 piles of money each. As we spend money on (for example) the electricity bill, I want to track how that pile of electricity bill money is changing.

I may just build an insane spreadsheet, but I figure there's gotta be a better way. Is there?

Comments

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

We just use the spreadsheet method. We have rows for different budget items and we add amounts into it each month from our income. When we pay an electricity bill we subtract the amount so we can always see how much we have in each "pile" so what we can afford to spend.

It is harder to track trends and stuff that way but easy to see if you are over spending or what you have available at any given time.