For many years, I’ve been relying on a budgeting system I came up with that leverages the unlimited free savings accounts offered by my credit union, and the scheduled transfer functionality in their online banking. I have a separate account for every recurring bill. I also have accounts for different types of expenses like groceries, car maintenance, clothing, travel, etc. Altogether I have about 50-60 accounts.

I am salaried so I get a predictable paycheck at predictable intervals. After every paycheck arrives, a flurry of scheduled transfers distribute the money among all the accounts. These accounts are my budget — if I go to the movie theater, for example, I’m not allowed to spend more than what’s in my Activites account. I rely heavily on my online banking app and often pull up the balances to see how much I have to work with. Most of my paycheck is allocated but there’s always a little bit left over in my checking account, which is used for discretionary spending and provides a little cushion if I need it.

Most of my bills are on auto-pay. I have scheduled transfers in place to move the money back into checking when it’s due, just in time for the payment to process.

This system works for me. I like how earmarking and separating out funds for specific purposes as soon as I get paid prevents me from spending that money on other things. I have some annual subscription renewals that I don’t even feel because I set aside a couple bucks every pay period and the money’s there when I need it. I like that this system doesn’t require complex paid software or tedious reconciliation processes. It’s admittedly a chore to make adjustments to anything because the online banking system wasn’t designed for this sort of workflow. Once it’s properly configured, everything is automated and it basically runs itself. I’ve added a couple supporting tools over the years: a spreadsheet to plan the whole budget before I create all the scheduled transfers, and a CLI script that projects upcoming balances for n years so I can optimize my biweekly allocation sizes for their corresponding monthly or annual payments.

I don’t know what to call this system. It’s similar to the old envelope method except I’m using actual bank accounts and never handling cash. I’ve heard that YNAB is similar but haven’t looked into that one. I can’t be the only one managing their money this way! Does this have a name? I’d love to hear resource recommendations for this sort of budget, and please share your own systems and tools as well!

It's 2024 if I remember correctly and budgeting is a fairly common practice. Companies are obsessed with data. Yet when I got to the store and buy a videogame, dap drywall joint compount, and 3 avocados the transactions is just the store and the amount. It'd be nice if I could track what I've been buying, categories them into entertainment, home improvement, and groceries respectively.

I'm guessing this information actually is tracked but is only used for marketing purposes. But I'm curious, does anyone have more information on why transactions can't at least optionally support extra metadata about what was actually bought?

I used to be happy paying $45/year for YNAB (grandfathered plan). But then "lol no, $90/year" happened and I started looking into alternatives. I tried out a bunch but none felt the same. Eventually I found Actual (open-source). I've been using it for ~6 months now and it offers everything I want/need. I self-host the container on my PC (no sync/etc.).

Always curious what others peoples finances look like, what they use to manage it, etc.

Do you use budgeting software? Do you follow a certain "method" to achieve your financial goals? How strict are you with your budget? Do you automate your retirement investments/contributions?

I've realized over the past few hours that I've spent an absurd amount of money relative to my income over the last few days, and I think that starting to budget would probably be a very good thing for me. Does anyone know of any good tools for keeping and managing a personal budget?

I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw an ad for an AI budgeting app called Cleo

I was wondering if anyone had experience with this app or has heard anything about it? I do want to start using budgeting assistants since I'm pretty bad fiscally.

Does anyone use budgeting apps? If so, what would you recommend?