I try to do this every year for those that care about this topic. Last year's thread for reference: https://texags.com/forums/57/topics/3174892/replies/58474001

Previously discussed options:

• Quicken - subscription
• Mint - free
• Personal Capital - free
• Money in Excel - comes with 365 subscription
• Fidelity Full View - free if already client of Fidelity

There are obviously more apps than this out there but my criteria is trying to find the best jack of all trades SW so I've left out ones that focus on just one aspect like the numerous apps that just focus primarily on budgeting. In this thread, I'm only going to cover discoveries since then.

I've found two new options that previously never turned up in searches - Tiller and Moneydance. To be fair, in re-reading my old thread above, I just now noticed that bagger05 mentioned Tiller and I just flat missed it. I'm testing Tiller hard core right now and I think I finally found my Quicken replacement.

Welcome to Tiller - Track all your finances in one place (tillerhq.com)

It's spreadsheet-based app that comes with the core tracking and aggregation functions that any legitimate personal finance software would have. In addition, it allows you to load community-built mods that extend your functionality. If you are spreadsheet savvy yourself, you can submit your own solutions for consideration in the overall product.

I'm loving it so far. It took me about 18 hours to set up but I'm a nerd and love this stuff, so I enjoyed it. Now that it's setup it's just a click of a button to update.

Pros

• Spreadsheet based
• It's fast and runs circle around Quicken from a speed perspective. My daily connection update on Quicken takes 30 seconds to 1 minute and Tiller's takes about 5 seconds. Navigating around Tiller is instantaneous while clicking around Quicken has become a cumbersome, bloated trial while you wait for stuff to load.
• Community mods
• Customizable transaction rules and reports
• Bill Pay tracker
• Available anywhere you have internet connection
• 30-day free trial
• Fairly active community with good info sharing

Cons

• While it has a basic version for Excel, the full product is only available for Google spreadsheets. However, they are planning to launch the full product for Excel in 2022.
• A little more expensive than Quicken
• Detailed investment tracking is not currently supported although they are debating if and how to support. It connects to everyone and will track your overall balances and record the debits/credits to these accounts, but you can't really track in the weeds investment transactions. So, you can still accurately track your Net Worth and see general insights with your investments but not see detailed allocations and holdings...yet.
• I'm totally good with this since Quicken's capabilities here are frankly overwhelming and ripe with error. I will continue to just look at that granular data in our investment platform portals as needed.

Moneydance - Personal Finance Manager for Mac, Windows, and Linux | Infinite Kind

Found this one as well but can't speak to it. It looks like a rough around the edges version of Quicken. Maybe someone else has used it and can share insights?

Dill-Ag13 said:

---

YNAB

---

Really expensive. One of the most expensive on the market. Can you elaborate it's capabilities beyond just budgeting? I specifically excluded it because of it's historical lone focus.

YouBet said:

---

Dill-Ag13 said:

---

YNAB

---

Really expensive. One of the most expensive on the market. Can you elaborate it's capabilities beyond just budgeting? I specifically excluded it because of it's historical lone focus.

---

It's definitely just budgeting but by far the best budgeting platform available (IMO). I got in before the price increase and could argue it's probably too expensive at current rates. But YNAB for budgeting plus Personal Cap for portfolio is my go-to combo.

littlebitofhifi said:

---

YouBet said:

---

Dill-Ag13 said:

---

YNAB

---

Really expensive. One of the most expensive on the market. Can you elaborate it's capabilities beyond just budgeting? I specifically excluded it because of it's historical lone focus.

---

It's definitely just budgeting but by far the best budgeting platform available (IMO). I got in before the price increase and could argue it's probably too expensive at current rates. But YNAB for budgeting plus Personal Cap for portfolio is my go-to combo.

---

Respect that and won't argue it because I've read that a lot. Just seems too narrow for a full fledged financial package. However, if budgeting is your primary focus then it sounds like it's great.

Tiller looks very interesting. Currently use YNAB for budget and mint for total look but rarely get on mint anymore.

And frankly YNAB isn't really that great.

Ragoo said:

---

Tiller looks very interesting. Currently use YNAB for budget and mint for total look but rarely get on mint anymore.

And frankly YNAB isn't really that great.

---

If you like spreadsheets and ability to customize (although the latter is not necessary), I would recommend. It's also cheaper than YNAB which was $85 last time I looked. That price is ridiculous for just budgeting.

Specifically, with budgeting, there are community mods that have built out different budgeting philosophies as well if you don't like the native budgeting worksheet.

Anytime I've ever used mint the connections won't stick.

Not into it. The less centralized my info is for oustiders looking in, the better. Are these software suites data mining you for advertisers?

JSKolache said:

---

Not into it. The less centralized my info is for oustiders looking in, the better. Are these software suites data mining you for advertisers?

---

Mint is notorious for it. Also a reason not to use it. Quicken to some degree since they have several partnerships with other companies.

Tiller is pretty self-contained....HOWEVER it was first built in Google so there is that. It's actually been a topic on their community site that has had to be addressed and the developers have said it's totally private. Fully admit it being in Google concerns me which is why i listed it as a con above.

Quote:

---

If you like spreadsheets and ability to customize (although the latter is not necessary), I would recommend. It's also cheaper than YNAB which was $85 last time I looked. That price is ridiculous for just budgeting.

---

it's up to 100 now. It still fits my eyes, as in I am comfortable with it and it makes sense, so it would have to be significantly above that start to looking elsewhere.

I do think that's an underrated feature of any piece of software - how well does the UI just fit you - whether learned over time or immediate upon use. The point is to derive action steps anyway.

Quicken Simplifi

Cyp0111 said:

---

Quicken Simplifi

---

I saw when this launched but haven't talked to anyone who actually uses it. What do you like / not like? Is it worth subscribing?

diehard03 said:

---

Quote:

---

If you like spreadsheets and ability to customize (although the latter is not necessary), I would recommend. It's also cheaper than YNAB which was $85 last time I looked. That price is ridiculous for just budgeting.

---

it's up to 100 now. It still fits my eyes, as in I am comfortable with it and it makes sense, so it would have to be significantly above that start to looking elsewhere.

I do think that's an underrated feature of any piece of software - how well does the UI just fit you - whether learned over time or immediate upon use. The point is to derive action steps anyway.

---

Good point. If it works for you and you derive ROI, then roll with it. I've never actually seen YNAB. What exactly is there budgeting philosophy?

The major philosophy they preach is that you don't project income and you only budget the dollars you have. Subsequently, it pushes you to work in the rears by month - you budget income you have from the previous month. Other than that, it's a standard "if you want to buy golf clubs, choose the category you're removing money from to compensate" system.

Software-wise, its' just a pretty digital envelope system with account activity download with standard category matching based on what you categorize different vendors. It has some reporting functions, but its an afterthought for the developers.

diehard03 said:

---

The major philosophy they preach is that you don't project income and you only budget the dollars you have. Subsequently, it pushes you to work in the rears by month - you budget income you have from the previous month. Other than that, it's a standard "if you want to buy golf clubs, choose the category you're removing money from to compensate" system.

Software-wise, its' just a pretty digital envelope system with account activity download with standard category matching based on what you categorize different vendors. It has some reporting functions, but its an afterthought for the developers.

---

Gotcha. The Tiller product has an Envelope based mod: Envelope Budget Savings Goals Spreadsheet (tillerhq.com)

I sound like I work for them at this point. Anyway, just pointing it out. Would save you $20 a year anyway if their solution is on par with what you have in YNAB.

I've used YNB for a long time. I'd love to use some other, more full featured apps, but everytime I try, I run into something that just drives me crazy. Either how they handle categories, how they handle overages, moving money around within a budget, how they handle credit cards, etc.

It's weird, but it's not like I use YNAB cause they do anything so well that I just have to shout it from the rooftops - they just do a great job of doing things in a way to where the tool doesn't get in my way or make me think "what the heck is going on here". It's like a reliable old truck. It's great because when you turn the key, it starts and it gets you from point A to point B. Seems underwhelming until you try something fancier that just always has problems that interrupt that basic goal of point A to point B.

They also now have an API which, for a software dev like me, is great as I can basically have access to my budget (categories, transactions, budgeted amounts, etc.) and do whatever I'd like with it. I've used this in the past to do some simple things like draw up a chart fo certain categories that are incrementally spent (think of things like "eating out") so that I could get a comparison of how I'm doing at the moment - it would basically just a way for me to see ahead of time if something was going to potentially run out early, even if it had lots of budget left on that day (i.e. if you have a $200 eating out budget, but you spend $100 the first day)....just little things like that - it's nice to be able to write up my own stuff without having to go through all the pain of hooking into something like Plaid, then pullling transaction data, then categorizing, etc.

Ragoo said:

---

YNAB always seems to get off for me. And it cannot figure out how to handle my chase checking account paying my chase credit card. It always wants to double dip the transaction.

---

Should just mark it as a transfer when it comes through. Most issues I've seen people have with credit cards are set up issues. Make sure when you first set things up, you "budget" for whatever you need to cover the starting balance of the credit cards (hope that makes sense).

I will say that I never backtrack when starting over - if I'm starting a "clean" budget or a new approach in March, I'll set my budget up, and just wait until 3/1 to start tracking. I'll delete all pre-3/1 transactions and just make sure that on 3/1 I divide my cash on hand into 3 pieces:

1 - my budget
2 - cover whatever the current balance of my CC are (I pay them off every month, but coming into 3/1 they won't be $0)
3 - excess goes into a "savings" category I set up

Happy to help if you have specific problems as I am a big believer in YNAB, but also understand that sometimes things can be frustrating and you can move on and not necessarily want to go back and figure it out, so no sweat if not!

Quote:

---

I sound like I work for them at this point. Anyway, just pointing it out. Would save you $20 a year anyway if their solution is on par with what you have in YNAB.

---

Don't worry, I know it can sound like I work for YNAB too.

Thanks for the info. I am unlikely to switch, but its nice to know that something else is available to check out.

edit: do the "envelopes" roll over month to month? I really look at it as filling envelopes rather than budgeting a set amount each month.

Alright. I have been playing around in Tiller all afternoon on this cold rainy day. It is very interesting.

It presents finances like a financial statement. I can see my monthly cash flow projected for the year.

It is static. Assumes I spend uniformly across the year but I can adjust as I go. It isn't predictive like YNAB. YNAB suggests a next month budget based on previous months average.

diehard03 said:

---

Quote:

---

I sound like I work for them at this point. Anyway, just pointing it out. Would save you $20 a year anyway if their solution is on par with what you have in YNAB.

---

Don't worry, I know it can sound like I work for YNAB too.

Thanks for the info. I am unlikely to switch, but its nice to know that something else is available to check out.

edit: do the "envelopes" roll over month to month? I really look at it as filling envelopes rather than budgeting a set amount each month.

---

I haven't used that particular mod but it says it does rollover.

I've looked around over the years but always come back to Quicken, although it is essentially the same product I start using in the late 90s after I got out of A&M.

Ag CPA said:

---

I've looked around over the years but always come back to Quicken, although it is essentially the same product I start using in the late 90s after I got out of A&M.

---

My Quicken account goes all the way back to 1992!

diehard03 said:

---

Quote:

---

I sound like I work for them at this point. Anyway, just pointing it out. Would save you $20 a year anyway if their solution is on par with what you have in YNAB.

---

Don't worry, I know it can sound like I work for YNAB too.

Thanks for the info. I am unlikely to switch, but its nice to know that something else is available to check out.

edit: do the "envelopes" roll over month to month? I really look at it as filling envelopes rather than budgeting a set amount each month.

---

I downloaded their module that does this and have been playing around with it all morning. I've never really used this methodology, but it has actually solved a tracking use case I've had for years that I've never been able to figure out in Quicken.

Really digging this tool and has cemented my switch away from Quicken.

Big bump here just to say that I've spent the last 6 weeks or so working to get comfortable with Tiller and I'm totally sold on it. Canceled YNAB (haven't been without YNAB since I started using it around 2015).

It's pretty amazing and I've been able to add a few customizations that I really like (mostly for dealing with pending transactions that Tiller doesn't sync, and then matching them once it does sync them as cleared, updating balances to include pending, custom daily email in addition to their daily email, etc.).

An addon I really like is the Category Scheduler - it lets you itemize categories without having to give each item its own budget line. Basically, it lets you have a little mini-budget that aggregates into parent categories on the main budget.

The one thing I will say is that I've recently stopped rolling budgets in YNAB for non-monthly accounts and instead I transfer these to an Ally bank account each month. This has had a few benefits for me -
1. Means I don't need to have my budgeting software roll balances each month (this seems to be a sticking point for lots of folks)
2. Means I don't have to worry about resetting everything mid-cycle and forgetting to seed those categories

With YNAB, when I was rolling budget for things like Septic services (annual), car insurance (6 months), etc. if I reset everything and forgot to put the accrued amount into those categories, I'd get an incorrect amount as a surplus....by actually transferring these amounts, I never have to worry about seeding the previously accrued amount in any category - it lets every category start "clean" each month.

Anyhow, all that to say I've been really impressed with Tiller and how extensible it is, even if you're not a spreadsheet guru. Really glad it was mentioned in here, cause I'd never heard of it before.

EclipseAg said:

---

Ag CPA said:

---

I've looked around over the years but always come back to Quicken, although it is essentially the same product I start using in the late 90s after I got out of A&M.

---

My Quicken account goes all the way back to 1992!

---

Yah, I still have all of my data starting with 1998, it's fun to go back and look at what I was making and spending money on back then, a lot of check cashing and bar tabs.

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

---

Big bump here just to say that I've spent the last 6 weeks or so working to get comfortable with Tiller and I'm totally sold on it. Canceled YNAB (haven't been without YNAB since I started using it around 2015).

It's pretty amazing and I've been able to add a few customizations that I really like (mostly for dealing with pending transactions that Tiller doesn't sync, and then matching them once it does sync them as cleared, updating balances to include pending, custom daily email in addition to their daily email, etc.).

An addon I really like is the Category Scheduler - it lets you itemize categories without having to give each item its own budget line. Basically, it lets you have a little mini-budget that aggregates into parent categories on the main budget.

The one thing I will say is that I've recently stopped rolling budgets in YNAB for non-monthly accounts and instead I transfer these to an Ally bank account each month. This has had a few benefits for me -
1. Means I don't need to have my budgeting software roll balances each month (this seems to be a sticking point for lots of folks)
2. Means I don't have to worry about resetting everything mid-cycle and forgetting to seed those categories

With YNAB, when I was rolling budget for things like Septic services (annual), car insurance (6 months), etc. if I reset everything and forgot to put the accrued amount into those categories, I'd get an incorrect amount as a surplus....by actually transferring these amounts, I never have to worry about seeding the previously accrued amount in any category - it lets every category start "clean" each month.

Anyhow, all that to say I've been really impressed with Tiller and how extensible it is, even if you're not a spreadsheet guru. Really glad it was mentioned in here, cause I'd never heard of it before.

---

Rolling budgets is an issue and has been an issue for me forever. I could never understand how to make it work in Quicken. My brain just has trouble processing it. In Tiller, I think I have figured out a way to make it work using the Savings Budget sheet where I use their decrementing procedure to take from those rolled forward budgets when the expense actually hits, but I had to write out how, why, and what step by step in OneNote so I could reference it going forward.

Your option is valid too and I do that for large one-off items (like property taxes, financial advisor bill, etc) but hadn't considered it for all non-monthly expenses. Going to look at that.

Yeah, I'm somebody that likes to play with my budget pretty often and tweak approaches, so for me, the nice thing about transferring it (and, FYI - I don't track those other accounts I transfer TO in Tiller - they're just for holding these things) is that no matter when I opt to try a new approach, I don't have to say "okay, well, I had accumulated $400 in car insurance, so let's start that budget with $400 + the monthly amount". If I have "accumulated" $400, it will be sitting in that other account, so I just have to start my budget with whatever my normal monthly amount is.

I really like Ally for this purpose because you can quickly/easily add "new" savings accounts and modify their names.

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

---

Yeah, I'm somebody that likes to play with my budget pretty often and tweak approaches, so for me, the nice thing about transferring it (and, FYI - I don't track those other accounts I transfer TO in Tiller - they're just for holding these things) is that no matter when I opt to try a new approach, I don't have to say "okay, well, I had accumulated $400 in car insurance, so let's start that budget with $400 + the monthly amount". If I have "accumulated" $400, it will be sitting in that other account, so I just have to start my budget with whatever my normal monthly amount is.

I really like Ally for this purpose because you can quickly/easily add "new" savings accounts and modify their names.

---

Will take a look at them. Wonder if I can do that easily at Fidelity since all of my money is there...

I have to say taking a look at Tiller as well as using the new version of YNAB that rolled out about 3 years ago... my biggest take-away is that YNAB used to be grounded completely in adding transactions manually. It was a big part of their core philosophy: you can't be aware of what you're spending unless you are manually categorizing and inputting every spent dollar.

YNAB pivoted away from this to go more mainstream and that requires additional engineers to maintain the auto-import links with all of the banks. YNAB should charge a base amount ($50/yr for example) and then charge a premium amount if you want to auto-import (another $50/yr).

Manually entering and categorizing every transaction sounds awful. Maybe feasible if I was single and living a bachelor life....

Not sure how far you've gotten in tiller but it's kind of a hybrid on this topic. It auto imports everything and then you can auto categorize transactions for the most part, but you don't have to do the latter. Although, I'm not sure why you wouldn't at that point if you are auto importing.

As it stands, you can't really auto categorize everything because of outlier transactions.

YouBet said:

---

Manually entering and categorizing every transaction sounds awful. Maybe feasible if I was single and living a bachelor life....

Not sure how far you've gotten in tiller but it's kind of a hybrid on this topic. It auto imports everything and then you can auto categorize transactions for the most part, but you don't have to do the latter. Although, I'm not sure why you wouldn't at that point if you are auto importing.

As it stands, you can't really auto categorize everything because of outlier transactions.

---

No doubt that I'm old school and it's not for everyone, just saying it should be an option. YNAB without auto-import requires FAR less work from a developer point of view. I've been YNABing for about 7 years, only ever manually input transactions.

Dill-Ag13 said:

---

YouBet said:

---

Manually entering and categorizing every transaction sounds awful. Maybe feasible if I was single and living a bachelor life....

Not sure how far you've gotten in tiller but it's kind of a hybrid on this topic. It auto imports everything and then you can auto categorize transactions for the most part, but you don't have to do the latter. Although, I'm not sure why you wouldn't at that point if you are auto importing.

As it stands, you can't really auto categorize everything because of outlier transactions.

---

No doubt that I'm old school and it's not for everyone, just saying it should be an option. YNAB without auto-import requires FAR less work from a developer point of view. I've been YNABing for about 7 years, only ever manually input transactions.

---

It seems like you could do that with Tiller by simply using their spreadsheets and not connecting them to banks. Pretty much everything feeds off the Categories and Transactions sheets so you could make it work manually.

Sounds good. I watched the YouTube video this morning, definitely intrigued.

Dill-Ag13 said:

---

Sounds good. I watched the YouTube video this morning, definitely intrigued.

---

This may not be relevant to you, but I knew this was the right product for me because I stopped opening Quicken. I've tried many solutions and every time I was testing a solution I was still using Quicken on the side because I just couldn't break away from it.

I haven't opened Quicken in a couple of weeks and the only reason I still did after first setting up Tiller was to confirm I had captured all of our bills for Tiller's Bill Tracker and wasn't missing something.

Anyway, I'll stop being a homer now.