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anybody here use Personal Capital? Trying to figure out what is the best budgeting software to work with. Mint and YNAB seem to be good but serve different purposes. I kind of just want a free working app. e: I will try mint for a bit and see how that pans out. JIZZ DENOUEMENT fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 22:08
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I wouldn't use personal capital for budgeting. It's too finnicky and the numbers going back aren't what they were when you actually logged in that day, so it would give you inaccurate information for budgeting. I only use it to get a quick look at what my current balances are in all my different investment accounts in one place since the investment accounts I have don't seem to be as much of a pain in the rear end to keep synced up compared to banking and credit card accounts, and I've verified that the balances on the investments do match what is on those accounts websites. I don't trust what personal capital says about my asset allocation and returns and whatnot though because the numbers are flat out wrong.
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Mar 17, 2019 22:29
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Personal Capital is a good zarug-style retrospective spending tracker and great for a one stop overall account look. Mint and YNAB are way better for actual non-zarug budgeting.
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Mar 18, 2019 01:11
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I never liked Mint that much. It tells me where my money went, which I don't need. For budgeting YNAB does everything I need, and I'll keep using YNAB4 as long as I possibly can.. That being said, I haven't tried Mint in many years, so it may be drastically different now. I do use personal capital, but I only use it once or twice a month or so to get a quick snapshot of all my accounts. If you're looking for free, I think there are a few YNAB clones that have been linked here that have come from reddit.
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Mar 18, 2019 01:41
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BAE OF PIGS posted:I never liked Mint that much.
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Mar 18, 2019 01:48
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moana posted:I use mint to track transactions and PC to track asset allocation. Neither is great for budgeting imo, but then again I'm not really a budgeter. Yeah Mint isn't really great as budget software. You can create budgets and track against them, but it's more of an afterthought. I'm not really a budgeter either but I use Mint to track spending, see if I'm going overboard in a particular category or overall, but I have a bunch of slop in my spending and income so I can absorb it and correct in later months.
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Mar 18, 2019 01:54
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mint doesn't want you to budget they want you to make lots of transactions because those are tangible data points they can sell to advertising companies
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Mar 18, 2019 02:19
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I installed mint and it seems pretty useful for budgeting? Unless I’m interpreting what budget means to this thread. It has individual thresholds for different categories of expenditures and let’s me set those to whatever level I want. So a quick look at the Budget widget shows me everything I need to know in terms of what areas are full for the month and which has room left. What’s the difference in budgeting between that and YNAB?
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Mar 18, 2019 03:52
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:I installed mint and it seems pretty useful for budgeting? Unless I’m interpreting what budget means It may also just be that I'm bad with budgets, who knows.
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Mar 18, 2019 07:13
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i use nYNAB and i prefer it over mint because it's a method more then an app, sort of like GTD to-do list organizers. following their method gave me way more understanding of my expenses and how to manage them then years of using quicken and then mint, YMMV.
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Mar 18, 2019 13:10
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Mint is great for reconciling your spending to a budget, or at least showing you where you are pissing money away if you don't really have a budget. It's gotten worse and worse over the years though, as far as being able to connect to different banks and financial institutions. I just logged in and 25% of my accounts won't connect, and the rest update sporadically.
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Mar 18, 2019 13:17
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moana posted:It's wasn't intuitive for me for large one time expenses like insurance but maybe they changed it. Half my expenses were nonrecurring it seemed, and I don't like it shrieking at me with red when I replace a water heater or whatever. "You spent 1k on dentists this month! You normally spend $47!" yeah great, thanks for this. Mint and Personal Capital are HORRIBLE for non-recurring spending. I paid off my Car and HELOC this month from proceeds on my annual bonus and such and it's screaming at me about my overspending.
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Mar 18, 2019 13:27
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I get that too, but I swipe left to remove the notification after it notifies me. Y’all are complaining about intended functionality, and I find it confusing. Mint, for me, is a financial transaction aggregator that loosely monitors spending. It’s nice to know where all my CC’s / bank accounts are at without having to log into 5 different institutions.
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Mar 18, 2019 13:44
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DNK posted:I get that too, but I swipe left to remove the notification after it notifies me. Y’all are complaining about intended functionality, and I find it confusing. If the intended functionality is to let you know that you paid your car insurance once every six months or had an unusual expense of some kind okay fine but that doesn't seem useful to me. I agree that it is by far the most useful as an aggregator to help one keep track of dozens of accounts scattered all over the place. My major gripe with mint is that there is no functionality that lets you divide debt payments into the actual expensive interest versus principal repayment and therefore it looks like my spending is absolutely outrageous every month when the huge majority of it is principal repayment on the mortgages and student loans.
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Mar 18, 2019 13:55
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You can set up non-monthly recurring bills and budgets in Mint. They aren't the best, but it helps get rid of some of the dumb notifications. It's definitely no YNAB for doing actual strict budgeting, but I still am a Mint user as my primary financial monitoring tool and it does a pretty good for what it is. I'm not a strict budgeter nor a profligate spender so Mint works well for me. And I don't have any regular connectivity issues with my accounts, either.
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Mar 18, 2019 17:06
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Mint vs YNAB vs Personal Capital helped me understand how my brain works with money. YNAB is backwards to me, and actually pretty tough on my mindset. When I get a paycheck, and I have to give every dollar a job, I tend to gravitate towards giving ALL of my available dollars the job of savings. That's my irrational tendency because I'm a natural saver. I also hate debt and don't want to miss bills, so I would put myself through the mental anguish of having put "used" dollars back into expense categories and always felt like I'm overspending (trust me, I'm not). Much of the YNAB thread is an awesome read for me because it is fun to see how many other people navigate the mental gymnastics of zero-based budgeting, and encourages me to try and expand my thought process. Mint is purely a tracker and tabulator. What you do is shown fairly consistently (as long as the sites link, which can be a pain when they don't). It's a retrospective "I spent $XXX on this." So, I can look back in trends and select that category for the last 12 months. "Oh, I've ALWAYS spent $XXX on that, and it's not hindering any goals, so no problem" or "drat, I really need to renegotiate that bill, it's creeped up over the last year." Those complaining of one-offs leading to an alert...I just turn on the feature that rolls over the budget amount every month. Magically, I go from a 12 month "surplus" to the hilarious "HOLY poo poo HOW DID YOU BLOW YOUR BUDGET BY 12 TIMES THE AMOUNT  " Alerts. They're funny to me. I still have no use for their broken "investment" tab that shows me absolutely nothing.Personal Capital's budgeter reminds me of Mint, but it's way less intuitive and wonky as gently caress to use consistently. It's really awesome for letting me see my performance against indexes and look at my asset allocation though. Plus I like the retirement planner (there are better ones, but it's decent and I don't have to re-input material every time).
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Mar 19, 2019 00:39
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What is Zuarg? Is it a person? Is there a write-up or summary? I love forums sagas.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:13
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Rolo posted:What is Zuarg? Is it a person? Is there a write-up or summary? By way of explaining, I’ll steal this post from the Long-Term Savings thread that was made today: Doccykins posted:If it were anyone else I'd agree but zaurg has proved time and time again over the period of a decade that he will not take good advice on board and constantly posts in bad faith so deserves the hostility.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:45
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Question about taxes on US savings bonds, if anyone knows the answer: So IRS Publication 550 says that on Series EE savings bonds, you can use either the cash method (where you pay interest all at once the same year you redeem the bonds, which is what most people do) or the accrual method (where you pay taxes on the interest you've earned every year). It also says you can freely switch from cash method to accrual method at any time by paying all the earned interest up to that point, and then continuing to report all new interest each year. I earned only $17k last year and plan to earn more this year. Wouldn't it make sense to switch to the accrual method for my 2018 taxes, pay taxes on all the interest earned the last 13+ years (about $15k interest), and then redeem them all this year? Seems like the most tax-efficient way of doing things, especially considering I've got other taxable assets I'd like to sell in 2019 to pay off some student loans, and I'd like to minimize my taxes on those.
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Mar 19, 2019 05:43
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Rolo posted:What is Zuarg? Is it a person? Is there a write-up or summary? A decade of bum-fuckery.
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Mar 19, 2019 13:35
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literally this big posted:Question about taxes on US savings bonds, if anyone knows the answer: I don't have any confirmation that this will work, but from the rules you're describing and how you're laying it out it sounds like a really good idea.
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Mar 19, 2019 14:18
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I currently have my money with bank of America in checking/savings. The savings account has something like a 0.06 interest rate, which is awful. I would like to transfer a bunch over to another account so allow for a house purchase in 2 years. However, I dont really want to open an online savings account with a new bank because itll be another think to keep track of. Is it a bad idea to put a bunch in a money market settlement account under the taxable account that I already have with vanguard? I know it isn't FDIC insured, but it has something like 2.3% return.
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Mar 19, 2019 17:22
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Hutzpah posted:I currently have my money with bank of America in checking/savings. The savings account has something like a 0.06 interest rate, which is awful. That 2.3% you’re seeing is a random 7-day average. Over 10 years it’s 0.36%, and past results are no indication of future earnings. Sorry, your concerns seem a little silly. There’s really not much to “keep track of” with an online savings account. Log in, make transfers when you need to —they take 3-4 days, but that’s fine because you shouldn’t need your medium-term savings any fast than that. Setup an automatic withdrawal if you really want to be hands off.
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Mar 19, 2019 19:09
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Hutzpah posted:I currently have my money with bank of America in checking/savings. The savings account has something like a 0.06 interest rate, which is awful. That idea is fine, it's basically the same outcome as a separate online savings account would be.
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Mar 19, 2019 19:15
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Hoodwinker posted:I don't have any confirmation that this will work, but from the rules you're describing and how you're laying it out it sounds like a really good idea. Yeah, this is what I've been getting a lot of when I ask around. It seems like a good idea, but nobody's really heard of it.
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Mar 19, 2019 23:22
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Hey, I'm new to the whole credit card game. I'm a low-income unemployed person, but I was thinking of applying a credit card for the ability to buy small things off of the computer - a $5 Steam game here that's only discounted for a day, a $10 book from Amazon there. I do a lot of my shopping on Amazon, honestly, so I was thinking of the Amazon credit card. Moderate rewards and no monthly fee sounds like what I'm looking for, and Visas are accepted pretty widely. (There's a credit cards thread, but it's mostly about the best rewards) But the top helpful review for the Amazon card says: Some random person who claims to be a loan underwriter posted:"I received my first statement and paid all but $25 (by accident, meant to pay in full) on time. So my carryover balance was $25, which I would expect to be charged interest for. However, on the next statement I see I have been charged interest for the full balance PLUS my new purchases, of which I was still within the grace period at that point. This happened again the following month. So I called Chase and was told that for this particular card, if you don't pay the balance in full they charge interest on the TOTAL balance - not the carry-over balance like most other credit cards, which in my case was $25" Now, I fully admit to not knowing much about the practical side of finances, but this sounds like hot garbo - just like the person says, I expect to pay interest on the parts of the credit card I don't pay off, not the whole shebang . Of course, the whole shebang in my case would almost always be like $50-$100, but I don't want to get slapped with extra fees if I can avoid it. How common is this style of tracking interest?
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Mar 25, 2019 20:16
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It's not and that probably didn't actually happen the way the reviewer wrote it.
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Mar 25, 2019 20:38
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No Butt Stuff posted:It's not and that probably didn't actually happen the way the reviewer wrote it.
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Mar 25, 2019 20:39
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The only time I've heard of that happening is when you sign up for a new card with a "90/180/365 days same as cash!" promo, where if you don't pay off the entire balance by the deadline, all of the accrued interest is due, not just what you didn't pay off.
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Mar 25, 2019 20:50
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Hmmm, noted. Thanks for the answers, fellows.
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Mar 25, 2019 21:45
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The day you get your new credit card in the mail, immediately log in and set your autopay to “statement balance in full” on or before “date due.” That’s the only trick to winning the credit card game. The amazon card is a fine first card. eddiewalker fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 25, 2019 |
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Mar 25, 2019 22:07
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eddiewalker posted:The day you get your new credit card in the mail, immediately log in and set your autopay to “statement balance in full” on or before “date due.” That’s the only trick to winning the credit card game. Yep I regularly use my Amazon, Chase Freedom and Citi double rewards cards for 2%-5% off. It's a good game but you have to pay it off. Miss one payment and the APR kills you.
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Mar 25, 2019 22:41
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eddiewalker posted:The day you get your new credit card in the mail, immediately log in and set your autopay to “statement balance in full” on or before “date due.” That’s the only trick to winning the credit card game. Seconding this. Immediately set up autopay for the full balance. Do not treat the cards as loans of money, treat them as money directly out of your budget.
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Mar 25, 2019 22:51
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John Lee posted:Hmmm, noted. Thanks for the answers, fellows. I do want to point out the grace period is all or nothing. If you have any carry over balance there is no grace period on the new purchases. Example: New card Jan: spend 100 pay off 100. No interest charged because the card is at 0. Feb: spend 100 pay off 75. Interest charged on $25. April: spend 75 (card at 100) pay off (it doesn't matter what you think you're going to pay off at the end of April!). Because you had 25 left on the card from Feb all 100 will be getting interest charged on it. And because interest is calculated immediately (not only on your due date) and because you have no more grace period, every purchase starts being charged interest immediately thr moment you charge it. This is a simplification but basically how it goes. It's intuitive to people familiar with how loans work. It might not be obvious to you. To reset the grace period you have to pay off the full balance and sometimes have the full balance paid for a full cycle. Since this isn't "simple" to navigate for first timers it's really important that you autopay you full balance on time every month. Never carry a balance. No excuses.
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Mar 25, 2019 23:33
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Do you guys mean to say "full balance" or do you mean "last statement balance"? I pay my last statement balance in full every month, and have never paid 1 penny of interest in my life, but my credit card balance is literally never $0.00 because I use my card daily.
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Mar 25, 2019 23:46
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Do you guys mean to say "full balance" or do you mean "last statement balance"? Yes, but you are still riding the grace period. If you have a balance you might have to pay off the full balance, not just the last statement balance, to reset the grace period. Your cardholder agreement will have the details (though they can be a pain in the rear end to read)
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Mar 25, 2019 23:49
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Thanks for the explanation, Amara; I had no idea what a 'grace period' was, really. It's not like they teach you this stuff in school, and the companies don't really have incentive to easily and practically explain how to avoid owing them money.
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Mar 25, 2019 23:57
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Sorry, I must have phrased that poorly. My credit card billing period is the 6th through the 5th each month. The purchases made during that period are due ~4 weeks later on the 2nd.  I can pay $1,000 without paying any interest because the $500 is not due yet. That $500 will be a part of the April 6th - May 5th billing period, due on June 2nd. I did not think this was unusual as I have quite a few credit cards that all work the same way. Do some cards really have a policy of "On this date, your entire total complete balance is due, even if some purchases posted 5 seconds ago"???
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Mar 26, 2019 00:03
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Sorry, I must have phrased that poorly. No, I get it. The issue is if you haven't paid off your previous statement balance in full. So in your example, you pay $800 instead of the full $1000. It's more than the minimum amount, so you don't get charged fees, but not the full statement balance, so you get charged interest. Your next statement balance might be $700 ($200 leftover + $500 new purchases) but your full balance might be more than that (interest charged, plus all the new purchases on the next billing cycle) - and if you don't pay the full balance, you'll still get charged interest on the new purchases from the date of purchase... without that one-cycle-grace-period. Normally you wouldn't get charged interest in that time, per your experience. I know because I screwed up payment once (forgot to hit "confirm" or something) and it took three billing cycles and lots of calls to the issuer to resolve before I stopped getting charged interest. The way you think of it it how it works while you're under the card's grace period, which is how I was used to my card operating too. But I got bit when I had that little mistake.
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Mar 26, 2019 00:13
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That all makes sense, but it still seems that you're airtight as long as you click "autopay - last statement balance", right? Only way for this to bite you is operator error?
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Mar 26, 2019 00:23
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