What I thought would be a month long series on budgets and different budget methods has been for the lack of a better term a mixed bag of results. I started with two methods and last week added a third into the mix. While any of these three are more than adequate to accomplish one’s needs in the budgeting process I have come to the conclusion that is really does come down to personal preference in what you are looking for in your budget and how you want to accomplish your goals. I prefer one of the spreadsheet methods as discussed last week and after buying the Simple Planning package again I really do favor it even over my own spreadsheet and the web-based program. As this whole process is really up to you and your preference I will this week go over each of the three programs and detail what I did and did not like about each. Now one is not better than the other but what it boils down to is personal preference and for you to decide what works best for you.
The first method and least expensive is the spreadsheet I developed a few years ago based loosely on the Simple Planning spreadsheet. While my spreadsheet offers the main same basic features of Simple Planning it does not have as many places to add and subtract more expenses and is technically limited to nine groups of ten expenses that are allowed to be customized. In this regard it is somewhat limited over that of Simple Planning but it does come at a fraction of the cost at just $5.00. While Simple Planning is a better spreadsheet in my opinion it does come at eight times the cost for the suite of spreadsheets which is the best deal that they offer as there are some great tools that are not available in my limited spreadsheet. But I do offer a debt reduction tools that when used with the budget spreadsheet can really help anyone get on top of their finances and reduce their debts. You can get both of the powerful tools for the price of one spreadsheet from Simple Planning at a cost of $10. If you are interested in the tools I developed I sell them as a single or double gig on fiverr or at the following link, Budget/Debt Reduction.
The next I will examine is Cash Control which is the web-based system. While this system is very well designed and extremely easy to use it has one main issue I had while trying to utilize it as an ongoing budget. The one area where I found it frustrating was that funds that were designated as a cash expense were limited to what was budgeted from what I could tell. If you input all your expenses as “big ticket” items you can manually input what you spent each week or month. But for cash items it was limited to what was budgeted and there was little room to adjust the budget. A very nice feature of the system is that it does break down monthly expenses into what needs to be saved on a weekly basis which I did find very beneficial. The idea of separating items into one of the buckets was also very well planned and operated extremely well with the sole exception being the cash bucket which I have already discussed the shortfalls. And yes another of the main draws of this system over mine is that it is web-based and may be accessed from any computer with Internet access. This allows you to update your expenses at any time and not limit you to when you are on your computer or have your thumb drive with the spreadsheet saved on it. Some other benefits of Cash Control are that they offer as 60 day money back guarantee, a very useful eBook that will aid you in setting up your budget and gives some excellent budget techniques and the company will even send you encouraging emails with helpful hints as well. You get all of this for a relatively low annual price of $38. Overall this is not a bad deal at all and can be a powerful and valuable tool to be used in your budgeting processes.
Now on to what I truly believe is the best of the three options and is also the best value for the money. Simple Planning can be purchased as a single spreadsheet for say budgeting for $9.95. But the company offers a total of eight very useful and powerful spreadsheets. The spreadsheet by itself is a good value and as I stated earlier is a much better improved version of the spreadsheet I offer on fiverr. But that is just a small part of what Simple Planning has to offer. For $39.95 you can get all eight of the spreadsheets for your personal use. Let’s look at them individually. As for the budget spreadsheet mine is basically the same but this one has a spending analyzer that is very useful in giving you a snapshot of where you money is going. The quick budget and comparisons are done very professionally and the spreadsheet is very easy to understand and use. There is a tax planning for 2013 that I am looking into adjusting for 2014 but I am not 100% certain it will be an effective crossover but it is worth noting that they make this available each year. There are three spreadsheets that can be used for your investments and retirement accounts and they are a retirement planner, investment planner and a 401(k) calculator. All three of these are very powerful and can help guide you to a financial peace that may be many years down the road. What you need to be aware of while using these three spreadsheets is that you need to use reasonable and attainable goals for your assumptions. Two other useful spreadsheets are a net worth calculator and a mortgage calculator that can be used to get a good snapshot of where you are in an overall picture. A final spreadsheet that I have not used much is the calendar planner. From my limited playing in the spreadsheet it appears to allow you to plan on a monthly and weekly basis and is good for many years to come. If you have many meetings, events, or need to track items this is an excellent tool for you to have as well. You get all of this from Simple Planning for a very reasonable cost of just $39.95 or you can get the premium service for $59.95 that allows for cloud storage and access from any computer. This option combines the best of a spreadsheet with the web-based system.
When I started this series I fully intended to have it last a full month and do a comparison but after three weeks Simple Planning is the clear leader and advantage when developing and using a budget system. For more information on the budget process feel free to click the link for Books on Amazon by Kirk and pick up a copy of my eBooklet Budgeting 101.
