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Daily personal expense tracking solutions?

Y

Yukon Jack

macrumors member
Original poster
May 14, 2010
85
2
I need something really simple regarding daily discretionary spending. I do not need a budgeting or complex income and expense solutions. I do not need something that consolidates all spending and income.

What I do need is a simple app or file or DB template that will allow me to select a day of the month (ideally from a calendar pane, which automatically displays "Today"), enter a few expenses, display the day's running total, and display the month's running total. I have very little experience setting up Numbers or Excel templates (my efforts always turn me off!). If I put my mind to it I could probably whip up a Bento or Filemaker template, but I'd rather it be something with a small memory footprint, sort of a run-time version. I've checked the Bento template exchange and every solution is geared toward businesses or large-scale home budgets, which is overkill for me.

In the past I've used a daily diary app and just kept notes and hand calculations, but that is not the way to go.

Any tips or solutions would be really great! Thanks.

-YJ
 
4JNA

4JNA

macrumors 68000
Feb 8, 2006
1,505
1
looking for trash files
a friend started doing something similar and tried a few from the app store.

My Weekly Budget is the one he kept using after giving up on the rest. i don't use it, but the reason he started is the same as yours. i've never used it, so have only a 3rd hand recommendation for you. best of luck.

EDIT: it also got rated well in THIS article for whatever thats worth.
 
Y

Yukon Jack

macrumors member
Original poster
May 14, 2010
85
2
@4JNA: thanks for the tip. This looks interesting. I don't have an iPhone but it ought to work on my iPad. I was looking more for something for my Mac but at 99¢ I can try this one.

Edit: I found the iPad version at $1.99. I'm considering it.
 
Last edited:
And

And

macrumors 6502
Feb 23, 2009
389
3
92 ft above sea level, UK
For your purposes a spreadsheet really is a simple solution. My personal preference is to use a common file format for things rather than a bespoke app. In the long run the common file format will be around for a lot longer than the finance app, and you have total control. The level of spreadsheet ability needed is very minimal:

I would have an excel spreadsheet called 'Month template'. Have a first sheet called 'Overview', then add extra worksheets running from 1st to 31st. Then on the '1st' put 'Daily spend' in to A1', into A2 put '=SUM(b2:b30)', then in A2 write 'Sandwich' and in B2 write £2.00, and so on for subsequent items, the top line will keep a daily running total.... If you buy more stuff, increase b30 to b1000! Just copy those formula out and paste into new tabs for 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. Then in the overview worksheet, have a column with 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc and add a reference to the appropriate running total on the daily worksheet: ='1st'!A2. That's it. You can then use this file as a template for each month and hold on to them if needed. Hope that makes sense.

a.
 
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