Would be so nice to have the ability to do accounting like this. This house and car are free, no money down! No need to take into account the future at all.
I wonder how many bankruptcies could be avoided if more people just had some basic spreadsheet literacy.
Before I bought a house, I built a stupid simple model to understand what my monthly expenses would look like. What you get an appreciation for is that very quickly you can go from comfortable to precarious with just a few additional fixed expenses (childcare, a new car, a boat).
Without laying it all out and seeing how your numbers change, it's hard to get a visceral appreciation for your finances.
Have the ability to create sub-groups within my checking account and move money accrodingly. For example, instead of seeing 1 overall balance, how about showing me available balance in my housing, car payment etc. This way it will become so much easier to track your income/expense.
There's a certain variety of budgeting I've yet to see, but that I think would be very valuable. It's something I'd pay a decent amount for, actually.
The majority of my expenses and income are very predictable, such that I get paid every N days, I get billed X every Y days, etc. I would like to see an application that tracks my balance for every day, from now and into the future, such that I can see my predicted balance on, say, February 21st.
It could also tie into my bank account and track current and past spending, both to recognize recurring events and to update the current balance, which also cascades into all the future predictions.
I'm a student, and I'd love a simple way to manage my income without having to faff around with spreadsheets and formulas (or more advanced finance software.)
I'd love to be able to manage my bank account with it, put a bit away every month and work out how much I have to spend - but in a clean, simple interface.
FWIW, I would really like to be able to do scripted management of my finances. Stuff like automatically paying my credit cards as much as possible while maintaining some minimum balance in my checking account (moving money from savings if necessary), or if my checking account is over some value, use the excess to fill savings account to $X, or put it in an investment account.
Personally, such a feature would be a selling point of a budgeting or accounting software package, and may make me pay more for it. I wouldn't pay much for this feature on it's own though.
My wife and I were discussing this a few weeks ago. If YNAB could automatically grab my bank transactions like Mint, I would be sold. I love their philosophy on budgeting.
some years back I started working on an app to track finances in that kind of way. No micro-management, just macro-management of budgets and categories. It would also forecast considering past data and future predictions and see where you would attain goals or go broke! :)
Nice. Cash base is pretty cool. I really like the simplicity of the interface. Would be cool if it were tied to your credit card, so expenses get automatically displayed.
reply