What do you use for budgeting/tracking spending?

[mamalisa]

Things are tight.   I'm used to having a large cushion so I've never tracked spending before, I just knew about how much was in the checking account and went with it.  We never really overspent, but now that things have changed I'm seeing there is a lot of room for cutting back on our spending. I need a better way to manage bills, auto pays, deposits and spending.

Do you use any programs/apps/pen and paper charts to track and manage your money?  Right now my system is failing because I have memory issues and don't write stuff down (brilliant combination, I know).  

Thanks~

[crunchy_mama]

www.mint.com

It is free and easy and brilliant.  You can sync it with your bank and other accts, set up a budget and it will automatically keep track of how you are doing in each category.

[texmati]

I just went through something similar-- I have a thread about it somewhere. We are using quicken (at least have been for the past few weeks.) I think mint and quicken are made by the same people, but I have to say, I"ve been really impressed so far. It took me a bit to figure it out, but now that I have it's so nice to be able to sit down with dh and have a conversations based on facts and not guesses. I would never have been able to handle this kind of data in my head, on paper, or even in excel.