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Spacewolf
May 19, 2014
OK, to describe my situation in general terms:

I'm 30 y/o, unemployed, male. Looking for work, but until that particular minor miracle happens, I'm on SSI (because I'm disabled), plus I get a check from Social Security retirement (not from me, from my dad's credits, because I was disabled as a baby) - point is, the total from the two checks is something like $697 or so.

Note carefully the bit about two checks. Because the government is weird, some months they don't come at the same time. (usually, one check comes on the first, the other on the third, but sometimes...not so much!) Meanwhile, I regularly have $634 in bills due *every month* on the fifth of each month (it used to be the third, but then I pointed out to my parents (AKA my landlords) that that was a heck of a risk of an overdraft basically because of the way the autopay stuff at the credit union works (the money *out* is processed before the money *in*, bizarrely) - they agreed it was no problem on their end to get the money automatically on the fifth, fortunately). Rent and other stuff.

I'm looking for budgeting software, thus, just to help me track things easier than Mint.com and stuff. (Also, I really would like to keep data stored locally, not on the internet.)

At the same time, I'm looking for work as a paralegal - my first job after taking a few years to do paralegal schooling at my local community college. Law firms (and other employers of paralegals/legal assistants/pick your term) tend to pay, I am told, twice a month...I would like a budgeting software that can work with that.

On the technical front, I use Windows 8.1 Update on a laptop, so kindly exclude the solely Mac or Linux offerings. :)

Price of the software is important, but I'm not sure what the usual price points *are* these days.

Anybody willing to help?

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100 HOGS AGREE
Oct 13, 2007
Grimey Drawer
You Need a Budget. See the thread on in in BFC but it's 60 bucks retail, and usually goes down to 15 on Steam during the Winter/Summer sales.

It also has a 34 day free trial.

slap me silly
Nov 1, 2009
Grimey Drawer
Not sure if it would work for you, but you should at least know about GnuCash. It is free and seems to have a windows port (that may or may not work that well, I don't know). It is not budgeting software but accounting software - good for keeping track of all your accounts and expenses, if you are interested in getting your head around the double-entry method and the clunky interface. What I do for budgeting is get a report of the last 3-12 months of expenses, put it in a spreadsheet, and say "ok now my plan for next year is X dollars per month on these things". Some things (rent) take care of themselves, other things (food) need the envelope method or something to stay in budget.

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

100 HOGS AGREE posted:

You Need a Budget. See the thread on in in BFC but it's 60 bucks retail, and usually goes down to 15 on Steam during the Winter/Summer sales.

It also has a 34 day free trial.
This. You'll like it. It has worked wonders for my budget, and I am someone who has tracked spending in Quicken for a decade now.

Quicken budgeting has come a long way, but I'm still not a fan of it. I haven't tried it hard enough tho, since I learned about YNAB. I really do wish YNAB would sync with my banks though...

Spacewolf
May 19, 2014
I've heard that YNAB doesn't play well with getting more than one paycheck or benefits check a month? Is that true, or did I misread something?

100 HOGS AGREE
Oct 13, 2007
Grimey Drawer

Spacewolf posted:

I've heard that YNAB doesn't play well with getting more than one paycheck or benefits check a month? Is that true, or did I misread something?
This is completely untrue. The way YNAB works is you input income whenever you get it, and then budget that income. Once you have budgeted all of your income you stop budgeting, until you get more income.

Functionally this means that if you are living check to check you can't budget an entire month out if you don't have the money to do so already, and you have to prioritize things based on importance and due date. YNAB doesn't care when the money comes in.

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Spacewolf
May 19, 2014
Ah.

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