3 EASY BUDGET TOOLS TO BECOME A DEBT FREE PT
by DebtFreeEmma | Apr 5, 2017
3 EASY BUDGET TOOLS TO BECOME A DEBT FREE PT
One of the first things I did when I graduated was to try to figure out all the different places my money was coming and going. I had a site for my loans (Navient), a site for my savings and checking accounts, for my credit cards, for my bills ect. There were all these different places where my money was coming and going – and I knew that I had no idea what was going on!
I knew that I needed to know what I was spending and what I was earning if I wanted to tackle my loans. So I looked up budgeting software – FREE budgeting software to be specific.
These are 4 simple and FREE budget tools that I have used to help reduce and track my spending:
Why its helpful:
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Free
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Simple
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Sync all your balances and bills together
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Create a budget and track your investments
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Online application form
Why its helpful:
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Free
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Simple
-
Sync all your balances and bills together
-
Create a budget and track your investments
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More focus on investments and HIDDEN fees
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Online application form
OR…. Go with your own home made budget through GOOGLE SPREADSHEETS/EXCEL 
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FREE
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No sharing of online data so you can feel confident more of your financial information is being protected
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Personally customizable
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As you see, Excel comes with free templates you can download budgeting templates from google or excel easily for free
Here’s why I like personal capital:
Easy to use: I quickly plugged in my IRA, investments, and bank accounts in minutes.
Reliable: All my sites to my knowledge were protected and safe. NOTE: I did not instal this application on my phone for fear that if my phone was stolen that they could get all of my financial information. I think its good practice to not have any bank account apps on a phone in case they are stolen. I loose things all the time so its just safer for me.
Easy to follow: It displayed a nice graph of where my spending was going, such as 20% to groceries, 10% to activities/fun, 20% gas and travel ect
It applied more focus to the hidden fees and investments. This is something I know the least about, so having Personal Capital simplify it was appealing to me. Also, I realized that investment fees can really add up!
One negative: When I made a money transfer, say from my bank account to my IRA – it appeared that it counted that as spending. So my graphs were skewed. But Im sure more tech savvy people could have figured out how to fix that!
I’m not a financial advisor but I think having a budget, especially if you have thousands in loans, is one the best and foremost steps to beginning to become debt free. Since having a budget, I can much clearly know what I’m wasting money one so that I can try to cut that spending.
Action tip: Gather all of your financial data and try to see a trend. Is a lot of money going towards food or to movies? Where are there places that you could spend less on? Taking this time can free up extra cash that can go towards your loans or a nice vacation!
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