It seems like every time I try to use Quicken or MS Money to track my expenses I always end up giving them up after a few weeks. I always find that they can’t automatically update some of my accounts and I have to manually import the data in. That combined with having to open yet another program always makes me go back to just using Yodlee Moneycenter to track my finances.

In the past I always just used Yodlee to see what bills were due, what the balances on my accounts were, and what transactions I had made. This year I decided I would try out some of the budgeting features on the website and see how well I could track those. I know they won’t have all the bells and whistles of the standalone programs, but I have been using Yodlee for about 4 years now almost exclusively so I know I won’t be getting rid of it anytime soon and that it can handle all my accounts.

Using Sub Categories For Custom Budgeting

When I dug into it I actually never knew after all this time that you could setup custom sub categories. This helps me to align some of the default categories with things more in line with my lifestyle.

However, when it came to the actual budgeting of these things became a bit confusing. I setup 2 custom categories under General Merchandise – one for my discretionary spending and one for my wife. However when you go to the budgeting like in the below image… do I put the budget at the sub category level or the category level? The category level does not update with the totals from the sub category (I put that in).

After digging into it more, I realize you have to setup both the category goal, and the sub category goal which is the way I have done it above.

Overall Impressions

I only started this week so I’m not sure. There are some things you obviously lose when you go to a web interface, like I wish I could customize the look of the chart in the budget vs actual screen (my mortgage budget is so high that it makes small budget goals hard to read since it expands the scale so much). Overall though I think I am more likely to stick with it since I know I will keep using Yodlee.

If you want total control over the look and expenses, then its probably not for you and you should stick with Quicken, MS Money, or your Excel spreadsheet with 500 tabs and 20 pivot tables. But I think its a pretty good alternative to those pricier software packages for the average user who doesn’t want to be so methodical or doesn’t want to track down their financial information in 20 different spots.

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