How do you practically track and manage your household finances? Not what you spend, but how you organise and monitor it.

Every thing is direct debit checked weekly , Martin Lewis spreadsheet it's great really speaking all out goings , food , clothes , heating bills etc keep an eye on everything coming in going out etc

I have always used a home made excel spreadsheet.

Years ago I would cross reference statements against the spreadsheet. Nowadays I check my account every couple of days to check the actual balance and mentally calculate the revised balance after the remaining direct debits go out.

We put a few hundred a month into a "jolly" account. We pay for take aways etc out of that and the balance that builds up goes towards holidays. Ditto for a Dog account.

All my personal spending goes on my credit card which I check regularly on the App. I pay it off every month. If I put something expensive on there, then I decide how much I will pay every month and incorporate it into my spreadsheet and adjust my personal spending.

But we are lucky that we are not struggling, we have savings and our joint incomes exceed our outgoings, and DS contributes as well, so it's not vital that we track every single penny now, but we are not wasteful.

Accounts nerd, I use an excel spreadsheet.

2 main pages, 1 is a cash book which is an itemised spending list
Date/Shop/Detail/payment type/Sum spent/ categories (Food/ Entertainment/ Household/ Insurance) etc. I total up the month end spends.

2nd page is a cash flow forecast.
Columns are: this month/ next month/ month 3 and so on.
Rows are: starting balance/+ income in/ - payments due out/ end balance (this is carried forward to next month's starting balance etc.
This is useful for working out future sums due in and out, helping to plan annual costs and affordability.

This is the basics of of my main accounting. It's been tinkered with over the last 10yrs and is now very complex and has all sorts of charts and summaries.

We use Monzo free bank accounts. DH and I have one each. Each account comes with 20 pots. I have pots for everything (school uniforms, summer holiday, barber, window cleaner, school trips, my clothes, DH clothes, weekly shop, car tax, tv licence, prescriptions, music lessons, etc). I have a standing order set up from my other high street bank account to go into Monzo each month. Then each pot has a scheduled payment into it each month. I have a spreadsheet which outlines the normal bills plus the Monzo pots budgets. Took ages to plan it all out, but works a treat now and I never go over budget. I always have money in my normal bank to cover the bills, and then my Monzo pots for everything else. Monzo is free. Google sheets is free.

I just have a budget on notes in my phone. Then plan ahead for the next few months extra expenditure and savings. I regularly check savings and isa amounts plus interest rates as a matter of habit.
For tracking spending I check our spending account daily or every other day to see where we are at. We are pretty used to our budget so we live largely within it.
Any large expenses coming up in the year I look ahead and plan how to handle those. That might be cutting back, earning more or using savings. I have a rough idea of our 1 and 5 year savings goals but review these often.
I review my budget monthly to make sure it’s accurate and up to date

Spreadsheets. Updated regularly even down to the odd klarna purchase because I want to use them as a middleman sometime.

It’s also on the one drive so I can access it anywhere.

We use YNAB too. Once it clicks it’s genuinely life-changing. Our finances are in the best shape ever, we never have skint months, we can handle all the peaks and troughs of life. Getting a £300 car bill and being able to pay it with no stress because the money is sitting there in the car maintenance category is just brilliant.

I have a book, pen and calculator 😂 old school
I write down what goes out each week at the beginning of the month and then cross it off when it's gone out.
I used to have a book where I wrote down every penny spent so I could see where our money was going but don't do that anymore

I have a model that I've built in Excel that tracks income, expenditure, savings accounts and assumed variables (e.g., energy tarrifs, savings rates etc).

Our outgoings don't change much on a month-to-month basis, so I tend to update it annually, then it is, for the most part, automated: I track it alongside accounts and it's generally very accurate (bar occasional outliers like the bloody market shifts following Trump's mad tariffs in the spring - grr!).

I am, however, a VBA programmer and a model builder working in fintech, so this is probably overload for most people. There are loads of good OOTB products available - Martin Lewis' is excellent.

I use and love YNAB.

We don’t use any tools but we target to maintain a specific balance in the current account each month. So at month end if we are over the target we transfer the excess into savings. If we are under we cut back a bit the next month to brings us back in line.

I used to use Clear Checkbook and sometimes a spreadsheet, now I use YNAB. There's a 34 day free trial period. It works for me because i used that sort of 'envelope' budgeting anyway - have always put money away each month for as many ongoing expenses as I could think of. I don't mind paying for YNAB because it just makes life so easy. I spend 5-10 minutes a week checking it I guess, with a longer look every now and again to make sure everything's on track, do I want to update anything, etc.

I use KMyMoney - free, open source software available for Linux, Mac and Windows. You can set up a budget but I just enter regular transactions and the software keeps track of bank account balances, savings, credit card balance etc. I check my own figures against my bank statements.

I have a spreadsheet with three sections:

• the 'known' monthly DDs and STOs (mortgage, savings, utilities, pet insurance)
• regular outgoings, estimated monthly cost (food bills, fuel, hair & beauty, pet supplies)
• annual bills broken into monthly amounts (car & house insurance, various memberships).

Each item has a what/how much and a 'last reviewed' (which must be within the last year so i keep it up to date) and some of them have as appropriate:

• a supplier (eg name of utility or insurance co)
• if they have an end point (phone contract).

There's actually a fourth section for things like birthdays, Christmas, holidays & days out, but I've never really broken that down.

Spreadsheet (I LOVE spreadsheets lol) and also funnelling a budget per month into separate pots. We have savings, holiday, Xmas, house, projects (DH a keen diy'er), holidays, fuel, dog and gifts, shopping, personal spends

It works brilliantly for us and we seem to save more too.

I keep on top of everything as I enjoy doing it and maximising our savings.

I have spreadsheets tracking every bank account, credit card, mortgages, monies owed to me by other people, and a list of big spends I'm expecting in the future. These get updated at least every other day - the main bank account one has details of all direct debits/standing orders/regular payments & income for the next couple of months in advance, so I always know where I am financially.

Currently stooging on credit cards (using 0% spending to pay for most things, making minimum repayments & putting the rest of the money in savings so I'm making money out of the credit card companies) and you have to be really careful and in control of things doing that, otherwise you can end up in a real mess!

I am an absolute spreadsheet geek though! 🤓😂

Martin Lewis spreadsheet is great, and the basis of our planning and tracking. Like pp, DH is a planner and tracks it all on a spreadsheet, long and short term. We also use a credit card for general expenses and pay off each month (getting a few vouchers in return). It doesn’t take long at all just to do the monthly finances.

We have a tendency to overspend - but this way we always know what our true position is!

DH also tracks pensions quite closely, which is worth doing.

I use an app called Spendee for my day to day ‘allowance’ spending as it adds up so fast, everything is now so expensive, and I like to know what I’ve frittered it away on.

Started ynab last October and that's really easy tracking actual spending.

I previously used the mse budget calculator but moved now to James Shack's budget spreadsheet and retirement tracker.

I have a rolling budget on a spreadsheet, so technically it should show what is in my account at any one time. I copy and paste all the ins and outs for the coming month and make any adjustments to the budget.

So it shows money coming in on pay day and what days direct debits for out etc. I do all transfers to my savings and pots as soon as I get paid, including transfer to my spends account.
I started this regime years ago when things were tighter financially but I find it reassuring to keep it going indefinitely.

I use YNAB too. It costs about £80 for a year.

I also use an excel spreadsheet to track my whole year spends.

The only thing that has worked for me is YNAB. Yes I pay for it but it has saved me that money many times over, I allocate money as it comes in and monitor it on my phone. I can plan monthly and annual costs while also saving for bigger projects. I get paid at different times throughout the month, and in different amount so being able to plan as the money comes in makes life much easier.

We have a bills account. We put om equal.amounts into and this covers of the bills plus a rolling £100 extra for unexpected bills. We compare every year to get the best deals. Are very prudent on electricity and gas and never buy anything on credit so only save for things.
We put £300 into savings for holidays each month. Teens have an allowance every month for clothes
We spend £100ish a week in food.. At the beginning of the month we pay any stuff like shoes. Anything else can be spent on fun stuff. It's worked for 25 years. Mortgage almost gone. Never been in debt. Always had small savings and a pension.

I have a spreadsheet with income at the top, regular payments below that (all the adds etc), then the other categories I spend in under that, with a running balance at the bottom.

I don't have a fixed budget per category, but I don't overspend because I can see what money I have left.

We have sufficient income to cover a reasonable standard of living, spend sensibly and don’t go on family holidays.

Day to day stuff goes on a paid in full credit card and I
monitor bank accounts, savings etc on a spreadsheet. Check at least once a week in case of fraud.

Bills account, direct debits, standing orders, a credit card automatically paid in full every month, online banking. What else do you need?