YNAB or something else (Preferably free!)

[drspouse]

We have a re-mortgage coming up, DH has recently retired, and I may need a private operation - all at once of course.
I definitely need to get on top of things.
DH is not always so happy about these apps that scrape your bank details, but I know most of these do this. Any suggestions? I really need to see where the money is going (and cut back on some of them).

I use Snoop and absolutely love it! It scrapes your details from all of your accounts and then populates them into categories, there's a bit of manual tidying to do to make sure things are allocated to the right account but once that's done the information it generates is so useful. You can create spending reports, set budgets, monitor spend against defined categories etc. I ended up subscribing to the premium but that's really not necessary unless you want to track net wealth (and are outweighing the money you spend on the premium with interest earned etc). You get 99% of the functionality on the free version which I used for over a year. I've not used YNAB so don't know how it compares.

If anyone wants snoop I have a referral code (may get you a voucher but not quite sure!) https://click.snoop.app/M2Tu/5zqz0byv

Great! I'm trying it now...

I can't get it to read a couple of my accounts which is annoying.

If you make a transfer to savings do you just set it to ignore that?

You could just have a really good review of all your finances to minimise your expenses. MSE will walk you through this:

Do a money makeover and potentially save £1,000s - Money Saving Expert

Then set up standing orders to separate your money into different accounts, eg:

One for shared regular bills

One for shared monthly essentials, eg food, petrol/fares

Savings for your surgery. If you're not quite at the 'need to remortgage' stage, you could work out what your mortgage would cost at current rates and start to live now as if that's what it costs and this will help start saving towards your surgery

One for shared annual and irregular expenses eg insurance, car repairs, Christmas etc

An emergency fund/large purchases fund (any home improvements, car repairs etc)

After all the above, and any other essentials/agreed joint costs, split the rest into the personal spending accounts. Don't touch any of the accounts other than the food etc account and the personal spending accounts and you use these on a 'when it's gone, it's gone' basis'.

Achieves the same result as YNAB for free and once it's set up, it just runs itself, except maybe check once a month that everything is working as it should. Any account that you're accumulating money in should earn interest - either set up linked savings accounts or use Kroo/Starling etc which pay interest on a current account.

That's kind of what we do at the moment - we have different accounts for different things - but it's hard to organise/categorise. That's what I need help with - I would never get my act together to sit down with a spreadsheet.

I am finding Snoop works well so far, just the annoyance that I can't link a couple of my savings accounts and one of the current accounts, plus DH has a credit card in his name only (he's not overspending particularly, I just can't link it and it's not like it's "fun money" for him, he uses it for house stuff etc. so we can't just say "oh that's your allowance and we can say it's X amount").

Yes it's annoying when it won't capture an account - depends whether those are main accounts though.

I set payments to credit cards and payments to other accounts like savings to show up as internal transfers, yes.

Btw first direct does work with Snoop so if you've not had a current account with them recently you could switch across one of the incompatible accounts and get the £175 joining bonus they're offering at the moment. It transfers across your direct debits, payments automatically. I've been quite wary of switching accounts in the past worrying about payments and direct debits getting disrupted but the current account switching service has made it so much easier.

The one it doesn't work with is Citibank and we need to keep that (because it has multiple currencies, we have family overseas) and we need to use it for at least some DDs so we can't completely switch.
It also doesn't work with a couple of savings accounts but that's easier as you can just set those payments out to ignore.