I tried a few budget tracking tools and they weren't that great

 It turns out I'm getting tired of updating my spreadsheets. I don't know if it's just because there's nothing truly wild going on, too many accounts, it's all gotten a bit too messy or if I'm spending too much time in my day job looking at spreadsheets.

Whatever the reason, yesterday I finally signed up for a few of the apps. I couldn't decide between the 2 popular ones, so I ended up signing up for both.

Personal Capital was by far the easiest to link accounts. It literally took seconds. The big snafu was it didn't link one of my checking accounts. I tried at least a dozen times, and nothing worked.  Then 4 hours later, I realized I was still editing categories and descriptions and tags.  One blogger I follow, uses a screenshot monthly to provide a quick snapshot of his expense and income categories. That appealed to me.  But when I explored it further, I realized I really wanted what my spreadsheet provides, the ability to see month over month trends at a glance.  Personal Capital can do month-over-month but just comparing expenses total not each category. Blech.

So then I tried Mint. It was quite a few more clicks and load time for each account. You had to check you weren't a robot for each account, and then load each one painstakingly. I didn't time it, but it was at least 30 seconds but felt like 3 minutes for each account. And you could only do it one at a time. Whereas with Personal Capital, once you entered your log-in for one account, you could move on to the next account.  This too wouldn't load one of my checking accounts. This one was Checking Account #2 where as Personal Capital wouldn't load Checking Account #1. 

So for tracking expenses, neither of them can really provide the full experience since they can't load both my checking accounts where my expenses come from.  Mint was incredibly annoying and busy. You have to constantly click to close adds and other superfluous boxes. Too many clicks! And I didn't need all the "cards" they showed on the dashboard but couldn't find a way to move them or close some of them. 

The thing I liked most about Mint was the way it calculated my FIRE goal. It was soooo very nice to hear that I was ahead of my goal and the time it might take to get there. I got instantly motivated. But then this morning I realized it's still 4 years away, so then that was deflating. (I think when I read it the first time, I thought it said I was 2 years away (false) as opposed to 2 years ahead (true).) But at first glance, I think it was a really useful tool.  This is what I would look for in a tracking tool. Take a look...

The other thing I liked about Mint is that it categorized my expenses and income and investment much more accurately.

So then I gave Fidelity a try. Ugh. I dislike that site in general. So much clutter and too many links for a novice like me. So I didn't have a lot of hope that this was going to go well. But they do have something called Full View. And what do you know, they were able to link both my checking accounts.  So for that reason alone, I might keep my accounts linked to it and see if there's any benefit to me. Categorizing was worse here than Personal Capital.

Here's what a snapshot of my retirement goals look like comparatively. And it's buried like 6 clicks deep. Can you make sense out of this? 

Actually, this morning was the first I even noticed that it'd calculated the total amount saved. Who knows if I'll be able to find that snapshot again??

Anyway, so the search is still on. I want to track my expenses, be able to trend month over month, and see a snapshot, and also track my FIRE journey without having to manually update spreadsheets. 

After yesterday, I was thinking I may keep Mint just to have that little boost of encouragement that tells me how long till my goal and that I'm doing a good job and maybe Fidelity to see if I can make any sense of the expenses tracking tool since it actually loaded both accounts. Not much use for Personal Capital at this point. 

Is there any tool you use that helps you?