Looking To Up Household Savings? Forget Budgets, Just Know Your Cash Flow


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Other than a few static expenses like the cable or garbage bill, it’s hard to know how much you’re likely to spend in a given month.

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September means back-to-school gear for the kids. December is gift-buying time. Go on vacation, and your “entertainment” budget for the month – maybe the year – is shot. And, if you’re a retired individual that relies almost entirely on savings, frugality is all the more crucial.

While budgeting tools are certainly useful, what’s ultimately important is that people have a sense of their overall cash flow every month. Did you spend more than you earned?

While myriad online tools exist to help you implement a household budget, beware: budgets are famously fickle. If your spending – or earnings – come from more than one source, it can be hard to actually monitor that budget, even with the various e-budgeting tools now available.

Personal Capital’s Focus on Cash Flow

With Personal Capital’s award-winning Dashboard, users can plug in all their accounts – checking, savings, 401k, college fund, loans, investments – and get a sense of how their bottom line has moved every month. What do all of your expenses – the mortgage, bills, loan payments, groceries – look like relative to your earnings?

Income vs. Spending stats are on the first page of the Dashboard when you log in. Users can flip back and forth between the two and dive in deeper by clicking whichever slice of the pie they’d like for a more detailed view of their transactions.

By clicking into the “Cash Flow” tool, users are able to look at transactions from each account, adjust the timeframe, and see which expenses or income take up what percentage of their budget. A bar-graph also shows income-vs.-spending month by month.

On the mobile apps, spending is shown in the “Cash Flow” view: A pie chart depicts transactions by type (ATM withdrawals, groceries, bills, etc.), while a line chart tracks spikes and dips in spending over time. Users also see which transactions account for what portion of their overall spending.

For those who want more control over organizing their expenses, the Personal Capital Dashboard allows users to categorize their transactions, either in general groups like “Entertainment” or “Food,” or in customizable fields, like “Fido’s dog food” or “Grandma’s stuff.” You can even add your own descriptions of each transaction.

With a 360-degree view of all spending and all income, users can really focus on the most important part of responsible budgeting: Making sure they’re staying in the black.


Crypto Whales Are Loading Up — Are You?

New research shows the biggest crypto buyers are back. And this time? They could hold for the possibility that Bitcoin will surpass $100,000 in 2024. You don’t want to miss the next massive crypto bull run like we saw in 2020 and 2021. To know exactly what’s going on and what to buy… Get Access To Benzinga’s Best Crypto Research and Investments For Only $1.


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