From: Nathan England <nathan@nmecs.com>
http://moneydance.com/
Is by far the best, though it is not free
The OP said he was looking for free stuff. I guess this might work if
you're willing to pay them whatever yearly fee they're charging now.
GnuCash is an accounting program but it is so complicated to use it
is not worth the time or hassle.
Seriously? I started using GNUcash in 2000, when the documentation was
barely there. I've never had any formal accounting training, and I figured
it all out pretty quickly. The double-entry bookkeeping that GNUcash uses
makes it really easy to see how much you've spent from date X to date Y on
(category of expenses), and it'll track stocks/bonds/mutual funds if you
install Finance::Quote.
Take a look at the basic help,
http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-help/help.html , and see if anything
in the advanced help ,
http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/index.html is interesting.
The thing to do when setting up GNUcash is to start out your checking
account opening balance with the opening balance on the first of (month),
then just enter all the income/expenses from then til today that are on
your bank statement. Start your cash in wallet opening balance with the
bills in your wallet. *DON'T* try to enter everything you have records of,
just pick a start date.[0] Then spend 5 minutes every day recording what
you spent that day and what you spent it on. It should become second
nature pretty quickly.
If you're going somewhere without your computer[1], one way to keep records
is to write down how much cash is in your wallet right before you leave,
and call that X. Then write down how much is in there when you get back,
and call that Y. Take (X - Y) and charge that to
Expenses:Entertainment:Travel [2] with a description of "trip to
$SOMEWHERE". Debit card/whatever charges will show up on your bank's page
and you can just enter those numbers when you get back.
If you're really hardcore, you can read
http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/txns-registers1.html#txns-regis
ters-multiaccount2 , so you can split every grocery/restaurant bill into
"bill" and "sales tax". Then at the end of the year/month, you can complain
about how the government's wasting your $XXX.YY on $THINGS_YOU_DONT_LIKE .
[0] Accountants, feel free to gasp in horror here.
[1] I know, that's crazy talk, man.
[2] The default setup should create a bunch of expense accounts like that.