Many people credit Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" approach to personal finance for helping them get in control of their money. EveryDollar is Ramsey's new free budgeting and financial goal tracking tool.
Granted, creating a budget isn't that difficult, and we've even featured Ramsey's own free guide on the subject before. But there are more than a few approaches to budgeting and several tools you could use. EveryDollar is one of the simplest and most straightforward I've seen, not to mention easy on the eyes.
Main categories are already chosen for you, and as you allocate your income, you can see how much you are left to budget. This follows the "Zero sum" (or "give every dollar a name") philosophy. Click the arrow to the next month and your budgeted amounts are conveniently copied over.
The Baby Steps portion of the tool tracks how you're progressing according to Ramsey's 7 steps, from saving $1,000 for your emergency fund and using the debt snowball method to paying off the house and leaving an inheritance.
While EveryDollar is free, to get actual financial tracking for your budget and connect your financial accounts, you'll need EveryDollar Plus, which costs $99 a year. With Plus, you can drag and drop to match transactions to your budget categories, but if you're a Mint user, you won't likely need this. Still, the budgeting tool is handy (and can help you create a better budget for use in other programs).
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