LIVING ON A BUDGET: Which Budget Personality Are You? 13 Questions to Help You Choose

What would you prefer? A quick test to help you pick the right budgeting tool

Here is a quick test I’ve created to help you match your approach to budgeting and the tools available to you.

Answer each question assigning a value from 1 to 9 with 1 being least important (or least true) statement and 9 – most important one, than total the score and read the description at the bottom of this post:

	QUESTION	YOUR SCORE
1	I know exactly what I am spending my money on I just need to track it	____
2	I know exactly what information I want to get out of my budget	____
3	I am aware of different budgeting schools out there and I have a strong preference for a particular one	____
4	I know how to forecast my budget and cash-flow	____
5	The best way for me to understand numbers is to see them as a picture, a graph or a pie chart	____
6	I am pretty confident I will stick to keeping budget, I just need a tool	____
7	Paying money for a product/service usually motivates me to keep using it	____
8	I like the support sharing with other people provides me with; I enjoy being able to share my experience and challenges with others	____
9	I am very concerned that my financial information may get in someone else’s hands	____
10	I am likely to track my spending as I go along, rather than at a set moment in time (e.g. evening or weekend)	____
11	I find it is important that the things I use look nice, are well designed and easy to use	____
12	I need to start budgeting because I am in real financial troubles and each penny counts	____
13	Writing your spending in a book like my parents did, is a viable alternative	____
	OVERALL SCORE	____

Scores below 50

You are most likely to be happy using free online budgeting tools that offer you community support and easy to handle applications. These tools offer some basic but easy to understand graphical reports; allow you to create personal budgets based on pre-defined categories and add your own, if needed.

The closer you get to the higher end of this category the more likely it is that a “paid for” package would be the right choice for you.

Scores between 51 – 63

The higher your score in this category the more likely you would welcome a semi-professional software package both online and offline.

You may feel that the fees a lot of these programs charge, is money well spent as you are likely to appreciate detailed reports and the ability to customise your tool to serve your well-defined requirements.

From 64 upwards

You might be happier using an excel spread sheet. Chances are you not only know what exactly you want your tool to calculate and report upon but also how to make it happen. You also may enjoy the freedom of to customising and creating your budget from scratch. You may also feel safe in the knowlede that no one can get hold of you information and misuse it.

For any technical support and inspiration just Google ”excel budget template”. Alternatively you can try to combine Excel and GoogleDocs to get the best out of both worlds: the flexibility of Excel and the convenience of an online tool.