My Financial System – How I Manage the Q-FI Kingdom

Systems, systems, systems.  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?  Hahaha… 

How do you track your finances?  What programs do you use?  How do you manage saving vs. Spending?  What is your system?  What is the magic to your success? 

If you’re into personal finance at all, then these are some of the most common questions that people want to know.  They want to see underneath the hood of the car, pull back the curtains from the Wizard of OZ so that they might glean some takeaways that they can apply in their own life. 

Tell me the secret to your success so that I can solve all of my problems… 

That would be nice wouldn’t it?  Slice off some low hanging fruit like a self-help ninja-guru about to lift all of your worries into a sky of cotton candy lullabies. 

Nope, not in this article. 

In this post, I am not telling you what to do or how to do it.  All that I’m doing is being transparent in what I do.  Maybe it teaches you something, maybe it doesn’t.  But I figure, if you’re going to be reading me rant about finance-related stuff, I might as well tell you exactly how I handle my own business. 

So here we go. 

Although, how I implement my financial system is always changing, being tweaked and optimized as my priorities in life shift – and they will shift – who I was at 28 compared to 38 are entirely different people.  The following is how I currently manage all of my peasant dollar bills in the Q-FI kingdom. 

First off, if you read this blog then you know I am married, so obviously this post is going to be more geared toward a couple with combined assets.  But I will say, if I was single or divorced, I would still manage my finances the same way.  So take that as you will. 

Alright, so what programs do I use?  Drumroll please… and the answer is: 

Mint and Personal Capital. 

No fucking way bro? 

Ta da… yep, the same Mint and Personal Capital software that every other personal finance nimrod on the entire planet uses.  I hate to break it to all of my fans, but my alter ego Q-FI is human, and just like the rest of us. 

But don’t worry… there will be no scary affiliate links to follow (but someday, I just might break down and start bankrolling this blog quietly to fund the Q-FI empire).  Yet until that day, just google these two juggernaut PF sites and sign up.  Or, if you are of the more benevolent nature, just click on any other finance blog and use their link so that you can give’em some free cashflow to hopefully improve their blog. 

How does the Q-FI Family of two, structure our finances as a couple? 

I see a lot of questions on blogs for newlyweds, how do we structure our finances once we are married? Do we combine our assets or keep them separate?  And the best answer is, since you’ll probably get divorced within the next five years, keep them separate!  Hahaha. 

Brup Ba!  I’m joking.  And shame on me for ever insinuating that.  Bad taste… maybe?  Funny to some… probably.  Yep, you know who you are. (wink) 

In the Q-FI home, we keep our bank accounts and assets separate.  Why, because that’s how we’ve always done it and it just plain works. 

When my wife and I got married, I saw no need to combine accounts.  She had her financial history and I had mine.  What I did do, is put us both on each other’s accounts so there would be no hiccups with either of our sudden deaths. 

However, I have seen a lot of postings about couples sharing a joint checking account. 

We personally do not do this and I have never seen any need for it either.  We are not tit for tat people that need to share the exact percentage of our income ratios to make sure everything is equally weighted in our spending and bill paying.  We view our incomes as the same.  It is OUR money regardless of who makes what.  I make the higher salary so I pay for most of the bills while my wife handles the groceries and home supplies.  It’s not rocket science and really is that simple. 

If there’s a big financial decision coming up, then we discuss it together and take the appropriate action. 

If you’re in a relationship, and you feel you need to have equality defined as clear as night and day.  I guess that can work too.  But I think there are bigger issues going on under the surface if that is a requirement to coexist in the relationship.  But hey, that’s just me.  And my advice is worth what it costs you… absolutely nothing. 

How do I use Mint? 

I use Mint for budgeting, tracking expenses (all credit cards) and managing our W2 income only.  I don’t want to see any investment accounts on this interface, because all I care about is the actual cashflow that is going into our checking accounts from our paychecks. 

For this software, my wife and I each have a separate account linked only to our checking accounts so that we can track how we are doing on an individual basis.  This way we can break down each of our individual spending habits rather than trying to filter it out from a joint account. 

Some people might argue, well, you can do all of this on Personal Capital.  Yes, but I don’t like the interface as well as Mint.  For some reason, Mint has been a better tool for me to track expenses and customize my budgets while I use Personal Capital for a combined assets view. 

Weekly I’ll categorize our expense tracking and then monthly we’ll review together how we did over the previous 30 days, where we can improve and planning for the next few months to come. 

How do I use Personal Capital? 

With personal capital, unlike Mint, we have only one account. 

As I mentioned above, I use Personal Capital to see the entire picture.  I want to view all income including W2 plus investments as well as pre-tax retirement accounts and post-tax retirement accounts in one place.  What I’m seeing here is the whole enchilada I have to work with. 

I’ll usually sign onto Personal Capital about once a month.  Maybe a couple times a year I’ll run a retirement scenario.  I like their interface, but I’ll be honest that I don’t use retirement calculators all that much.  So I’m not basing this experience on a lot of research.  I keep things pretty simple.  I find something that I like and I use it. 

I also think the fee fund analyzer is a cool tool, but I have to chime in that a lot of my retirement index funds in employer accounts don’t show up.  So you need to have relatively popular funds in order for the software to work.  I find this part frustrating. 

Someone might argue that having two systems is cumbersome, but I find this balance to be the best for me.  Mint is easier to customize my budget on and Personal Capital gives me the better net worth picture. 

Yes, even with these programs, I still default to Excel. 

What it all comes down to is, I’m a finance guy.  And no software can ever replace customizing things on your own. 

Although during the year, I use Mint weekly/monthly and Personal Capital monthly, when it comes to the heavy lifting in the end of the year review, I still find limitations on how both of these programs filter the data.  So, once my final year-end spending results are in, I import the transaction data for both my wife and I into Excel and customize as I see fit. 

I only have had this system in place for a year and a half, so we’ll see what tweaks if any I decide to make in year two.  But so far so good, and I’m happy with the results. 

Till next time mi amigos. 

-Q-FI 

P.S.  What financial software do you use?  Do you budget?  Tell me about your system and its evolution over the years?  Let’s get some fucking corporate best practices rolling here… hahaha.