Budgets and Interest

Once you have recorded and analyzed your finances for some time, you will want to create a budget. To do this, click Budget in the left sidebar. You can assign a specific monthly or annual budget to the categories. For example, you define the maximum amount of money you want to spend on eating out every month. You can use the category to keep track of how much of this budget you have already used up in the current month.

You can create your budget yourself or just let the software do it for you. If you choose the latter, press the Automatic icon at the bottom of the Budget window. Skrooge analyzes the operation data of a given year as the basis for automatically creating a budget. For the budget calculations to be realistic, data for a complete year should be available.

If you have taken advantage of potential savings and put money aside, it may be worthwhile investing your excess capital. For an overview of the potential interest returns, press Simulations in the left sidebar to open an interest calculator. At the bottom of the window, select Amortization Table instead of Interest to display the monthly interest and installments for a loan.

Conclusions

The developers have designed Skrooge as a digital budget book. This clearly distinguishes the program from financial managers such as GnuCash [4] or KMyMoney [5]. The program focuses on aspects that are essential for private finances. A systematic approach with categories and payees gives you an overview of what you spend money on and where your earnings come from. The monthly reports present a clear overview of your financial situation and help you identify potential savings. Budget planning also helps you to implement consistent cost control. If you are looking for a simple digital budget book to help you keep track of your personal finances, it's definitely worth taking a closer look at Skrooge.