Still haven't found what I'm looking for...

(Anyone have U2 lyrics stuck in their heads now??)

So the next step in my baby-steps-toward-financial-peace adventure is to find good, user-friendly, Mac-based budgeting software.  My frustration at this seemingly simple task is mounting.

You see, no one asked ME (gasp!) for advice when they created their dumb software, which has resulted in the perfect software not existing.  For me, and most of my adults-with-kids friends, we need basic. household. budgeting. help.  What i do not need are fancy graphs and charts that show me how my stocks are doing (falls on floor laughing!).  What I DO need is a place where I can track every expense and expenditure that I make.  On my computer.  On my phone.  In the bank.  Where ever.

All softwares SOUND capable of that.  We have been working with Mint for the past 2 years.  Mint is free.  Everyone raves about how incredible it is.  I, however, beg to differ for the following reasons:

1.)   Unless you have IT experience, you can't PRINT ON PAPER a single chart or graph.  I can't figure it out.  So after spending hours on the computer correcting expenses and entering vendors for checks, I still have to take out a piece of paper and a pen and WRITE DOWN the totals for each month's expense categories so that I can know what we are spending it on.  Irritating.  Because I want to compare months, but maybe not this month and last month.  Maybe 3 months ago and next month, I don't know, but it doesn't seem that crazy to want the info on paper.  I suppose I could print a screen shot, but that seems like a silly work-around.

2.)  There is NO GOOD WAY to notate cash expenditures.  We have been trying to use cash for household expenses.  Basically anything that isn't paid with a paper bill, we pull cash out of the bank to use (more on this concept later).  The problem with Mint is that you can pull out cash and mark the category it falls into, but it's super-tedious.  What I want is a way to show that when I spent $25 at the strawberry stand, it should go into groceries and then two weeks later when I spent $15 at the school book fair it should go into our School expense category.  With Mint, you have to split EACH TRANSACTION under the cash withdrawal transaction, which is just simply irritating.  What I want to do is be able to create a Cash Account, and essentially "transfer" money from my checking bank account into the Cash Account (aka my wallet) and then assign the money spent into each category.

3.)  For whatever reason, I have NEVER had the same account balance in my Mint app and my bank account app.  So something's not being properly communicated, that much I know.

I've looked online a lot, and YNAB (which I have also tried, but before it had a smartphone app.)  comes up a lot, as does Quicken.  I have used quicken before, and now I'm starting to lean toward it again but in a weird way it feels super old-fashioned to me.  If I was Excel-savvy at all, it would probably make sense to just set up a spreadsheet, but that feels overwhelming.

When I do find what i'm looking for, I promise not to don gigantic sunglasses and sing about social justice though.