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This might be the worst Wikipedia article I've ever read, and that's saying a lot. I'm not experienced enough to edit this whole page, but hopefully some heroic veteran can save it. I don't think it would be a bad idea to delete the whole thing altogether. Iskeptic 20:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
I second that this article is very poorly written, however there is a lot of useful information here. Most of my criticism has to do with style, and not substance. It seems that the person that wrote this article had never read a Wikipedia article before.
I am working on revising this topic. My current progress can be found here. -- Kenneth Cochran 12:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I've started to incorporate some of my changes into the main article. The large amount of editing required would make it difficult to merge my completed copy into the main article. So instead I'll just edit the article in small increments. -- Kenneth Cochran 13:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
It might help to break this into seperate pages. The methods should go under the link that the "Budget" page on wikipedia refers to under Personal Budgets. I agree, the content here is awful. It's also heavily biased. It should just be a definition of what a personal budget is, and separate pages listing all the methods, criticism of different methods, etc, and another one listing all the tools (if it's possible to separate them out as some are tightly coupled with a unique method). -- Hpatenaude 19:38, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
One of the things about the article even now is that a lot of it smacks of original research. The more references to back up what's being said in this article (and with as many personal budgeting methods as there are in existence, this is hard)... the better. — Rob ( talk) 16:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
The mention of debt service is redundant as it is an expense, also if budget allocation to savings is includeded then the foremost mentions should be taxes and insurance before savings. Go2self 21:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
The illustration is a budget summary that lists cash flow event totals as opposed to a working budget that itemizes cash flow events with amounts and dates so it can be used by consumers as an active plan or map. Go2self 22:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not particularly difficult. It's not all that complex. It really should be merged into Personal budget. Will merge in 7 days (2006-09-29). — Rob ( talk) 18:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The Envelopes section almost looks like a lead into Mvelopes online budgeting company, I may be wrong Go2self 21:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Just completed a rework of the first paragraph and some others to a lesser extent. There is sooo much work caused by the vagueness of the implied "research". The topic is certainly worthy of additions, if anything at least one paragraph at at time. Go2self 03:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Might I recommend the addition of http://pearbudget.com/ and/or http://ideaharbor.org/peachbudget/ to either the Tools section or the References section as examples of spreadsheet-based personal budget templates? Currently the article only mentions http://budget-master.com/, a web-based solution. Full disclosure requires that I confess to maintaining one of the two recommended sites, which is why I don't want to make the addition myself, but they really are both good tools worthy of your consideration. Raggmopp614 14:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I would like to recommend Budgets Get Real http://budgetsgetreal.com/ be added to the Tools section, specifically as Money management software. Not only is this a quality tool, but it is appropriate for use in most of the world's countries, unlike the listed software which have since retracted almost all of their International versions. And yes, I am involved in the development of this software. Lorenai 04:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone have any comments to make about the recent delisting of the online budgeting web site budget-master.com (that someone had just added a link to) in favor of whostolemymoney.com? Contrasting and comparing the two programs, budget-master.com provides the opportunity to do both budgeting and long-term planning using a 12-month spreadsheet format with date-shifting. (It's patent pending because date-shifting of a spreadsheet has never been done before.) While whostolemymoney.com uses many page views in a one-month format, with claims to date-shifting that are not obvious in the demo. (It's hard to access the claim of patent pending because the format and techniques shown are not unusual.) And both offer some free use and low user costs. As an encyclopedia, I would think that we should list them both and give interested readers the opportunity to review each for possible use. What bothers me is that whoever altered the information about online budgeting programs delisted one site in favor of another, which seems more like an attempt to use this wiki as a sales and marketing tool rather than an important information tool. Since I created and own budget-master.com I will not make any changes adding back budget-master.com, but feel that there's an important philosophical issue at stake here, and visitors to Wikipedia are the losers. --Dianeinct 2 July 2007 8 am. (having trouble using the signing method) ----
I'm inclined to agree with Dianeinct, I don't think it's really acceptable for someone to come in and anonymously remove one persons link just to replace it with their own. I can't comment as to which is the better product, or if either are suitable to be listed here. That should be left for someone else to more impartially decide. -- Lorenai 03:34, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
I certainly agree with what is being voiced here. The current example (www.whostolemymoney.com) is restricted to only New Zealand customers, and while you can obviously lie about your location in the registration, only imports from major New Zealand banks are supported. This certainly does not represent the general audience of a Wikipedia viewer. --ShawSam 1:18am, 21 July 2007 (AEST)
I looked into the basis for the worldwide view tag on this article. I was hoping to remove the tag. But the tag is completely justified right now. A personal budget is an expenditure plan based on income or the consumption of savings. There is no reason to dedicate more than a single section to technological tools for budgeting, especially when those tools assume personal debt, use of credit cards, and Internet access, none of which are worldwide. I suggest the article concentrate on basic personal money management -- as in what some people were lucky enough to learn when they were children and had an allowance -- THEN discuss more complex features of money management such as going into debt, paying off debt, and investing in an IRA (very American).
I know this won't happen overnight, but it's something to think about as the article develops. -- SueHay 00:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Having been told that I cannot merely add content with links, I recommend the addition of another common style of budgeting, which is maintaining expenses on a calendar and figuring out your new account balance on the top of each day. This is analogous to a banks transaction history, except for each entry on a day, you subtract (for expenses) or add (for income) values to your spending categories. This is a variation of the envelope method (or using budgeting categories) that many people are using. There is some software that automates this such as the web site http://calendarbudget.com (which I created) or the freeware application "Budget Calendar" ( http://www.tucows.com/preview/395759). Calendarbudget 16:02, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Can someone find a source on the suggestion to budget 25%? I can't find any, but I do find a source claiming that most households spend about 30-40% on housing, which sounds more accurate:
Any objection to editing the section in question accordingly? -- RoninBK T C 12:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Could interested editors please add sources to the article and engage in cleaning it up. It has vast swathes of unsourced material. I will reduce it down to a stub soon unless proper references are added to support the text. Thanks, Railfan23 ( talk) 16:57, 9 August 2019 (UTC)