As long as you're decent with Excel, a spreadsheet will suffice. Granted, you can't import your account from online banking and such, but it's really not too complicated. Start with one worksheet for income, one for expenses, and third for investments/retirement, and a fourth as kind of a summary. Makes it pretty easy to see what's coming in and going out and also how much you can set aside each month for retirement/savings and how much "flex" spending money you have for the little things. And the best advice I can give is ALWAYS ROUND UP! Make everything pretty whole numbers (Like if your rent/mortgage is $1650/month, make it $1700). This will help make up for the little things that you might forget or are hard to budget (like a random lunch at Panera because you were out running errands).