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Budget Apps

6 replies

mama3bears · 31/08/2022 16:05

Does any use a budget app and could recommend one?
I've looked at a few but not found one I get on with yet.
Looking for one where I can enter daily purchases and categorise them as well as look at what bills are left to be paid that month etc.
It needs to be free and have no subscription charges!
Thank you Smile

OP posts:
AYearOfCushions · 31/08/2022 16:18

I use the Emma app- I like it and find it easy to use.

Cynderella · 31/08/2022 19:42

Moneydashboard is free - it will track all of your online accounts, categorise spending and has budget options. I don't know how it does cash spending, but for card transactions, it will guess the category or you can set your own.

Jarstastic · 01/09/2022 10:19

YNAB is transforming us. It’s not free but you have a long free trial which you can have without giving card details.

BlackCoffeeAndToast · 02/09/2022 21:39

I use Snoop quite happily. It tracked my spending at amazon since 2019 and let's just say I nearly dropped my phone when I saw the total...

Gentleness · 02/09/2022 22:12

I'm adding a vote for YNAB (youneedabudget.com). It costs more than I'd like, but it has saved us a lot of money and stress already. We didn't go into it with debt to cover - we pretty much panic saved into a big pot and hoped for the best but felt stressed at every prospective expense.

YNAB is partly about tracking spending, but much more than that. You identify your essential costs, your true expenses and your wishes / savings ideals. That alone was transformative. It's not that we had no idea before, but setting up a system helped that understanding become concrete, practical money management.

To budget, you allocate your existing money to your different categories (my mum used to use envelopes!) and spend out of them. If you overspend in one area, you can see the effect of needing to cover that by taking from other categories. And if you underspend, you can shift the savings into somewhere that you really want them to be.

The biggest effect for me is that I don't stress about the big, expected expenses. I just paid the annual car insurance, and knew that the money was ready and waiting to be used. I'm spending on what we need confidently because I've planned for it, and I've got the insight into our spending patterns to know what exactly we need to cut back on to cover the energy price hikes.

Honestly, you'll get a flavour of it in the 34 day trial period, but it will probably take more like 3+ months to really get into the swing of it, getting your categories and method of logging spends set up to suit you best. As a major overthinker, I spent a silly amount of time playing with the structure of our budget. And I got myself in a real twist about how credit cards work but there is a lot of support material and the customer service was amazing. The app is so easy and the web-version is excellent. You can even import your spending from your bank account or card, which saves a lot of time searching for that one transaction you forgot to enter!

I don't work for them, honest! But I really like the way our lives have changed as a result of using them.

mama3bears · 03/09/2022 12:11

Thanks everyone I'll check them out

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