Budgeting Apps

[Maggiethecat]

Dd considered opening a Monzo account aside from her student account and to which she could make weekly payments to help with budgeting. I think she said it had some other features she liked. However it seems that it’s limited to a maximum deposit of £1000 in 6 months so that’s not going to work.

Has anyone used a budgeting app (preferably free) that they found very useful?

She can get a year free from You Need A Budget (YNAB). It's an envelope budgeting system and its very effective. Her money would stay in her account, but in YNAB, she'd see where she's allocated the money to and how much is spare.

YNAB brilliant and it's free for the first year for students.

After that unfortunately it's not, but she could continue the same method on a spreadsheet or just decide whether it's worth it. I find it saves me more than it costs and the alternatives don't have the features that I want, so I find it worth it.

I use YNAB, and if I’d started to use it as a teenager my life would have been very different! It’s not free but I think you get a deal as a student? There’s a whole method to it so worth watching the YouTube videos. You do have to keep up with inputting transactions, but if you do it’s an amazing tool

YNAB revolutionised our finances. I’m another vote.

Ive been reading the YNAB book. Just looked at the app and it's quite expensive!

It is, but tbh it people use it properly, it saves much more than you spend.

We need an edit function!

Also, there's a 34 day free trial, which allows you to decide if it's useful to you.

I use monefy budgeting app which is free but you have to input spending manually. However you can have multiple accounts and set your own categories. You can also set recurring expenses and input income.

Chase is an online bank account app (you get sent a debit card) that breaks down spending but into preset categories. However you get 1% cashback on all spending for a year. You can also open a chase savings account which gets 1.5% interest no notice. DS is going to transfer money each month from his student bank account (he needs this for the free overdraft as backup) and use Chase for his daily spending so he gets 1% back.

Chase automatically allocates the spending into categories eg bills, groceries, other shopping, transport, cash, entertainment etc and also lists spending by 'Merchant' so it is probably detailed enough.

I use the envelope system but on a spreadsheet - I taught my daughter how to do it and she runs her own spreadsheet now

My daughters use Monzo as do I, the pots are great for budgeting. I think the deposit limit is for cash not for all deposits - I get my salary paid in.

DS is going to limit himself to £15/week on junk food & take aways. Not budgeting otherwise.

My DD uses Monzo. As soon as she receives her loan, she pays her rent then divides what's left by the number of weeks in the term. She transfers that amount per week from her student account to Monzo and uses Monzo for all her spending. It works for her, but she is never near £1000!

I'm another ynab fan. Mines linked to my bank account so the transactions automatically come up in the app and I just have to check them rather than input them all from scratch. Every year I wonder about renewing as the cost has gone up quite a bit but I can't find a good alternative. It definitely has paid for itself though. I was in debt when I started using it and it helped me clear that. I've been in credit ever since as I have a much better idea of what I need to keep hold of money for and what I can afford to spend.

@sunniest who do you bank with? I'm with Barclays and as far as I know, I can't do auto import with them. It's a bit of a pain!

I'm with Halifax and it didn't work at the beginning. Could be worth retrying linking yours if it is a while since you attempted it.

Thanks @sunniest - I've had YNAB for years so assumed that as I couldn't do it when I got it, it would stay the same. I've looked today and my bank is supported, so I've linked the accounts. Very happy!