This is an anonymous post from an Elpha member.

What budgeting apps do you recommend?

Kalyn179·Oct 18, 2023

Hello everyone!

I'm embarrassed to say I don't know how much I spend each month. Or I have a rough idea, but I'd love to get better at it so that it doesn't feel like I'm blindly spending money.

As for my budgeting app history, I only have experience using Splitwise for shared expenses but I'd love to know what you use to keep your personal finances in check.

Ideally, some free options but I think it might also be worth paying for one as well – or what are your suggestions?

I'm also open to any best practices you have around some of the budgeting problems I run into or if it's helpful for informing your app recs.

1. I live in an economy that is primarily cash-based, which makes it harder to get super granular with my expenses since they don't get automatically logged anywhere and requires an additional step of logging these in manually which I can easily forget when I'm on the go.

2. I also have expenses from multiple accounts and currencies, so an app that helps unify these would be great.

3. An app that allows you to categorize expenses (or if it does it for you, even better!) and generates an end of month report or something of the likes.

Thanks for reading me! Excited to read your recs :)

tanyarai·Oct 19, 2023

Hey! When I started tracking my spending I realised heavily on this app called Buddy. But over the last few years, I’ve made a very simple Google sheet to help me keep track.

Kalyn179·Oct 19, 2023

Thank you so much! I hadn't heard of Buddy – I'll check it out

Iynna·Oct 19, 2023

Don't be embarrassed :) we all have to start somewhereI typically use my bank (in my case, Chase) to track approx how much goes into each category i set up, but then I also like Personal Capital (new name is Empower) to track my net worth. But other tools that might help is YNAB (You need a budget) to help you with tracking and budgeting!

Kalyn179·Oct 19, 2023

Aw, thank you! I'll check these out

Iynna·Oct 20, 2023

ofc!!!

melaniecrissey·Oct 19, 2023

I love YNAB (You Need a Budget) and you can use my referral link if you want to try it out: https://ynab.com/referral/?ref=BFZNxxsUhx_mdoUdYNAB is a budgeting software tool that generates useful reports but they also have a lot of educational resources and their big mantra is "give every dollar a job" which is a digital version of "the envelope method." For example: If you can imagine having a stack of labeled envelopes that you put cash into every month and only take out what you need; whatever you have left in that envelope rolls over into the next month and you put "new" dollars in for your category.YNAB can handle multiple currencies but they recommend creating separate budgets for each; there's no easy way to unify multiple currencies in one "budget" but any account can have multiple budgets. More info: https://www.ynab.com/blog/the-digital-nomads-guide-to-budgeting-in-different-currenciesI imagine the cash-based aspect of this might make it harder for the system to automatically categorize expenses, but honestly, I enjoy using YNAB so much; I log in every day and I don't mind manually updating values or assigning things to keep it organized. I love the reports for watching net worth and tracking spending month over month.

Kalyn179·Oct 19, 2023

Thank you so much! I'll check it out :) And yes, I think there's no way around the cash-based aspect besides manual entries. Super helpful, thanks!

tvisi·Oct 21, 2023

I love Copilot! It’s super east to set your budget and see all your expenses from your various credit cards or banks (you also can add cash expenses to it). And it’s kinda fun to tag your expenses throughout the month and see how you are doing in each of your spend categories. There are a lot of neat ways to customize (rollover budgets or not for example). The only caveat is that it is paid, but you can try it out free for a month. Use my code to get a month of Copilot free: 8NVDHB https://copilot.money/link/XmeHqLuvMC94tFEc8