Has It Been That Long?

The People of the Cave

I've not written on this blog for a while, and I realized my last post was in November. It's March. I've finally awaken and realize it's been 5 months since I posted. Passing the new year, I didn't make any resolutions. I did, however, use the personal finance apps for my budgeting needs. Many things happened during the time that I gave the apps a run for their money. I'll give a short say on each of them with a very important conclusion.

Toshl Finance was coming close to a winner during my experience. It's the most easiest to use and understand out of the whole bunch, but functionality have changed during the start of my test. It's almost unusable now. So, you'd have to decide if it would fit you to continuously use it. For $19.99/year, it's a small amount if it can motivate you to get your finances together.

YNAB made the most sense. You set your budget (spending goals), you track your expense (spending), and you can see whether you made your goals accordingly. It's for those who loves looking at numbers. It's $60 for the license to use the software.

MoneyWise and Pocket Budget are excellent free-to-use-apps, mainly as an expense tracker.

There's one problem, all these software doesn't really fit me. I really hate tracking my expenses, it gets tedious after a while. I've built the habit of spending without really planning nor tracking for such a long time, that all these software would fail to be a part of my financial activities. The one closest to succeeding was YNAB since I love numbers. So, I chose to use a spreadsheet software as part of my financial activities. I really dug deep to create a system that works for ME. A combination of a cash based spending system and NOT registering any of it.

My advice?

Don't read any personal finance apps review.

Don't spend money on software and justifying that purchase by telling yourself that you will use it and magic will happen to your finances.

The best thing you can do is to get down to business and quickly figure out a system that works for YOU.