Reccys for Money Spending App

nachtvlinders

Is there an app that can track your spending that you can recommend? I'd like one that has your income, your bills, savings, payment plans and one that recognises priority spending against non-priority spending, please. Thanks in advance. 

blue.peter

I'm not clear about exactly what you mean by "priority spending".

However, I use (and recommend) AceMoney to  manage my money.

Accounts are assigned to a type - e.g., Bank account, Savings account, Credit card, Loans. It comes with a set of predefined account types, but it's easy to edit or delete them, or to add your own.

It's possible to assign a category to every transaction, or to split a transaction between multiple categories. For example, if I go to the supermarket, I might split the record between:

• Food & Drink|Groceries;
• Food & Drink|Alcohol;
• Household|Cleaning;
• Personal Care.

It comes with a set of predefined categories, but it's easy to edit or delete them, or to add your own.

It'll generate spending reports, either as a table or as a pie chart. They can be broken down by category or by payee.

I find that the most useful feature is the ability to look ahead and see scheduled payments. This makes planning very easy. Obviously, this implies that I make extensive use of the scheduling feature.I'm not sure what you mean by "payment plan", but it sounds like a schedule of future payments, in which case this feature would be ideal for it.

Other similar packages are available. You'll find that some forum users favour Microsoft Money. Also well worth a look is MoneyManager EX. Both of these are free.

nachtvlinders

Thanks, @blue.peter I'll look into these. Priority spends such as rent/mortgage, bills etc. and non-priority is treats, clothes etc.,

blue.peter

nachtvlinders said:

Priority spends such as rent/mortgage, bills etc. and non-priority is treats, clothes etc.,

OK.The concept of differentiating in this way is not, as far as I know, one that's commonly used. I've certainly never come across it before. I'd therefore be rather surprised if any app caters for it. AceMoney doesn't.

One possible workaround that comes to mind would be to create the appropriate spending categories and prefix your priority ones with an "A" and non-priority ones with a "B". That way, any list or report of spending by category that's listed alphabetically (which is the way that AceMoney works) will put the priority ones first and non-priority after.

nachtvlinders

I work in a community based job and a lot of my service-users unfortunately do fall into the trap of spending unneccessarily where they don't actually keep track of their spending. It's very easy to spend when using contactless where you don't see the money you've spent. I personally do this too, but thankfully I have the funds to afford nice things, but I don't do it too often as I know my limits. I have a very rudimentary template that I print out for what you have described, priority and non-priority, but it rarely gets the committment for someone to follow through properly.