According to the statistics, people waste up to 30 percent of their incomes simply because they do not control them. And by controlling we understand writing the expenses down, keeping them in a notebook, charts on PC or as fintech would suggest – having an app designated for it.
Cointelegraph introduces five popular apps for keeping your expenses in order. The selection was made according to the amount of downloads and rates of the users.
The creams of personal finances apps you could ever encounter are presented by some peculiar characters. Are you more like Louis or Taylor, or maybe you have some resemblance with Misha’s attitude to counting down your money?
Find yourself in these five types of personal finance app users and choose any. Detailed information, nice visualization or more analytical features, they are all here at your disposal. Whatever app you choose, brings you closer to the perfection on a way to keep your balance positive.
Mayvio Budget - a sleek way to budget
Who should use it: old school users, nostalgic iPhone 2 lovers and simple design appreciators.
Saara always loved to keep all the receipts in one folder; she even found it exciting, to say the least. So her story of keeping debit and credit clear has started a long time ago when she earned the first dollar. First, it was a sort of accountant book, then Excel and now she switched to an app reminding her of the old times. That is why she picked the Mayvio Budget app.
The interface of iPhone 2 makes you feel like you are a decade back in time but for Saara, it gives the feeling of security and is indeed soothing.
Hitting the + Add button brings you to the tab where you can choose whether to add income (green field) or expense (red field), add the amount, choose the date (if the transaction was made earlier) and write the comment. There are no presets for the categories, so everything you input you need to describe manually in the comment field. The way to add income does not come naturally: you need to hit the wallet icon of Cash and choose the Other incomes from the list.
The good thing is that you can add recurring expenses in the app and it will remind you about them. Also, the report of the financial statistics of the month is not overloaded with information, just the two slices of the pie chart. Clicking one of them you get the actual list of incomes and expenses made during the selected month.
In general, the Mayvio app is the digitalized version for a personal accounting notepad. The popularity of the app says that it is not all those fancy and designer interfaces that rule the world of fintech. There is still a great share of users who like it the hard way and who want to take control in their own financial statement.
CoinKeeper - keep your coins safe
Who should use it: control freaks, freelancers, people who have many sources of incomes and not just one job.
Louis is a very fastidious guy. He always looks neat, talks flowers of speech and just loves abundance in everything. Including information of all sort.
To keep his personal finances under his rigorous control he uses CoinKeeper app. There he can indulge in all sorts of categories and income source creation to his taste. You would not be surprised he has plenty, would you?
CoinKeeper allows to create various icons for Incomes including cash, bank transfers and other sorts of benefits and Spendings subcategories, so all that you would need is to drag one of the income pictograms to the expenditure one to “swallow” it. The sound of coins ringing is so realistic that it actually makes you acknowledge: the money has gone. Dzing!
After this manipulation, you should actually input how much of the money there was.
The opportunities to analyze personal debit and credit is also vast. Louis appreciate it since he can see the charts on incomes and expenses, cashflow and net worth for any period accompanied by the list of products and services purchased. In the end of the month, cash flow is high because it is rent payment time. It makes the chart even more beautiful.
The name of the app Coinkeeper says for itself, it is not only about spending but keeping. That is why on the main tab there is always balance number as a mute reminder of what financial freedom you have got. Additionally, it allows to plan the expenditures for the future and sends a notification on your monthly balance.
Visual Budget - visualize your budget
Who should use it: pie chart lovers, creative and/or analytical minds.
Misha loves pie charts and graphs. He often saddens when the graph hits minus. However with his careless spending he allows himself at times it is clearly seen in the .
After the bad times come the good times, and the balance raises up again.
The list of expenditures looks like that in the Visual Budget:
However, the logic of inputting the information is a bit different from two previous apps. Here we firstly choose the category and then open the card of the expense unit. The information about each and every expense can be just the amount of money spent or filled into the fullest including mean of payment and bank reconciliation.
Here comes the best part of Visual Budget, i.e. visualization of the personal finances for the past month. That is where the developers went crazy in a positive way.
The spending pie is simple and informational, hit on any of the categories and you open up the list of goods and services purchased under the selected topic. The same if you choose to see both, how much money you have received and spend: it shows a simple two sliced pie, by clicking on each you get a detailed statement.
To embrace the opportunities Misha gets with Visual Budget, have a look at the print screen of all the reports you can have at your taste. Balance graphs, pie charts of the budget, calendar with all the expenditures per day, even reports in pdf format to send to your mamma. If you are able to save and are in the black monthly, she will surely gratify you with a pie. No pun intended.
Money Flow - go with the flow
">Who should use it: money keepers and spenders in style, social media users.
Counting and keeping control of the money can also be fun. At least that was how Taylor thought. He loves being online, social media holds a prominent place in his life. That is why his expectation on the personal finance app would be a quality design, which possibly adopts such features as geolocation or tagging places and photos in the attachment to the statement. As a proof that he spent money in some fancy place, for instance.
When adding the unit of income or expense, you just hit the plus button and input the data: amount, purpose, date and tag. The endless list of preset tags could be filled in on the demand, so if you have several favorite shops, cafes or cinemas you often visit, you would tag them easily in one click. You can also write a note on every record if you wish to specify it.
You cannot change the list of the expenses categories but it seems exhaustive. Anyways with the option of taking or attaching the picture, the record of your spending will be saying for itself. Taylor actually uses it quite a lot, last time it was to show his friends what kind of New Balance sneakers he got last month.
The financial analysis is presented again in the shape of a pie chart, made in style. Hitting a category on the chart brings you to the list of expenditures made during the selected period.
Nicely selected color pattern and dark background, thought through icons and intelligible navigation makes the Money Flow a very user-friendly app.
Income OK - Is your income ok?
Who should use it: busy and active people, those who never checked their expenditures but want to start.
We are all very busy people. We just do not have a spare minute to sit and relax the eyes, not to say about keeping records on personal expenditures. So people like Melany realized that lack of time plays a low-down trick with her budget. She does not need some detailed tracks of her debit and credit, she just needs some general understanding on how much she earns, spends and preferably saves. That is why after trying out several apps she now opted for Income OK.
The interface of Income OK is something a minimalist would adore. Field to dial digits, simple icons for the expense or income categories, calendar to choose the date, comment field, what else would you need? Intuitive plus “+” button for Income tab, minus “-“ for Expense, the list of categories is exhaustive. It basically takes Melany three seconds to make a record of her spending. Easy, fast and efficient.
Monthly statistics are also shown in a pie chart with the detailed description under the image. Keeping your personal finances has never been that easy. One may say it is quite superficial and you can not get into deep analysis of you expenditures, yet it is enough to keep the budget in control via a simple interface and fast record input. This function is realized in Income OK pretty well and busy users like Melany surely appreciate it.
Fine design and easy-on-the-go usage makes Income OK a very efficient and helpful app for those who are concerned about their expenditures.
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