Want more money in your life? Of course you do. We all do. And, chances are, you're currently living paycheck to paycheck.
You're probably spending a lot of money on crap though. Contactless payments and the like mean it's easy for us to dismiss purchases for little things like they were nothing. Those little things are adding up though.
I tried out a bunch of different budget trackers to see if I could remedy this. All of them work in that they make you think before you spend but some of them are easier to use for different purposes than others. Read on to find out which one's best for you.
1. Daily Budget
This one is nicely designed. Which is a bit of a rareity when it comes these apps which mainly look as if they've been modelled after a website from 2001. There's features you have to pay for (boo) but it's very simple to use. Just put what you spend on rent, bills, travel and other stuff and how much you want to save each month and it'll give you a daily budget you need to spend within. If you go over one day, it'll detract it from the next day so you don't lose out.
Get it here.
2. Citizen's Advice Bureau Budget Tracker
Suprising stuff from government-funded technology - an app that actually looks nice and isn't complicated to use (seriously have ever been into the darkest recesses of the HMRC website, it's like the Crystal Maze. But no fun). Expenses and incomes are easy to put in and are easy to tag which means that you get a nice clear graph showing where all your money's going (food and drink). Also, this one, unlike the rest, has no other features you can add on for a fee. Which makes you feel like you've beaten the system.
Get it here.
3. Spending Tracker
It's not pretty and oh my gosh it uses that font you used to use to write short stories with in Year 7 once you realised Papyrus was super lame but nevertheless is is one of the easiest and most self-explanatory apps to you. There's loads of different catergories for you to log your spending under and you can always add more. Plus, just turn your phone on its side to see a helpful graph of where all your cash is going. In summary, good app, looks like crap.
Get it here.
4.Fudget
This one allows you to set monthly, weekly and daily budgets. Although that does make things a little complicated if you set up more than one budget IMHO. Other users love it though, so it might just be me. Say you earn £2000 (HAHAHALOLOLOL) in a month, and you want to save £500, just tell Fudget that and it'll track how you're doing on your way to achieving your goal. Say you want to save £10,000 in a year (again, HAHAHALOLOL), tell Fudget and it'll track it alongside your monthly budget. Shame about the ugly adverts.
Get it here.
5. Show Me The Money
Immediately my favourite purely for the Jerry Maguire reference. And it looks nice. And you can add pictures of what it is you buy. If you want, you can even set it up to recognise texts from your bank and add in or take away the amount of money it says you've gained and/or lost. Annoyingly, the currency is set to dollars and there doesn't seem to be a way to change it but on the bright side, with the conversion rate, you'll always have more money than it looks like you do. You can also set up budgets.
Get it here.
6. Money Lover
This one allows you to have multiple wallets at the same time. In case you've got more than one source of income, or several different accounts or something. Otherwise it pretty much does the same as the other budget trackers. And it looks nice. The best part is though it has a built in calculator so you don't have to spend ages being all like 'Hmmmmm' and 'God how did I pass GCSE maths' and 'Lol at my maths skills' in public. Which is nice.
Get it here.
7. On Trees from Money Supermarket
This one is the nicest looking but you do have to 'agree' to let Money Saving Supermarket and their 'carefully' selected partners to contact you with 'money saving tips and special offers'. Grr. Otherwise though it's super easy, clean, good looking and lets you have multiple accounts, a budgeting systems and clear graphs of where your cash is going. A winner.
Get it here.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.