Simple but robust budgeting app

March 18, 2018 1:49 PM

I need to make and monitor a budget on my android phone. What are the best apps or systems for this these days?

I get almost zero computer time at home, but I get a lot of "waiting for my toddler to fall asleep (etc)" time, during which I have my android phone available. I'd like to use that time to set up a Budget and get a lot better at budget tracking.

I tried You Need a Budget and couldn't even figure it out. And free would be nice.

I tried Mint, but its connection to my accounts kept breaking.

Do I just need to try again with one of them or is there something better on offer?

At some point, I'd love to combine the budgeting for my accounts with those of my husband, so something robust enough to handle that would be really cool.

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.

posted by slidell to Work & Money (4 answers total)

Haven't tried it yet (I can't make myself leave Excel behind), but I've been eyeing Toshl.
posted by gakiko at 2:43 PM on March 18, 2018

I love YNAB and I'd encourage you to give it another look. They have live classes every day, and there are also a ton of recorded tutorials for every aspect of the program. Yes it's not free (and they recently raised the price but you will save more than the cost in the first month, promise) but there is a 34-day free trial so you can do a full month of budgeting and spending to see if it works for you.

If you haven't tried it in a couple years it's very different than it used to be, it's no longer software you install and sync to your phone via Dropbox, now it's online with an integrated app that is much more fully functional -- easier to set up than it used to be and pretty much everything you can do on the computer can now be done in the app (which was very not true a couple years ago).

You can add any accounts you want, no matter if they belong to you or your spouse and you can both have the app on your phone connected to the same YNAB budget so you can both see the budget and add transactions.

YNAB changed my life so I'm kind of an evangelist for it. I have three friends who have started using it based on my inability to shut up about it and they all agree that it's the best thing ever. There is a learning curve at the beginning but once you're all set up (and for real, the classes are super-helpful and there's also an extremely large and active Facebook group that loves to help you with any questions you might have) it is really, really awesome.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 6:47 AM on March 19, 2018

YNAB is very good, but it is INCREDIBLY--budget-breakingly, for me--expensive. It's also very hard to do on a phone. You'll need to do set-up on a computer at least, and the bank connections are always breaking so you do have to go through your statements by hand and make sure everything's cleared properly. You also need to hand-enter receipts, as it can take up to 4 days to pull from your bank. You can get a 3-month trial to get a better feel for it (just google YNAB 3-month trial), but given your desire to do it on your phone and the fact that Mint's connection problems were a deal-breaker for you, I would not recommend trying YNAB again.

I'm sure others will pop in with better suggestions, but while YNAB is a game-changer for lots of people I don't think it'll fit your needs.
posted by AmandaA at 6:54 AM on March 19, 2018

Response by poster: Just wanted to thank everyone who responded! I'll take a look at Toshl and maybe give YNAB more of a try (but probably not - any app that needs that much of a learning community is probably more than I can deal with right now).
posted by slidell at 7:44 PM on March 22, 2018