Nick and His Wife Get Transparency in Their Money Management Using PocketSmith

Read how Nick uses PocketSmith to take the guesswork and time-consuming details out of his family’s money management with PocketSmith.

Tell us a little about yourself?

My wife and I live in country Victoria, and we are parents to an energetic 3.5-year-old boy. We also have a male Golden Retriever who was the eldest in his litter and still thinks he runs our household. The area we live in has some fantastic bushwalks, wineries and plenty of nice parks.

How would you describe your role in your household?

My wife and I are both breadwinners and have reasonably demanding roles in professional and financial services. We contribute equally in most ways aside from cooking. My wife is a wonderful cook, and I find it stressful, so she ends up doing the majority of it.

What drew you to PocketSmith?

Like a lot of people during Covid, I started listening to a lot of podcasts, especially financial independence ones. I came across The Happy Saver podcast, which obviously promotes PocketSmith, and the rest is history.

How long have you been with us?

Probably about 2.5 years now.

What do you primarily use PocketSmith for?

Tracking net worth and expenditure. The categorization functionality automatically picks up most of your bank transactions, and once you have defined your category labels and trained the tool, it picks up most transactions and auto-categorizes them — painting a super powerful picture of where our money is going.

How has PocketSmith changed the way you do money?

Both my wife and I like to be in control of our collective finances. We like transparency. PocketSmith takes the speculation around where our money is going out of the conversation, and all the data is there on the dashboard plain as day — we know what strings to pull if things need to change, and we know how to impact our net financial position. We tried other platforms, but the open banking feed reliability was generally poor and inconsistent, and the UX was average.

What are your favorite features?

The income vs. expenses summary for your selected range is one I keep an eye on most, and when I want to get into the weeds a little more, the transaction search functionality helps me figure out what those morning coffees are costing me over a calendar year.

I must admit I am a Wallabies supporter, but putting the Trans-Tasman rivalry to one side for a moment, I like the back story and the fact that PocketSmith was founded and is still based in Dunedin. It has that focus on the customer, and despite being a genuine fintech, it feels like the human element shines through.

Got any tips?

I use the dashboards and information captured in PocketSmith in conversation with my financial adviser. It means we are going into our annual review informed as to our cashflow position, can cover that off in a fraction of the time then focus mainly on conversations around the future and retirement planning, which is obviously where the real value is.

What’s the best money decision you made in the past 12 months?

It might be too early to call, but we just got our roof covered with solar panels, which should provide twice as much power as we currently use, so hopefully means lower electricity bills and the option to switch to an electric vehicle in the near future. Hopefully there is a PocketSmithesque app to help us maximize what we take from this new system, and we can’t wait to properly start generating our own power!