Read how PocketSmith gives Trevor peace of mind that his family has enough for day-to-day costs, future plans and the unexpected.
I’m a 60-year-old male living in Australia with a family of five. We arrived as immigrants in 2011, so I’ve had to manage our money carefully to pay for a house, educate the children and have money for retirement. I’m a professional engineer and manager, and am fortunate to earn a decent living.
I am the primary income earner and look after all the major financial requirements. We have had the privilege of my wife being a full-time mum for many years, now supplementing our income with some part-time work. She has always run the daily expenses of the home.
I had been using Quicken to manage my household finances, but it was very US-centric and no longer supported in Australia, so I decided to find something else. Finding PocketSmith, being a New Zealand-based company, I decided to give it a try and liked the features it has, so I started using it.
Four years.
I use PocketSmith to manage the entire budget for our family, including long-term savings, accruals for regular payments of utilities and short-term requirements such as groceries and eating out. I have it linked to my Commonwealth Bank accounts, and over the years, it has learned very well what my regular transactions are, which makes coding of the transactions very easy.
I still do my primary budgeting in Excel, but then load that into PocketSmith to track expenditure against budgets, both for short-term and medium-term requirements.
What PocketSmith has done is give me peace of mind that we have sufficient money for the things we need. I really like the ability to track a particular category over time and see if I’m spending more or less, and then to drill down into that category by simply clicking on the item, and it shows me all the transactions.
The feeds to my bank accounts that keep PocketSmith current, the reports where I can track spending vs. budget allocation, and the automatic categorisation of expenses when it comes through.
PocketSmith is a really good system and relatively easy to use. However, you need to think about the way you plan your budget and how you use the categories effectively to track your expenditure. There are good tutorials available through PocketSmith that require patience and some practise to get right — it took me quite a while to get it working smoothly, but it does work really well.
Creating an emergency fund to pay for large unforeseen events has allowed me to help out my kids when they needed it.
