Personal finance apps — it’s a tough one, isn’t it? Where do you start? Will it take me long to set everything up? How do you know if they’ll “work” for you? There are a lot of question marks when it comes to money apps, but my advice is this — don’t go looking for a personal finance or budgeting app that’s going to be the miracle solution to your money management. No app can change your money situation for you. What they can do is support you to optimize and monitor the way you already manage your money.
Here are four Australian personal finance apps I use to support my money management.
Up Banking
Okay, so this isn’t strictly a personal finance app, but Up is an app-based Aussie bank that makes managing your money really fun. Yep, you heard me. FUN! I’ve got my money categorized into buckets that I can customize as my budget changes, and I store my monthly salary in there and pay myself a weekly spending allowance every Monday using the auto-transfer feature. You can set up a payday routine (we love), cover purchases from savers at the tap of a button, round up your transactions to boost your savings without even trying, and even set up a MayBuy, which is like buy-now-pay-later in reverse. You link the thing you want to buy and a little picture of it appears, and then you choose a savings frequency and a target buy date. It’s SO cool.
PocketSmith
I couldn’t leave old faithful off this list, could I!? PocketSmith is the money management software for all walks of life, and that’s something I love about it. It meets me where I’m at. I don’t use lots of the whizzy in-depth features because that’s not how my brain does money. But I pick and choose other features that do work for me, like the transactions dashboard that visually shows where my money has gone for the month, the quarter, or the year, in a colorful pie chart. I use PocketSmith as part of my quarterly money reviews (which is when I lodge my quarterly taxes as a freelancer, too) and my annual review and goal-setting. It’s actually part of the reason I committed to buying no clothes for a year. PocketSmith helped me look at my finances from a birds-eye view and see opportunities to save big by cutting out or cutting back in certain areas.
ThinkUp
Okay, this is niche and technically not a finance app, but hear me out. ThinkUp is an affirmations app — stay with me — that helps you create more positive thought patterns through repeating positive affirmations that help create new neural pathways in your brain. You can record your own custom affirmations in your own voice and listen to them mixed with meditation and relaxation music. You can create categories and lists of different types of affirmations, and one of my lists is money. A lot of our ‘money stuff’ lives in our subconscious brain and actually dictates our behavior. Building a positive relationship with money is about recognizing where your beliefs might be keeping you stuck and replacing them with new ways of thinking and feeling when it comes to money.
Rounded
Rounded is the freelancer accounting software that I’ve used in my business for the past eight years. So yeah, you could say it’s getting pretty serious between us… *blushes*. Rounded is one of the most affordable accounting software available and is designed specifically for freelancers — yay! You don’t need to contend with big business features you don’t need, and I find the interface really simple and intuitive to use. I use Rounded to generate invoices and record income, input my expenses and upload receipts, view reports like profit and loss or Business Activity Statements, and keep tabs on my revenue and profit for the year so I know my tax savings are on track.
Emma Edwards is a finance copywriter and blogger, on a mission to humanize the financial services industry by creating meaningful content that’s accessible and empowering. You’ll find her penning money tips at her blog, The Broke Generation, sharing financial insights on Instagram, or injecting life into content for her business clients.
