Whether you're trying to track your spending or reach financial goals, budgeting is a crucial step. It's important to know how you spend your money each month to determine where you can save.
Although you can set a budget yourself, there are several budgeting apps and websites that can set one for you. PocketGuard is worth considering.
It's free to download the PocketGuard app and create an account. An optional subscription is available for premium features that cost $4.99 per month, $24.99 per year, or $79.99 for a lifetime subscription.
But the free version of the app has everything you need to start tracking your spending.
What is PocketGuard?
PocketGuard is a personal finance app and website launched in 2015. Its purpose is to help you control your money, optimize your spending, and automatically grow your savings.
PocketGuard stands apart from competitors like Mint, Personal Capital, and YNAB for its useful features for people struggling with overspending.
You can link your bank accounts to the app and manually enter your cash budget. PocketGuard will automatically calculate how much money you have after setting aside enough for bills, goals, and needs.
From here, you can track your spending with custom reports, view all your bills in one place, and keep track of your bills.
The great thing about PocketGuard is that it clearly shows you how much money you have to spend after you pay your bills. You can then create a budget with the remaining balance.
As you spend money, you'll receive alerts to stay within your budget in each category. The app also provides monthly insights into your spending, which can help you find areas for improvement.
How does PocketGuard work?
PocketGuard works by allowing you to link all your checking, credit, and savings accounts. According to the website, your data is protected with 256-bit SSL encryption, which is the same level of security as major banks.
The app also uses PINs and biometrics as additional layers of security, so it's safe to link your accounts.
After you link your accounts, PocketGuard will automatically calculate your monthly income and bills based on recent transactions. You can then set your budget and PocketGuard can help you stick to it.
To get started, visit the PocketGuard website or download the app for iPhone or Android. When I tried PocketGuard, I downloaded the iPhone app to create my account and set up my budget.
After doing so, I logged in online. The website was almost identical to the app with the same tabs and features.
However you decide to create an account, click "Get Started Now" to get started. You will need to enter an email address and password to continue.
You will then need to create a four-digit PIN to use for additional protection. You can also enable Face ID and push notifications for convenience and alerts about upcoming bills and/or overspending.
Once you're logged in, you'll be able to connect your banks and credit cards to get a complete view of your finances with all your accounts in one place. Depending on the application, PocketGuard supports 18,000 banks.
I was able to easily find my banks and enter my login credentials to link them.
PocketGuard will automatically create a budget for you, dividing your income into future bills, contributions to savings goals, and other expense categories such as food, clothing, or transportation. The remaining amount is what you can safely spend. It's called "In My Pocket."
Vertical PocketGuard “In my pocket”
When I first saw this page, my "In my pocket" value was negative due to some miscalculation in the app. You may need to adjust your estimated income and future bills when you log in to get an accurate picture of your finances.
You can easily do this by clicking on the “Estimated Yield” tab. There you can choose from recent deposits to your account and indicate how often these payments are made.
You can also add your earnings manually. You can then do the same in the “Upcoming Accounts” category: choose between recent charges or add accounts manually.
How to set your budget
Once you've set up your estimated income and upcoming bills, you can start creating your budget. Click on “Expenses and Budgets” to get started.
Here you can create categories to determine how you will spend the “In My Pocket” money. Category budgets are optional with PocketGuard and you don't need to allocate every dollar to a category. If you want to leave free money for unforeseen expenses, you can.
The free version of PocketGuard has some standard expense categories like "Groceries" and "Pets" that are placed in a section called "Upcoming Bills." You can add other recurring invoices.
And you have two spaces in the “Expenses and Budgets” section to create your own categories of money that you might not spend each month, like “Books” or “Clothes”.
To add a category budget, click on “Expenses and budgets”. You can then click the plus sign in the top right corner and choose a category for the quote.
Finally, enter the amount you want to budget for this category and click 'Save'.
Add budget to PocketGuard app
Once you have created a category and budgeted an amount of money, PocketGuard will deduct it from your “In My Pocket” money.
You can edit any category citation by clicking it, clicking the three dots in the top right corner, and clicking “Edit Citation.” You can also delete a budget category as well.
If a budget category turns red, it means you've exceeded the budgeted amount in the category and need to adjust your budget. Otherwise, the excess will be deducted from your “In my pocket” money.
If a budget category turns green, you have earned more than you have spent in the category.
How to stay on budget
PocketGuard's goal is to help you spend less than you earn. It does this by determining how much money you can safely spend or save after bills, budget categories, and goals.
This is the amount that is displayed as “In My Pocket” money and is what you see first each time you log in to the app or website.
PocketGuard recommends checking the money "In my pocket" daily or at least before you buy. Keeping an eye on this number after setting up your PocketGuard account is very helpful in avoiding overspending.
To track your spending a little more closely, categorize your transactions and manually enter all cash transactions.
PocketGuard automatically pulls transactions from your account when you link them to the app. They are divided into different categories, but you can customize and modify the categories/transactions by clicking on the “Transactions” tab.
As you spend throughout the month, be sure to check that each transaction is classified correctly. If you do, you can effectively analyze your expenses using the "Statistics" tab. There you will see a pie chart of all your transactions for the month.
You can click on each category or on the “List”, “#Hashtags” or “Merchants” tabs to see a more detailed breakdown of your spending. The free version of PocketGuard allows users to view up to three months of spending history.
It's a great way to find out which categories you can spend less on and motivate yourself to stick to your budget.
Advantages and disadvantages
Budgeting is essential if you really want to reach your financial goals, PocketGuard offers everything you need to meet your budget. After testing PocketGuard, these were the main drawbacks that have been found.
Easy Tracking – You can link accounts to automatically import transactions. You can also modify transactions and create a checking account to enter transactions manually. The app allows you to easily keep track of how much you have, no matter how much you spend.
Limited features: The free version of PocketGuard allows users to set a savings goal and two budget categories. The free version only tracks your spending for the last three months.
Automatic savings: With the free version of PocketGuard, you can set a savings goal beyond your assumption categories. You can automatically deposit your monthly savings contribution into an FDIC-insured PocketGuard savings account.
Otherwise, the app will track your savings contributions in your search bank account and deduct your “In My Pocket” Silver total each month.
Differences: The amount of silver you will see available will probably not correspond to the amount that the voices have in the bones of the bank accounts. In fact, the total is based on your budget and estimated income and bills, as opposed to the actual amount available.
For this reason, your "In My Pocket" silver may be negative when you have silver in your account. Also, you should verify that the transactions are classified correctly.
Avoid overspending: Once you've set up the app, you can easily see how much money you have left to spend. You can also set alerts for budget categories to alert you when you're approaching a budget increase.
Initial setup: Although the app is very easy to use once you've set up your income, budget, and budget, getting to this point may require some patience.
It can be tricky to combine both accounts, re-categorize recent transactions, set up a built-in budget for the app that suits your needs.
Conclusion of PocketGuard
Compared to other budgeting tools like Mint, Personal Capital, YNAB, Mvelopes, and Honeydue, PocketGuard stands out for its ability to help you avoid overspending.
It takes time to categorize white income and expenses, but when you do, the In My Pocket feature is amazing. If you need an app that displays an expense amount to view, PocketGuard will do it for you.
Because of how hard I set my budget, PocketGuard was not difficult to use. However, with any budgeting app, there is a learning curve.
If you already have a free budgeting app or a classic spreadsheet/pen and paper budget that works for you, there's no real reason to upgrade to PocketGuard.