EveryDollar: Budget Management

I’ve been using EveryDollar since they first came out with it years ago. I’m a big fan. We used to manually enter every transaction in the free version, but since life has gotten crazier with three young kids and growing responsibilities my wife and I just opted for the premium version. I will say before we made this change I tried three other popular budgeting apps and almost switched, but came back to EveryDollar because of the simplicity. However features missing that I’ve seen on other apps that would take this one to the next level are: 1. In the sinking funds, it would be super helpful if you guys added the back end math so users can put in the needed amount, the date needed, and the app could spit out how much you need to save per month to get there. YNAB does this and it was super helpful for things like annual fitness app payment, or EveryDollar subscriptions, etc. I’m thankful you have the sinking funds. But adding this additional functionality would be super helpful. 2. A reoccurring expense calendar. Monarch has this and it really helps at the beginning of the month when your updating your budget categories to make sure you don’t miss something like a life insurance payment, car insurance, or subscription, etc. Thanks for listening and for a great budgeting app!

I really enjoy this app for its simplicity and customizability. It’s pretty bare bones, but you don’t need much if you are already fiscally responsible and just need a tracker. However, there’s one element that absolutely drives me bonkers: the funds. I understand the purpose of the planned category; that’s not my issue. Whenever you log a transaction against the fund, it updates the balance as expected (positive or negative). But It also updates the total remaining amount to spend for the entire monthly budget, and it drives me bonkers! For example, if I log an unexpected $1000 charge against my emergency fund (25k total), that fund will be updated to $24k but the monthly budget will say I’m $1k overbudget. Same thing if I have an unexpected windfall of $5000 that I add to the fund; it’ll say I have $5000 more to spend for that month. It can make it really confusing because I just want a snapshot of how I’m doing for the month excluding extraneous transactions. I just wish it would keep funds separate. I just log my savings as a line item and then do the funds in a spreadsheet because it’s so frustrating, Some additional graphs in the free tier would be a nice update too. (And it seems to be available in other free apps). For example, you can see the pie chart split by category for the current month (housing, lifestyle, etc) but you currently can’t scroll back to previous months. I can’t say if there are more features with the paid version, but these elements stood out to me.

I do like this app and it has helped me keep track of my spending much better than I had been. It also shows me how much I am really spending on items that I can cut back on, like eating out. Before, I really didn't realize how much we were spending and now I can see it add up as the month goes on. I like being able to split transactions into different categories to track each cost. But the help section is lacking and there was no real tutorial that I saw so I kind of had to learn as I went. The one thing I still can not get an answer to is the income. I can put in a planned amount but sometimes our income is more or less. When I put the actual received amount in as a transaction, it doesn't change my overall monthly amount. So it doesn't account for the over/under. This may be user error, but I've tried everything to get it to work properly and it won't. So I just change the planned amount to what we get paid. Which is fine, although the next month's budget shows the wrong amounts as planned income and I have to change, and it is not at all what the help section says should happen. It seems like the plus version would do it for me, but I am not paying $120 a year for an app to help me budget and save money. And honestly, I think that is shady of Dave Ramsey to even do that considering he preaches about cutting out unnecessary expenses. I'd give this app 4 stars but the lacking help section and fee for everydollar plus makes it lose at least 1 star.