Expense Keep: Envelope Budget

Going on 2 years since I’ve downloaded this Expense Keep and I’ve slowly became obsessed with tracking my expenses and budgeting. Similar to the other budget apps, they allow you to manually input your expenses and incomes (as well as set up reoccurring expenses and incomes), shows you a chart and breakdown of what you’re spending, and allows you to set up multiple “accounts” to track your expenses for the accounts that you personally have. But what I like more about Expense Keep is the ease of use. I’ve tried Fugdet, Mint, and the other free budget apps, and they were too confusing to use and either wouldn’t let you put expenses in manually or as a reoccurrence. Couple of downsides. The other apps had a way for you to set a budget for each category you choose and monitor how much you are spending in those categories. Expense Keep does not do that. Also, some apps allow you to put in all of your expected expenses and incomes for the future and see where you’re finances would be towards the end of the month (or next month), this app doesn’t do that as well. Lastly, other apps that I’ve tried includes a monthly calendar that shows your scheduled bills and paychecks. Expense Keep doesn’t have that either. Still some areas of growth, but overall, Expense Keep is easier to use and has a much cleaner look (which makes it better to budget)

Overall a solid start. The app does what I want for manually tracking expenses. Saves me a hell of a time coding my own. I wish I could change the currency symbol. Im in China so it looks like I paid $1,800 USD for rent this month when actually given the currency exchange rate it is more like $270. As well the default colors for the pie chart aren’t my favorite. No errors for me yet and the app is fast so I can easily add purchases right after making them. Really good design. Just open the app and hit the plus button. Overall, I feel it is just missed some added customization. Money is a very personal matter for many, I think this app could improve a great deal by adding more personalization. I would go for the premium version if it had some of these other options for customization, but for now I don’t think the packaged features are worth it. The free version works very well and the premium version doesn’t add anything that I would want. Also I think the accounts setup is a little funny and out of place. It requires you manually add in your account balances. I could see that as more fitting for a financial tool like Mint, but it seems out of place for this app. It is an expense tracker, but that aspect makes it seem more like a budget/balance checking tool. I know a lot of hard work went into making this and it is exactly what I was looking for. I hope you all are continuing to develop and add more features.

This app is pretty simple to use and serves all basic budgeting needs. You can create multiple "accounts," which I use as if they were envelopes of cash that I'm allowed to spend for each category, but you could also use them to signify actual bank accounts. The process of adding a regular paycheck, bills, and money you've spent or received is all very easy. Only problems I've run into are: 1. No ability to create a recurring paycheck on customized dates TWICE a month (the only semi-monthly option is 1st and 15th) and 2. It is difficult to find how to manually set an account to a certain amount if you've made a mistake or something. Also, there's no way I've found to reset your "unallocated" funds to a specific amount (or to zero). Otherwise, though, it's very nice because you aren't limited to a certain number of accounts or spending categories, and there's no registration required to set it up (as far as I remember). It's a good, basic app for keeping track of a simple budget and spending.