Lunch Money

I have used money management and budgeting apps all the way back to the Quicken and MS Money era. I watched the rise and then ruin of Mint by Intuit. Lunch Money is the old school simplicity and clarity of some of the originals without all the ads and junk other apps add on. Absolutely love this product and fear the day the developer sells it to a big company!

This mobile app is a companion to the web app. It has more limited functionality compared to the web app since Lunch Money is focused on a web-first experience. Getting started was relatively straightforward! This is a breath of fresh air compared to some money management tools that have high learning curves. I love that it allows for me to set certain categories to rollover funds from one budget period to the next. This is great for variable expense categories like gifts, emergency fund, sinking funds, etc. I also really love that you can set custom budget periods. You don’t have to follow the traditional monthly budget period if you don’t want to! You can set budget periods that align with your paycheck schedule.

Their web service for finance management is already one of the best, and this App provides a really valuable addition for simple snapshots of your accounts. It’s especially helpful for manual cash transactions as I prefer to do this on an App. NOTE: Lunch Money is already set apart from most others because they integrate multi currency accounts! I have tested many and consider LM to be similar to Wallet by Budget Bakers, Buddy Budget and Spendee (Buddy doesn’t have multi-currency yet). Spendee is a one time purchase and has a really beautiful UI, but the connection problems with certain institutions has not been worked out yet (and Wallet has even more issues with connections). If Lunch Money proves they are more stable then I will be switching from Spendee