Pennies: Budget & Bill Tracker

I use Mint to keep track of my finances; it has a built-in budget generator and links with my bank account for constant updates. However powerful it may be, the app is extremely dense. It takes time to load and time to navigate to the budgeting section. Even then, the interface is crowded for the amount of information it tries to display! Pennies is ONLY a budgeting app. It JUST does budgets, but it does them flawlessly. It loads almost instantly on my iPhone, and the interface couldn't be easier or more pleasant to use. No, it doesn't link with my bank account. I view that as a strength. Pennies cuts away an extra layer of complication and vulnerable security. And by requiring that I manually enter my purchases, it makes me really think more about my spending habits. All in all, a stellar budgeting app.

I love the way this app works in theory, but it’s too unstable to rely on. Every few months I’ll run into performance bugs where it will freeze for ~30 seconds when adding new entries. Sometimes performance is addressed with an updated version, sometimes the problems persist for weeks, then mysteriously go away. I’ve reached out for help from the developer before and they’ve tried to offer support, but the last time it ended with their suggestion that one of my budgets was corrupted in an older version of the app and I should wipe them all out and start fresh. Two problems with that: First, that’s a pretty drastic recommendation. Second, this is when I also discovered I cannot reliably export my past budgets from the app. Attempting to export my complete budget history crashes the app and doesn’t work. I have to manually export one month at a time, any more than that and it fails and crashes again. So the recommended fix for my performance problems is to delete my budgets and start over, and exporting my data prior to deleting my budgets is a painfully tedious process because that functionality is also broken. This is unacceptable for an app that wants me to rely on it for something as important as my financial data. And one last weird bug, reported to the developer (and corroborated by at least one other user), traveling to a different time zone throws off the math in the budget, screwing up your totals, until you return to your original time zone. Reported this in January, no fix provided. So don’t rely on this app if you travel.

Initially I was trying to use pennies to track everything we/I spend. Sheesh. We’re a family of 6 and it was just loony. Stupid too- I know already what our mortgage is each month- why track that? Realized that’s really not the app’s purpose (which I believe the dev. says in the faqs). It excels at providing a place and a means to manage and track the variable expenses, the ones I can control. So if I reduce expenditure in one area I can choose to save it, stockpile it for another month, use it in a different area, etc. What’s great is that as I enter my expenses (in the areas I track) I am forced to think about how that fits with my master plan. Which I honestly need- in the moment I can convince myself to purchase something, eg, that frankly blows my budget and really isn’t needed. Great accountability. So now- I track the variables I can control and manipulate monthly and it is terrific. Easy. Fast to enter. Intuitive. Adaptable to me. Really like it. Brilliant.