spend money

A PocketSmith Review

July 26, 2017 By Mary Newton 2 Comments

PocketSmith is a budgeting and personal finance software tool that allows you to take control of your money. It allows you to take control of your money through forecasting, or showing you what your finances will look like in the future if your current trends continue. With calendars, budgets, pie charts, and graphs, PocketSmith offers a one-stop shop for all your financial tracking needs. But does it deliver?

How PocketSmith Works

When you create an account, you have to pick one of PocketSmith’s three available plans. Their Basic plan is free and features manual imports and limited budgets, accounts, and projection spans. Their Premium plan comes up to $9.95 a month, though the price is only $7.49 per month if you pay annually instead of monthly. This plan makes bank feeds automatic, as well as transaction importing and categorization. It features unlimited budgets and more forgiving limits on accounts and projection spans. Their Super plan comes in at $19.95 a month and $14.16 per month when paid annually, and offers all the Premium features plus unlimited accounts and a larger projection span.

Setting up PocketSmith requires three simple steps: adding bank accounts, categorizing your transactions, and creating your budgets and forecast. Everything is smooth sailing after you complete these time-consuming steps. PocketSmith allows Premium users to connect bank accounts. This sets up an automatic bank feed in your account. PocketSmith also offers manual import of bank files or files from popular apps such as Mint and Quicken.

You can also use PocketSmith without importing sensitive bank files. To do this, you can either enter your transactions manually, or you can use the Forecast Calendar to run your budget with just a basic idea of your income and expenses.

If and when you do have your transactions in the program, you can categorize them. Users with automatic categorization need only set up categories and PocketSmith will categorize in the background. If you do not have automatic categorization, you can create and assign categories for your transactions on the web page and in the mobile app.

Finally, when you have your financial information and transactions uploaded, you can create your budgets and start forecasting. Budgets correlate with your categorized transactions, helping you maintain control of your financial goals.

PocketSmith’s Drawbacks

While PocketSmith has a plethora of features, it also has its drawbacks. In my experience, the biggest drawback was the painful simplicity of the app. When you log into your account with the app – because you cannot set up your account in the app, only on your computer – you can view your accounts, manually categorize transactions, and view your budgets. While these are all essential features, they fail to represent the scope of information you can access via the web. In our smartphone world, it only makes sense to have as many standard features as possible available within the app.

PocketSmith also offers few alerts for account balances and budget limits. Given its close monitoring of your accounts, alerts about such things as unusual spending, or even notifications and reminders from your calendar, would be a smart and useful addition to PocketSmith’s tools.

Is PocketSmith Worth It?

The short answer is probably. Although it is not perfect, the software is unique and offers a variety of features. If you are looking for a good start to balancing your personal finances, PocketSmith’s free plan can help you get started creating and tracking budgets with as little or as much detail as you choose. If you have been balancing your finances and budgeting for a while, but are dissatisfied with your current tools, PocketSmith’s Premium and Super plans may offer the added tools and analysis you need. Regardless, PocketSmith offers a positive user experience and a variety of useful features sure to meet your financial tracking needs.

Cover Photo: Investor Junkie

Additional Screenshots: PocketSmith Demo Data

Good Reasons To Spend Money

February 27, 2010 By David G. Mitchell 9 Comments

There are a lot of reasons to spend money and each of us has his or her own. Our attitudes and perspectives are forged over lifetimes spent earning and spending and enjoying and regretting. I can look at any number of purchases and feel that I have made a good buying decision. I can look at a similar number and know that I made a mistake. Fortunately, the older I get, the greater the number of good decisions so I hope I am on the right track.

This past week, for example, I bought a gravity tea pot and a pound of loose leaf tea from an out of state vendor. For the past forty-plus years, I have been a tea drinker, but the tea was always delivered in a tea bag. Although I enjoyed it, I now recognize that the tea I bought in the grocery story was not particularly flavorful. I enjoyed it, but I did not enjoy it as much as I might have. A couple of weeks ago, however, I discovered Tavalon Tea at a local bakery. I was hooked from the first sip and found myself “needing” at least one cup per day, at $2 per cup. I also found myself enjoying the experience of watching the tea drop out of the bottom of the gravity tea pot that the bakery uses to brew the tea.

After spending about $20 on tea within a week, I knew I needed to find another way to get my tea fix. I found the Tavalon website and learned that I could buy a pound of New York City Breakfast Tea for $28 plus shipping (about $5). That works out to about 27 cents per cup. If I purchase in greater bulk, the price will drop to 22 cents per cup. I also bought a gravity tea pot from a local vendor for $15 and can enjoy the novelty of it when I brew my own tea. With the tea bags that I bought in my local store, by comparison, I paid about 14 cents per cup so there was still savings, but the value of the experience was far less. Given that I drink about 15 cups of tea per day (at a minimum), I want the experience to be good and the value to maximized. I think I have found that.

There are a lot of good reasons to spend and one huge reason, in particular, not to spend. Here are some of my spending guidelines, developed over forty plus years of purchasing mistakes:

Buy Because You Need It: He who dies with the most money in the bank is still dead. It is not worth a bizarre obituary that talks about all of the money that you have left stuffed in your mattress. If you have considered your needs and determined that you need something, go out and buy it if you can afford it. Don’t be frugal to a fault. Whether “need” means groceries or a night on the town is irrelevant. Know what you want and buy it if you can do so responsibly.

Buy It Because You Want It: Sometimes, you want a new toy. That’s OK. If you have disposable income and buying a new toy is not taking food off the table, buy the toy. Some of you can afford a new car because you have been frugal for the past ten years. Go out and buy it if you want it. Others might want to take a nice vacation. Maybe a new toy means a new iPod or something smaller. Whatever it is, buy it and enjoy it if you can do so responsibly.

Buy It Because You Have Better Things To Do: Sometimes, I will pay a few extra dollars for something that I do not really need to buy, but that will save me time so that I can work on a money-making project. If I need to cook dinner for my family but I know that take out will cost $30 and a project that I can finish for a client will earn me $300, the cost of take-out becomes a cost of doing business.

Don’t Buy It Because You Are Lazy: If I continued to purchase my tea at the bakery, it would have been lazy of me. I took the time to order my tea and to get my tea pot. Now I will save close to $1.75 each time I brew a pot of tea. If I had continued to purchase tea at the bakery, it would have been lazy of me and a waste of both time and money. Now I can enjoy my tea and feel that I have made a better buying decision.

What have you learned about spending over the years? What can you share with us to help guide better purchasing patterns? And if you can recommend a good source for loose leaf tea, let us know that, too.

Insidious Magazine Advertising

October 22, 2009 By Jennifer Derrick 3 Comments

I’m a big reader and some of my reading materials are magazines. Yet over the last few years I’ve been noticing something: Magazines aren’t always good for my wallet. It’s not the subscription costs, but the advertising that’s the problem. Magazines are full of ads; it’s how they pay for their publication. I get it. But I once did a quick calculation of a well known women’s magazine and discovered that about 53% of it was ads. If you had a TV program that was 53% ads, you’d have an uproar (not that it doesn’t seem close sometimes, but anyway). But magazines get away with it.

These ads are often subtle and that’s the danger. There’s no one yelling at you as on TV, no droning voice, and there’s no pressure to buy now. Those ads are easy to tune out and dismiss as ridiculous. Many magazine ads are simply a picture of the product or even an artistic scene. You are drawn in by the pretty picture or the person who looks so like you. You look because you’re engaged with the magazine and the ad is part of it. Unlike TV, you can’t get up and get a snack when an ad appears or hit the mute button. There’s no DVR for magazines. Some ads are so wedded to the content on the nearby pages that you may not even notice that they are ads. Yet all the time these ads are working on your brain, convincing you that you need this product. Women’s magazines are the worst, but insidious advertising is in everything from business to sports publications, as well.

And it isn’t just the blatant advertisements. Sometimes the content leads you to buy. Many articles are filled with product reviews and endorsements (think the “Favorite Things” feature in O Magazine). While they may or may not be paid endorsements, you can’t help but think, “Hey, if so and so used it and it fixed a problem or improved their life, it will work for me.” Then there are the articles that discuss problems you didn’t even know you had and then encourage you to try a product to fix it. Women’s magazines are the worst at preying on our fears that we are bad mothers, wives, housekeepers, etc. They run articles about all sorts of problems, conditions, or issues that we or our families may face and then, at the end of the article, feature a little box filled with products that have successfully been used to treat these problems. Before it’s done you’re convinced that you have a big problem and that you need these products to fix it. “Where to buy,” they helpfully offer as they present a list of retailers and maybe a coupon at the end of the piece.

It isn’t just women’s magazines, either. If you read entertainment magazines, you’ve no doubt run out and bought an album, book, or video game based on some review you saw in the magazine. You may not have known that band X was releasing a new album, but now that you do you have to have it! Travel magazines present deals that you have to take advantage of. You never wanted to visit Bora Bora before but hey, there’s a great exclusive deal for readers of this magazine so off you go. Read a tennis magazine and you’ll see the hot player spouting off about how great his Brand Z racquet is for his game, so you go get one to improve your own game. A car magazine runs a story about how a product like OnStar saved someone’s life and you think, “Well, I don’t want to die,” so you go get a similar product for your car. And on it goes. Read enough magazines and you’ll find yourself “needing” all kinds of things.

I’m never sure how much of this “advertising” is paid for and how much of it is just genuine interest in a product on the part of an author or product user so I take it all with a grain of salt. In recent years this trend of excessive advertising and product placement has led me to drastically decrease the number of publications I subscribe to and buy. I like learning new things, but I get tired of “discovering” all kinds of new conditions and problems that can only be solved with certain products. I grow tired of so-called tastemakers telling me that I should love these shoes or wallets or that these books would make great gifts. I get tired of being made to feel inferior, like a failure, or out of touch just because I don’t have the latest what-not. Positive reviews that are clearly biased and paid for irk me. When every article starts to read like an ad, it’s time to rethink my reading habits.

My advice is this: Read widely, but watch out for magazines. Ask yourself if you really need whatever it is that’s being advertised. Ask yourself if you or your kids really have these problems discussed in the articles or if it’s just an attempt to sell you something. Skip over the “Buy now” boxes. Don’t let someone else’s tastes dictate what you buy. Limit the number of magazines you read to a few that give you genuine knowledge in spite of the ads. Be aware that magazines are packed with hidden ads and product placements and that your wallet is the target. Tread carefully.

I’m Untrustworthy And Proud Of It

February 23, 2009 By Jennifer Derrick 9 Comments

People make fun of me because I always have NPR, CNBC or The Nightly Business Report on in the background when I’m working. They tell me I’m a finance junkie, and they’re not far off. But, it’s entertainment for me and every now and then I get to hear someone utter words that are so stupid or shocking that I nearly fall off my chair. It happened this week.

The pundits on one show were arguing about the new stimulus plan and going back and forth over what they thought should and should not be included. Then they started arguing about how the stimulus money should be distributed to the public. Lump sum check like last year? Dole a little out in each paycheck? Reduce taxes so take home pay goes up? Finally one genius on the panel (I didn’t catch his name, but I’m sorry I missed it) says, “I think the money needs to be given out either as a small bit of money tacked on to each pay check or through reductions in tax withholding so that take home pay increases by a small amount each week.”

The moderator asked why and he replied, “Because the American people have proven that they cannot be trusted to spend the stimulus money. We gave them a lump sum last year and the majority of Americans did not spend it. They either saved it or used it to pay down debt, which was wrong. If we put the money in their paychecks, they will spend it. If they’re living paycheck to paycheck, then we know the money will be funneled back into the economy because they will drain their entire paycheck. That’s what we’re after.”

After I got up off the floor, I thought about this moron’s words. There was so much wrong with his statement that I didn’t know where to start. First of all, I didn’t care for his notion that, “Americans can’t be trusted to spend the money.” As if we’re all selfish little children and the government parental units doled out money to us to pay the ice cream man and said, “Now go straight to the curb and get an ice cream cone and don’t do anything else.” Instead, some of us were bad kids who ran home and stuck the money in our piggy banks instead so we could buy comic books later, proving we couldn’t be trusted to do what was expected of us. When I got my check last summer, it didn’t come with a list of do’s and don’ts. I didn’t ask for it for any specific reason; it was given to me. Therefore, it was mine to use as I chose. I chose to save it. I resent the attitude that I did something wrong and that I have proven to be untrustworthy in my country’s eyes. Maybe I am selfish to act in my own best interest rather than in the interest of my country, but I have no choice but to look out for my own interests. I haven’t seen the government looking out for my best financial interests in quite some time.

I like that I can’t be trusted to spend the stimulus money. Call me irresponsible, unpatriotic, or untrustworthy. I’m proud of it. And if I got a second stimulus check, I still wouldn’t spend it, even if this pundit came to my house and taunted me with my apparent inability to follow basic directions. Spending everything we had before we even had it (as a nation) is what got the economy in this mess to begin with. The pundit who uttered these stupid words needs to remember that. What he also needs to remember is that saving or paying down debt is good for the economy in the long term. Banks have more money to lend, people have more money to spend if they save, and the entire financial system isn’t crushed under an unmanageable level of debt. No, it doesn’t boost spending right this instant, but the “instant” solution is rarely the correct solution. Apparently, we need more irresponsible and untrustworthy people who do the wrong thing with stimulus money to stabilize the economy.

The other thing that bothered me about these comments was the notion that the government wants us to spend every cent of our paychecks; that living paycheck to paycheck is desirable, from a governmental point of view. This pundit wants to put extra money in our paychecks so that we will spend it. He assumes that we all have no self control and that if money is in our checks, we will spend it. He assumes that will all be unable to detect the extra money and save it or use it to pay down debt. The idea is that they give us “stealth money” and we’ll mindlessly spend to the bottom of our checkbook without even realizing that we spent the extra.

To some extent, I realize he’s right. There are a lot of people with no self control. If the money’s in the check, it’s meant to be spent. Every cent of it. Give them a lump sum in a separate check and they might think twice before spending it. But sneak it in their checks and they will spend it. However, desiring (and openly rooting) for people to live that way is wrong. Our government and media should be encouraging people to get away from that type of lifestyle and guide them toward a more stable and sustainable way of spending. Otherwise, we’ll be experiencing this same economic crisis in another fifty years. We have to get away from “spending” as the only indicator of economic or household success. To openly encourage people to spend everything they have is, to me, irresponsible.

I’m not certain that he meant his remarks in that way, but since he said it, I’m assuming he did mean it. I’m assuming that he really meant that we cannot be trusted to manage our affairs so that they best benefit the country rather than ourselves and that we should all be spending everything we make to save the economy. As I’m writing this, the final details of the stimulus package haven’t been worked out so I don’t know what we’ll get, if anything. But I personally am hoping for no money. I don’t want an extra check and I don’t want any more in my take home pay. Anything “extra” is an illusion; one that I and my heirs will be paying for with higher taxes for generations to come. Since I obviously can’t be trusted to do the right thing and spend any stimulus money I’m given, please spare me the chastisement next year and just don’t give it to me.