With the cost of living skyrocketing and the petrol price totally out of control, South Africans are really starting to feel the pinch. But never fear – there are some really good budgeting apps available to help you manage your money a little better this month.
22seven
Powered by Old Mutual, this free app links to your bank account to automatically categorise and sort your transactions, so you can track your spending on all your accounts, monitor your investments and manage your budget.
Pros:
Free!
Backed by a trusted financial institution
Automatically generates a personalised budget based on your historical spending.
See exactly how much you spend on what.
Make and manage investments in-app.
Data is secure, private and insured.
Cons:
Works best if you have regular income – possibly not the best fit for freelancers.
You Need A Budget (YNAB)
This American app takes a more philosophical approach to money management, helping you focus on debt reduction, saving and managing your spending through a simple, logical four-rule method.
Pros:
More flexible budgeting function, allowing you to allocate money to custom categories.
Manually tracking spending leads to more mindful purchasing patterns.
Debt is an assignable category, so you can track how you fast you pay it off.
Loads of additional resources accessible in-app.
Cons:
Doesn’t automatically track transactions in South Africa.
Manually tracking your spending becomes a bit of a bore.
Costs about R250/month.
Goodbudget
This is a useful app for sharing a budget with a spouse, partner or household. Sync your budget across multiple devices to keep everyone on track. Goodbudget is based on the envelope budgeting system, where money is allocated to various things for the month, and you can move money from one category to another if you need to.
Pros:
Transactions are synced with the cloud and shared to multiple devices.
Free (to a point)
Gives insightful reports, so you can see where your money is going.
Track your debt payment.
Based on the envelope saving method.
Cons:
Free version only allows for 10 regular envelopes and 10 annual envelopes.
Geared for the American system.