Dear Lifehacker, Mint is a fantastic app that tracks spending and personal finance in the US. Is there and will there ever be an Australian equivalent? Thanks, App-rehensive
Dear App-rehensive,
Our favourite in this category is undoubtedly Pocketbook. Available via the web or as an Android or iOS app, it integrates directly with every major Australian bank, tracks your spending, sends you alerts for unusual fees, and offers a weekly summary of your spending. Best of all, it’s free. If you want to get your money sorted, this is the place to start.
What other apps would readers recommend for this? Tell us in the comments.
Cheers
Lifehacker
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Comments
8 responses to “Ask LH: Is There An Australian Version Of Mint?”
I use Yodlee, and have done so for the last 3 years or so. I’m with CUA and it does a good job tracking my money there, but it also does my PayPal, and at one point, my Everyday Rewards card.
Only complaint is that the site is mostly flash based, and that if your bank upgrades it’s web banker system (like CUA did the other week), your Yodlee stops working until it’s resolved (which is rather quickly, especially if you notify them).
Pocketbook link fail
ANZ Money Manager. Displays all accounts (not just ANZ bank) frequent flyer points, shares, superannuation, etc. and provides good analysis/reports/budget tools. I find it very useful. Free too.
The downside I have found for ANZ Money Manager is no app. Sometimes I want to categorise my spending on the go – it makes it a lot easier than trying to remember after the fact.
+1 for ANZ Money Manager. I have been using it for years. I tried Pocketbook when it first came out for a while, but found myself returning to ANZ Money Manager over Pocketbook.
Pocketbook does have an advantage on mobile side with an app though.
The proper link for Pocketbook is getpocketbook.com. I’ve been using it for the last month or so and it’s really great. I’ve always wanted something that does automatic expenditure categorisation based on my transactions and give me a pretty pie graph of how my spending looks. Pocketbook does precisely that and it has a much needed mobile app (iOS and Android) It’s really great – get on it. Additionally, the developers reply to some of the feedback.
The developers of Pocketbook won’t respond when asked what happens if there is an unauthorised withdrawal on your bank account & the bank finds out you have given your login details to a third party in direct contravention of your agreement with your bank.
I think you get a much better feel for your finances if you do manual entries which can be done in Pocketbook or one of the many other apps.
this is a good point. i used to use Wesabe, a site similar to pocketbook before it shut down due to not having enough money to promise security. Didn’t bother me as I imported manually but you can’t really have an easy to use money app when you have to manually import bank statements and clean up the resulting output.
To be fair, you really should have dual factor authentication set up. That way no money can be sent to an unauthorised account with a text or second form of identification. Means handing log in details aren’t a huge issue.
YNAB is the way to go, (www.youneedabudget.com). I’ve been using it successfully for the last year. You can have multiple budgets, store them in the cloud and access them from your computer, android, iPhone or iPad. It has fancy graphs of spending trends, net wealth etc. And the best part is it doesn’t integrate with your bank account, so no security problems. You can however export transactions from your bank if you so choose and upload them directlt to YNAB. I do this with one budget and it works brilliantly. For my everyday budget I add the transactions in manually on the fly. It has helped me budget brilliantly. I no longer live paycheck to paycheck. I live on last months paychecks and always have money saved away for the big bills.
It’s a brilliant piece of software, and I believe lifehacker has rated it well in the past.
My main problem with YNAB is that it puts the money in all your separate accounts in one big pool. I’d like to be able to use it to enforce having money in my car account be only spent on car stuff, and only money in my car account to be spent on car stuff. There’s nothing in YNAB to prevent me from spending my quarterly bills account on $300 worth of bouncy balls, instead of taking it from my entertainment account.
Plus, the needing to log every transaction by hand, or import then categorise by hand, is tedious and just creates more work. I find a spreadsheet to be easier, but then it doesn’t really suit my needs either.
Banks need to start supporting that open bank api, so we can write our own apps that suit our personal needs.
Thanks Angus and Lifehacker for the post. Just FYI, the Pocketbook link there is broken. Any readers that want to check us out can go to https://getpocketbook.com.
I have been using myprosperity.com.au for the past few months after trying to find something like mint and giving ANZ money manager a go. It has property and bank feeds which is great as I have an investment property and looking to buy another. Really easy to use
I’ve also started using myprosperity.com.au after checking out some of the others mentioned here. In my opinion it’s the best – i love the property, car and shares features.
But Pocketbook don’t add different credit cards other than big 4 bank ones. The budget is set automatic and I would like to set my own budget.
I have written reviews many times but this hasnt been considered yet