Skip to main content

The XIII Labor Of Hercules

Spare no expense to save money on this one. - Samuel Goldwyn
This could very well describe my quest to find a good Android budgeting app. My needs were pretty simple - track expenses and incomes with category distribution, monthly budget reports and my account balance at any time. I didn't need multiple accounts, users, auto update from my bank accounts (I don't have any!) or investing tools. I needed to track cash, that's it. Bonus points for looking good, though not mandatory.

As it turned out, I had unknowingly embarked on one of the Labors of Hercules. What I thought would take half an hour, took more than 3 days. Here's a chronicle of the apps I tried out before finding one which had (almost) everything I wanted:

Step 1: Search for budgeting apps on Play Store
This got me a listing of more than 25 apps. After weeding out that ones which looked like they had a Gingerbread hangover or fake leather and paper, I had a handful of apps remaining.


Step 2: Try out a couple
After discarding a few, the first app I really liked was Trackash. It was simple, pretty and easy to enter transactions. It showed my entries in a facebook-like timeline and used twitter-like hash tags to show categories. Nice touch. Unfortunately it was too simple. It wouldn't even show my balance. If I made $100 and spent $25 in this month, how much did I have left? It couldn't tell me the answer to this absurdly simple word problem! Which also meant I couldn't see how much I'd managed to save in a particular month in the past. Not much use, though it was really pretty. Moving on...


Step 3: Get frustrated and buy an app
Because you know, money always solves problems (not!). Anyway after several fruitless hours of searching, I found what I thought was a good app and paid for it. Expense Manager had a beautiful HOLO interface, budgets, category distribution and was easy to use. Yet there was still some things missing. This too wouldn't show my balance. What is with budgeting apps which refuse to tell you how much money you have left? You'd think that was the first item they would think to include! It didn't have income categories either. So $3.50 for this app was a bust. Maybe it'll get better in the future, but for now it wasn't going to cut it.

Step 4: Give up
I'd resigned myself to using this app, till it got better. It wasn't bad, just didn't have everything I was looking for.

Step 5: Get lucky!
By accident, I stumbled upon Money Tab. Though it was't pretty to look at on a high dpi screen, it had all the features I wanted. It had income categories, monthly budget reports, previous month totals and templates which you set up to quickly add entries. It even had features I didn't know I wanted like syncing with Google so I can easily change phones in the future. It was perfect, except for the not looking nice part, which hopefully be improved by the developer soon. And I'm sticking with this one for now.


And thus a winner is crowned! Start to finish took me just over 3 days and $4.50 in the Play Store. Who knew finding an app to suit my needs would be this convoluted?
Labels:
Location: Michigan, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Don’t We Raise Our Sons like We Do Our Daughters?

This post originally appeard in Women's Web: Why Don’t We Raise Our Sons like We Do Our Daughters? One of the hot button topics right now in Indian media is the safety of women – or rather how our country doesn't really care about half its population. From rape, sexual assault, harassment (in streets, public transport, nearly every public place) to violence perpetrated on women, Indians are finally getting around to discussing taboo topics. One refrain that caught my eye throughout these debates – both online and off – is the fact that the reaction of the majority of Indians is the same: girls should stay at home, not go out after dark, dress appropriately and so on if they want to stay safe. No one seems to bat an eyelid when laying down these precautions for women. Except that the reality is women would be far safer if all the men simply DID NOT RAPE or HARASS any person that looks remotely female. No one has to stay at home and become a hermit! That got me th...
3 comments
Read more

Arranged Versus Love Marriage

This post originally appeared in Women's Web:  Arranged Versus Love Marriage: Here's Why Things Are Changing In 21st-century India, change is so rapid that we barely have time to get used to something before some new trend is on the horizon. And I'm not just talking about technology here. Whether it is human behavior, relationships, societal or cultural norms, Indian society – along with the rest of the world – today is hardly recognizable to my parents or their parents. It's not a surprise that the institution of marriage and the process of finding a life partner is also undergoing a metamorphosis. Perhaps this is one of the areas where the gap between generations is the most obvious. Almost every day, there is a TV show or media report or blog post talking about arranged vs. love marriages. So I figured I would present my take on it as well! Whenever anyone talks about arranged versus love marriages - I don't know why they are always portrayed as opposing ...
4 comments
Read more

One Step Up

Tia “Tia darling! So nice of you to come to my party, it’s been a long time since we met at that charity event!” exclaimed Mona, handing her a glass of wine as soon as she entered. “You look fabulous, my dear!” replied Tia, “So I take it you like the new DSK Spring collection?”, indicating Mona’s brand new designer gown. “Really? Thank you! I remember what you said about me not wearing pink, so I bought this green dress. Anyway,” she said, dragging her farther into the room, “You know most of the people here I expect. I’ll talk to you later, I have to check up on the caterer now.” Someone hailed Tia and she was soon busy with her regular cronies. She wouldn’t have come here if not for Mona, who was one of the few people she felt comfortable with. She disliked crowds but hated being alone even more so. Ten years of homeschooling could do that to a person. She could still recall the day she was kidnapped from school as a young child of 8. The police eventually caught the crim...
Post a Comment
Read more