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Pennies: A Budgeting App As Focused As You

Got your eyes on an electric scooter? But also you need to buy your partner a birthday present next month--oh, and pay rent? If you’ve…

pennies-appGot your eyes on an electric scooter? But also you need to buy your partner a birthday present next month--oh, and pay rent? If you’ve got multiple specific financial goals, Pennies might be your new favorite app. 

Pennies has a simple and fun UI whose home allows you to swipe through remaining totals of your personal budgets. Adding budgets is easy: Pennies prompts you for a budget title, periodic schedule, timeline (start and finish date for the budget), currency, and amount you aim to spend. You can view your budgets written out in list format or swipe through them individually. 

pennies

The written list, aka the “My Budgets” page, gives a comprehensive overview of all budgets, and allows you to toggle between viewing remaining funds versus spent funds, and your budgetary allowance for the current day versus the total budgetary period. Budgets are conveniently color-coded: green to indicate under-budget spending, and red to warn you you’ve bottomed out.

The main drawback to Pennies is that it requires manual addition of budget spends. Each time you spend from or add funds to a budget, you enter a quick note that updates your total. Each budget has a list of these notes you can view by title and/or date. While it would certainly be nice if Pennies could connect to your bank and intelligently sift through your debit card purchases, it doesn’t seem the tech is there yet--for any app (even one like Mint, which still requires a good deal of manual labor to aid the algorithm). 

What Pennies really excels at doing is specific cost-benefit analysis. Pennies allows you to transfer money between budgets, so you can understand exactly how much a shopping splurge will tighten your daily food budget, or see how saving your bonus can boost this year’s vacation budget. While other popular financial apps offer a more holistic approach to your finances, Pennies enables more granular financial goals.

So if you’re someone who needs the nitty gritty when it comes to financial decisions, Pennies can give you the details on how certain spends will affect your budget.

But enough about other people's apps.

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