Keep Yourself On A Strict Budget With Your iPhone
August 3, 2010
Want to get a tighter reign on your finances? A great system for personal finance has made its way to the iPhone and iPod touch.
If you're a person who keeps to a strict budget, or you're looking to keep a better eye on your finances, you may have heard of the envelope system. With the envelope system, you label envelopes based on budget categories like groceries, gas and restaurants. When you get paid, you put a predetermined amount into each envelope. Then, when you go grocery shopping, you can only spend out of the grocery envelope.
This system is generally accepted as the easiest way to keep yourself on a regular budget as you cannot easily overspend in any category. However, for many people it is not feasible for them to live day-to-day with a huge amount of cash in their pocket. For people like that, there are apps like Budget for Windows and Mac systems. For those who don't feel like carrying a laptop with them every time they go to the store, they now have Pocket Budget for iPhone.
Pocket Budget, like its full-sized counterpart, lets you create virtual envelopes for each of your budget categories. Then, as you spend at the store, you can log your expenses and see how much is left in each of your envelopes. While it doesn't offer the physical barrier to overspending that using real cash in an envelope provides, it does provide much of the same experience.
For those who want to edit and monitor their budget on a larger screen, Pocket Budget also gives you the ability to sync with its Mac counterpart. Syncing for Windows users will be coming soon.
Pocket Budget is available now for $5.99 in the App Store.
