The iPhone Mom

I am allergic to budgeting. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. But every once in awhile I get the urge to try and “cure” my allergy so I decide to give budgeting a try again. Now that I’ve got my iPhone I’ve been searching for a magic app that’s going to suddenly make me not spend money like it grows on trees. Let’s just say I’m still looking.

But in the meantime I’ve been trying out a couple of the free budget apps that are available and I have to say that Home Budget Lite is a decent app. It allows you to keep track of your income, expenses and set up a monthly budget. You can also enter in your accounts (savings, checking) and how much money you’ve got in each one. Once your accounts are set up and you’re keeping track of expenses you can mark which account the expenses are coming from and your balances will go down.

When you set up your budget there are plenty of categories and sub-categories to choose from. If you can’t find just the right one you can always create a custom category. On the budget screen you can watch a green line that shows you how you’re doing with your spending. As you spend money in each category the line will turn blue. If you spend more than your budgeted amount the line turns a dreaded red.

If you visit the help section before you start using Home Budget Lite you’ll find that it’s pretty easy to get started. For a free app it does a fine enough job of helping you track expenses and budgeting. I’d like to find an app that will allow my husband and I to share a budget. Something that we could both update and share using our separate phones. If anyone knows of an app that can do this please leave me a comment or send an email.

Price when Reviewed: Free

See the app at iTunes

Seller: Anishu, Inc.

A full version of Home Budget Lite is also available at iTunes for $4.99

The Free Shipping.org app is brought to you by the folks behind the Coupon Sherpa app. This app gives you a list of online stores offering free shipping and other internet offers. So even though the title is “Free Shipping” you’ll find other great online deals to be had. You can view the offers by store list, categories or see only the featured offers. If you find one that looks interesting tap it and then tap the coupon you’d like to view. You’ll see a details screen and from there you’ll want to touch the “Use Coupon” button. This button pulls up the store’s site within the Free Shipping.org app. (If you don’t want to view it this way you’ll see a small button that says “Safari” in the bottom right corner of the screen. Tap that and the store’s site will open up in the Safari browser.) From here you can go ahead and make your purchase directly from your iPhone, using the coupons.

This app is a bit slow and I did have problems with some crashing. I think that given the graphic intensive nature of the online store sites it takes time to load them all within the app. The Coupon Sherpa app (which I love) works very smoothly for me, so I’m sure the developers will be ironing out the bugs with this one.

The Free Shipping.org app is free (fitting isn’t it!) and if you’re a frequent online shopper I’d check this one out to see what deals are available in the vast frontier that is internet shopping. The app is updated daily so you’ll be able to stay on top of all those wonderful online coupon codes.

*There is also a website to go along with this app – www.freeshipping.org – definitely worth checking out as well.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Available at iTunes

Seller: Kinoli/Free Shipping.org

I was really excited when I found the Cell Minute Tracker app a few weeks ago and downloaded it to my iPhone. I thought to myself this the app that is going to save me some money each month and keep my husband from asking if I know how many text messages I’ve sent each time he hears my iPhone ding. I wasn’t very big on texting before I got my iPhone but it’s so easy to do now…and why get on the phone for a ten minute conversation when you can quickly type something up and send it off? You save nine minutes and spare the person on the other end of the phone from listening to the screaming chaos going on in the background of your home. But back to the app and my initial excitement. It lasted until I was telling my husband about Cell Minute Tracker and he asked me why I didn’t download the free AT&T My Wireless Mobile app instead. Oh. Ok, so apparently there’s a free app that’d give me the same information about my cell phone usage. Now granted Cell Minute Tracker is only $.99 but if I can get a free replacement that’s just as good it’s a no brainer. So I downloaded the AT&T app to see how the two compare.

Cell Minute Tracker pulls up your cell phone’s account information and shows you how many minutes and texts you’ve used up in your billing cycle. You can look at it and know how close you are to having to pay for those pricey overage charges. You’ll need to have an AT&T online account to use the app but it only took me a few minutes to set mine up. Once you’ve done that you open the app and enter in your cell number and AT&T password. It takes a few more minutes for the app to update but after that you can view your usage. (You won’t have to enter your information every time you open the app.) Our information shows up as a “Family Talk Group” and also as our individual phone numbers. The data information (including those pesky text messages) won’t show up on the group screen. You have to select the individual number to see those. You can also view your current bill from within the app and go from the app to the AT&T website to pay your bill.

AT&T’s myWireless Mobile gives you the same information, but in a slightly different format. You’ll also need to have setup an AT&T online account to use this app. The first time you use it you’ll have to enter your wireless number and AT&T online password. It’ll take a second but then your account information will be available.The “Usage” button takes you to the screens that show you how many minutes you’ve used. To see your data charges you have to navigate to the “Individual” screens. Here’s where you’ll find the text messages. With the “Features” button you can add on new features to your cell plan directly from the app. The “Bill & Pay” button will show you a summary of your bill, including your last payment and your current balance and due date. You can view the full bill as a PDF and make a payment through the app. It’s all very well laid out and easy to read.

So what we’ve got here are two apps that do almost the same thing but one is free and the other isn’t. For me the plus to using AT&T myWireless Mobile  is being able to access my bill and make payments from within the app. You can also do this with Cell Minute Tracker but you have to go through the additional step of logging into the AT&T website and the information is harder to read and navigate through. The plus to using Cell Minute Tracker is that you DON’T have to enter in a password every time you open up the app. For me, personally this is more important than being able to easily pay my bill. I don’t think I’d do that very frequently but I do know that in the short time I’ve been testing out the apps I’ve had to repeatedly ask my husband what the AT&T password is so I can login to myWireless Mobile. That is a deal breaker for me and why I’m going to stick with the $.99 app.

*Cell Minute Tracker*

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Available at iTunes

Seller: Pageonce, Inc.

*AT&T myWireless Mobile*

Price when Reviewed: Free

Available at iTunes

Seller: AT&T Services

Spend is a budgeting app and it’s a very thorough app for its $.99 price tag. It’s taken some focus for me to figure out exactly how to use it. I’d highly recommend visiting the website for the app (http://www.adamcode.com/spend/index.html). Scroll to the bottom of the webpage and you’ll see a link for the FAQ section, it’ll walk you through setting up your budgets. Once I read through that the app started to make sense. I’m not even going to try and explain how you go through all the steps to create/edit a budget because I know I’d only end up confusing everyone. So visit the FAQ for the site and hopefully the light bulbs will go off for you too.

Overall I’m happy with Spend. I’m going to have to carve out some time to get all my budgets entered and setup but once I’ve done that it’ll be easy to keep track of expenses. I really like the idea of having my budgets on my iPhone, it might help when I’m in Costco and debating back and forth whether I need something or not. I can pull up Spend and see what damage that big bag of M&Ms is going to cause. Damage to my budget that is – my thighs are a whole other story.

One nitpicky complaint – the plus sign that you use to add things to your budget is at the bottom of the screen. I’m sure there’s a design reason for this but it feels odd to me. I’m so used to that plus being in the same spot on most other apps that it’s taking some getting used to with Spend.

Lastly, something I’d like to see in future updates – a way to share your budget with another iPhone user. My husband and I both dine out somewhat frequently, but not often together. It’d be nice to be able to share a budget and both enter in expenses that’d then show up on the other’s iPhone. Something along the lines of what Grocery Gadget has done with their app.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Available at iTunes

Seller: Adam Williams

I figured I’d give Bill Tracker Lite a try to see if it’d help me keep better track of our bills. Right now my system involves a manila folder and an excel spreadsheet that shows me when everything is due. It works but if I could find something for my iPhone, so much the better.

I’d recommend starting by entering in the accounts for your bills. Tap the “Accounts” button at the bottom of the screen. Use the plus button and add the name of your account (American Express, Electric Bill, etc.), the account number, website, phone number and any notes. After you’ve added the accounts tap the “Bills” button.  It’s pretty straightforward – just use the plus button to add the bill and then enter in the missing information. The first thing the app will ask you is to select the account for the bill. If you don’t see the right one on the list then you can always add a new account from here. Once you’ve got bills entered in you can sort the bills by “all”, “unpaid” or “paid”. After entering in bills you’ll also see them listed on the main Accounts page, along with the number of days until they are due.When you want to record a bill payment tap a bill and then touch the word “Payment” at the top of the screen. It doesn’t look like an obvious button so I missed it at first. Now Bill Tracker Lite will let you enter in any payments you’ve made for this particular bill.

The “Settings” button lets you set a passcode for the app and choose your currency. You can also choose to rollover unpaid bills and have the due dates automatically adjust when the date falls on a weekend.

Bill Tracker Lite is simple to use but it didn’t really work for me. I need one that will let me set up recurring bills. With this lite version you have to enter in the bills each month. Not exactly the time saving feature I need. According to the description on iTunes the regular version of Bill Tracker has a recurring feature and also a bill reminder feature.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Available at iTunes

Seller: Kelly Beck/Snap Tap

Full version of Bill Tracker is $3.99

Available at iTunes