Better budgeting

Tracking transactions and spending safely

YNAB is built around a fourpoint plan that requires you to give every pound a job (food, car repairs, savings and so on), so you know what you can spend in each category. Everything left over from each pot rolls over at the end of the month, with the aim of building up a full month’s reserve over time. It’s easy to understand.

So too is the bucket system used by MoneyWell, the envelopes used by iBank and the expense lines in MoneyWiz, in which you break down your monthly pay into virtual wallets, each devoted to a particular kind of expense. iBank works out what you spent in the previous month, which you can use as a guide when building your first budget. It produces spending records that let you see how you performed in each area.

Money displays graphs showing how much of both the individual pots and your overall budget remain to be spent, and so does Wave, but there you set limits retrospectively rather than in advance, so you can’t get up and running so quickly.

YNAB is focused on budgeting and although this looks complex it’s easy to set up.