PocketGuard Review – Can This App Really Help With Your Budgeting?
Managing personal finance is a necessary part of financial health, especially with the million and one reasons we have to spend money these days. PocketGuard is a budgeting app owned by Igor Kuznetsov that has gained a lot of attention in recent times due to its many benefits and efficient features designed for effective financial management. This PocketGuard review will show you money management made simple and how this free app for budgeting may help you gain control of your spending with its variety of features. So, if you’re wondering if PocketGuard is the right personal finance app for you, let’s dive in and find out!
About PocketGuard
PocketGuard is a money management and budgeting app that helps you track cash inflow and outflow right from your cell phone in your pocket. This app aims to help you take control of how you spend your money. It keeps tabs on how much money you have after taking out the necessary expenses to pay bills, meet your savings goals, and cater to other needs.
PocketGuard also helps you track your finances and budget to deduce what is taking the biggest chunk out of your income. It allows users to monitor any transactions that go out of their accounts and for whichever purpose. With features that link the app to bank accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, other budgeting apps, and any other accounts that touch your finances, you can now keep track of your net worth, account balance, investments, and so much more from one location. This helps you take note of unwanted expenses and long-forgotten subscriptions whenever money leaves your account.
PocketGuard works excellently on Androids and iPhones. It has apps available on both Google Play and the App Store for easy download to any of your devices. This way, you can set spending limits to help lower your bills, spend less, and crush all your financial goals. PocketGuard is the best app for budgeting that charges you nothing to regain control of your finances; all you need is an email address to get started.
PocketGuard Pricing
PocketGuard comes in two options; the free version and the premium plan. The free version has great features which you can enjoy without an upgrade. It still helps you manage your spending and improve your savings exceptionally. However, the upgraded plan, PocketGuard Plus, is a step further for the user. It provides you with more sophisticated features that change the budgeting and spending game, taking it to a whole new level. PocketGuard Plus starts at $4.99 per month or $34.99 yearly. With this upgrade, things get more automated, making your use of the app easier and a good investment. If you’re looking for just a simple way to track cash without fancy features and settings, the free version is a good fit.
For those on the free plan wondering how PocketGuard makes money, here’s what you need to know. The PocketGuard app feature that automates savings has no extra costs for those on PocketGuard Plus. However, for the free user, PocketGuard charges $2 for monthly maintenance. Also, just like other budgeting tools or apps that monitor financial transactions, PocketGuard uses your information. PocketGuard pays itself for offering you a free service by using your data to generate products and services for its marketing partners. Whenever users sign up for any of these offers through affiliate links, PocketGuard receives compensation from these partners.
PocketGuard App Features
PocketGuard has numerous features that make it one of the best budgeting apps in recent times. Some of these are peculiar to PocketGuard Plus, while others are shared between the premium and free version.
In My Pocket
The In My Pocket feature is one feature all budgeting tools should have. It works simply but ideally helps to keep your spending limits in check. Once you have set aside your income, bills, saving goals, and expenses, this feature analyzes what you have left to spend or save for any other needs of yours.
In My Pocket feature works best when you have linked all your bank accounts, checking account, credit account, and pretty much every financial information you own to PocketGuard. The app will then attempt to determine which expenses qualify as recurring income or bills and calculate the total amount you have spent. Every month, this feature resets and starts over to stay updated with your spending and bills. This is ideal because it considers the important and necessary expenses and ensures that you take it out first before giving you access to what’s left of your money.
To calculate how In My Pocket works, PcketGuard uses the IMP formula. IMP formula is your Estimated income – Upcoming bills – Goals – Spending & Budgets.
Transactions
Once you have linked your accounts to PocketGuard, it retrieves all your cash transactions from the necessary financial accounts and places them in the app. The transactions tab shows you a list of how you use your money and every spending you make right on the PocketGuard app. It also allows you to hide any transactions you don’t want to see from any of your accounts. PcketGuard gives you complete control.
Using a unique algorithm, the app then categorizes each cash transaction per merchant. However, sometimes, the algorithm may review your transactions wrongly. You can check to see if any of the merchants have been categorized wrongly and correct it. However, PocketGuard claims to be working hard to improve this feature.
Spending Pie-Chart
PocketGuard helps you analyze your data simply through a spending pie-chart. With this pie chart, you can see all your transactions at a glance since all your spending for the month is divided into a section on the pie. This feature is ideal for users who get overwhelmed with numbers but can review their spending better in visual form. With your data openly presented visually, users can effectively see what money goes where and track cash much faster.
#Hashtags
PocketGuard takes its features a trendy step further by offering users the #Hashtags feature. PocketGuard allows users to categorize expenses into categories it calls “pocket,” but the Hashtag feature helps you manually track your spending.
Simply adding the hashtag sign in front of every transaction lumps all transactions with the same tag together. For instance, to track every Friday night out, you can track your transactions by creating a hashtag like #movies, #datenight, etc.
Setting Goals
With PocketGuard, users can set different types of goals, especially the necessaries like savings goals. If you have a financial goal you wish to work towards, such as paying off a debt or completing a savings goal, this feature is a useful asset.
Looking to pay off college loans? Buy a car? Save for a trip? Setting Goals with PocketGuard feature is your best bet. It offers users recommendations to help you meet your goal in record time. However, you may need to set up savings accounts for any goal you set up on PocketGuard. On PocketGuard free version, you only get a pass to set up one savings goal; this feature is limitless for PocketGuard Plus users.
PocketGuard Plus Features
There are a few features that only PocketGuard Plus users have access to. Here are some extra things users on the Plus plan can do with their upgrade.
- Users can create more transaction categories
- They have access to export transactions to Google Sheets or Excel
- They can create a cash transaction category to monitor cash spendings
- They can also monitor withdrawals or deposits from the ATM
- Plus users can set unlimited goals and change dates on any transaction that has already been posted.
PocketGuard Uses for Personal Finance
PocketGuard’s numerous features are not just pretty on the app but have very practical uses. The most important of all these is to help users track and maintain their spending limit, make the most of their income, and stick to the budget.
- Financial Tracking: Every day, there’s one thing to spend on, whether planned or unplanned. PocketGuard makes sure you see where your money is going. This is quite useful for big spenders, impulse buyers, overspenders, and anyone who has issues with controlling their finances.
- Guilt-Free Spending: PocketGuard is one of the budgeting apps that encourages healthy finance growth. It not only helps you save for the rainy day but also encourages you to spend what’s left as you like, guilt-free. With the In My Pocket feature, you spend what’s left after settling the important stuff.
- Automated Budgeting: PocketGuard is an almost intuitive app that builds you a budget after analyzing how much goes to your investment plans, income, and bills.
- Save on unwanted expenses: Because users have connected their financial accounts to PocketGuard, you can now detect money leaks and lower your bills. You can turn off unwanted email subscriptions that charge you directly from your and detect other expenditures that are pilfering from your money.
PocketGuard Alternatives
PocketGuard is just one competitor out of many on the financial management market. Many budgeting tools exist, from YNAB to Personal Capital, and the list goes on. There are also many that offer similar services to PocketGuard, so how does it truly compare? Let’s take a look at how PocketGuard measures up to two other popular options: Mint and Every Dollar.
Mint
Mint budgeting app, in comparison to PocketGuard, is a little average. Mint is a free tool and offers more functions that PocketGuard doesn’t have, like Credit Score Monitoring. However, PocketGuard has an easy-to-use interface with less annoying ads from the bank advertiser. Check out our full Mint review here to learn more.
Every Dollar
Every Dollar is one of those fancy budgeting tools that may give PocketGuard a run for their money. This app also runs a free and premium version like PocketGuard. However, PocketGuard offers a cheaper rate than EveryDollar’s $129.99 per year. Read our complete Every Dollar review here to learn more about this app.
Is PocketGuard Worth the Money?
PocketGuard offers some great free tools that help overspenders and people who find it hard to track cash stay within their spending limit. But when you consider PocketGuard Plus offerings, it becomes a little hard to tell if an upgrade is wise.
PocketGuard Plus is not as expensive as many other budgeting apps on the block, but the free version is pretty much ideal for regular users. An upgrade may be worth it though if you have more than two budgets to keep track of since the free version only offers you access to a budget.
Pros
- It has a free plan with good enough features.
- It is functional and great for tracking your spending at a glance.
- Allows you to stay on track with its Spending Limits notifications that remind you when you’re nearing the edge.
- PocketGuard Plus helps you track your cash transactions.
Cons
- No phone support. Customer support is limited and only available through email or chat.
- Ads still pop up on the paid version.
- It is currently only available on mobile.