Aussie personal finance apps?

[Mellow Mallow]

Has anyone got an Australian personal finance app that they would recommend for tracking spending, saving, investment purchases & whatnot, or would you just recommend Excel?

I'm rubbish at Excel, but my husband is very good at it.

[mspym]

My husband uses pocketbook for txns and sharesight for investment and likes them. There have been discussions here about whether you violate banking T&Cs by using pocketbook but I just don't like sharing login details with third parties. I used Excel for a few years and now use gnucash. It was initially daunting to set up but the instructions are super comprehensive and now it's ridiculously easy for me to update as I go.

Maybe give the apps a go?

[mjr]

Pocketbook is great.

You don't need to use the automatic integration feature, just export from your bank and import into pocketbook.  That's what I do.

[kivex]

I use PocketSmith (NZ company) - https://www.pocketsmith.com. You can have it integrate with your bank and automatically pull transactions, or you can manually import transactions if you don't want to provide your banking details.

I find it is really good at not only tracking purchases / expenses, but also tracking expected balances. It does this by you adding income and expenses into a calendar (can be repeating or once off). Can also have it cater for interest payments and so forth. This gives a guide to what your future balances should be.

For investments I use Sharesight, however I'll keep a monthly balance of what Sharesight provides and put that into PocketSmith so I can see total net worth.

[Mellow Mallow]

Thanks, all! I'll check them out. I need something relatively idiot-proof.

I'm interested in Sharesight. It looks like we'll be putting some money into Vanguard Growth soon, so I assume I'll need to start keeping records of that? Or can I just rely on Vanguard's records? Many questions...!

[dystopic]

It looks like we'll be putting some money into Vanguard Growth soon, so I assume I'll need to start keeping records of that? Or can I just rely on Vanguard's records? Many questions...!

I happily rely on Vanguard records, pretty easy to see and read on the mobile. They do have a new website coming as well so hopefully, it will get even better.

[Mellow Mallow]

It looks like we'll be putting some money into Vanguard Growth soon, so I assume I'll need to start keeping records of that? Or can I just rely on Vanguard's records? Many questions...!

I happily rely on Vanguard records, pretty easy to see and read on the mobile. They do have a new website coming as well so hopefully, it will get even better.

Thanks! :)

[mspym]

Yeah, unless you want to have an overview of multiple investment accounts at once, just log on to the Vanguard site and check it. It holds all your txns.

An app may be overkill - for a lot of what people want to do with their numbers, a notebook for jotting transactions and a wallchart for tracking NW is honestly enough for most people. Don't let the search for a perfect tool trick get you off track - work out exactly what you are trying to do and what the minimal tool you can use to do it.

I just recently watched both Till Debt Do Us Part and Money Morons on youtube and you can do a heck of a lot with some envelopes and a notebook.

[middo]

I thought I would chime in here.  I've recently been through the app search, but what I was looking for was probably a lot less functional than what others here are talking about.  I want an app that lets me record my expenses easily in real time (I pay for must stuff with cash) without linking it to bank accounts, and able to be customised to my "ten buckets" of spending, export the data as a csv file, and reset the app to zero at the start of each month.

Nope.  Couldn't find one.  I have a makeshift one called money manager that I am using, with the online functionality turned off.  But at the end of the month I will need to delete the app after I export my data, and then spend time re-doing the buckets that I want.

So, I have started to write my own basic app.  Custom designed for my needs only.

It is slow, and interesting to learn programming again.  I may have one ready by Christmas.