Goodbudget is a free app available on both Android and iOS. The budgeting app developed by Dayspring Partners has over a million downloads on the Google Play Store and has a rating of 4.6 stars on the App Store.
Goodbudget uses the envelope system, a budgeting method that allows you to track your monthly spending by dividing your monthly income into separate envelopes. Each envelope represents a specific expense category, such as groceries, food and dining out, and gas. Depending on how much you think you’ll need to allocate to each expense, you’ll have to assign an amount to each envelope. Make sure to omit your fixed expenses, like tuition and rent, from your income before allocating amounts to your envelopes.
Once each envelope has been created, you can only spend the money assigned to each envelope. Once you’ve spent all the money in a certain envelope, you’ll need to wait until the next month to spend in that category. When you launch the app, you’ll see four tabs: Envelopes, Transactions, Accounts, and Reports.
The Envelopes tab displays your envelopes and the remaining amount for each envelope. As the name suggests, the Transactions tab lists all your financial transactions and is the tab you need to go to as soon as you receive a payment or spend some money. The Accounts tab displays all your savings, checking, cash, and debt accounts. The Reports tab visually displays your spending habits by providing charts for how much you spend by envelope, your monthly income vs spending, and if you track debt accounts, your debt progress report. Unfortunately, you can only add a maximum of 10 monthly and annual envelopes on a free account.
