Dr Bling Bling
The blog
Plain guides to seeing where your money went, and honest comparisons with other apps, including where they are better than ours.
Guides
- What Mint's closure taught us about money apps
Mint was free, popular and owned by a large company, and it closed anyway. Most articles about replacing it skip the lesson.
- What makes a money app good for someone over 60
Most lists of the best budget apps are written for people in their thirties saving for a house. If you are living on a pension, the question is a different one.
- How to track expenses from your bank statement
You do not have to log a single purchase. Your bank has already written them all down, and a statement is the most complete record of your spending you will ever get.
- Why does a budget app cost $100 a year, and do you need one that does?
Connected money apps cost around $100 a year. There is a reason for that, and it does not apply to every app.
- How to track your money without linking your bank account
Plenty of careful people will not connect a bank account to an app, and they are not being paranoid. There are three ways to manage without it.
Compared with other apps
- Spendee or Dr Bling Bling?
Spendee is a tidy money tracker with wallets you can share. Dr Bling Bling does one narrower job, which is reading your bank statements.
- EveryDollar or Dr Bling Bling?
EveryDollar's free version asks you to type in every purchase. Its paid version connects to your bank. There is a third way, which is to use the statement you already get.
- Rocket Money or Dr Bling Bling?
Most people come to Rocket Money to find the subscriptions they forgot about. Your bank statement already lists every one of them.
- Copilot Money or Dr Bling Bling?
Both are iPhone apps made by people who care how an app looks. They differ on the one thing that matters most here: how your money gets into them.
- Monarch Money or Dr Bling Bling?
Monarch gathers every account you own in one live dashboard. Dr Bling Bling reads the statements you download and keeps the result on your phone.
- YNAB or Dr Bling Bling?
These two apps answer different questions. YNAB asks what each dollar is going to do. Dr Bling Bling asks what your money already did.