

While the idea is sound, the execution isn’t as polished as the rest of the app: I ran into a frustrating bug in which MoneyWiz did not change months correctly. MoneyWiz’s Schedules component offers an estimated financial forecast based on any scheduled payments, such as monthly cable bills or twice annual auto insurance bills. Budgeting is easy enough to set up, although it would’ve been nice to see a graph of spending from the budgeting screen, too. MoneyWiz tracked my purchases (including how much I spent and where I spent it) and alerted me when I reached or exceeded my target amount I can spend each month. For example, I set an amount to budget each month on clothing and told MoneyWiz to track my spending. If you opt to create a budget, you’ll do so using those payee categories I mentioned earlier.

This is another way of saying that you can use budgeting if you want to but you don’t have to: the app works fine without it. While some apps ask that you create a budget as soon as you use the app, MoneyWiz leaves the budgeting to your discretion. Budgeting is an important part of any personal finance app.
