Every Dollar’s Simplified Budget Tool

Budgeting is an essential part of the human economic development, yet many people find it tiring to organize a feasible and holistic budgeting plan due to the complexities of drafting and structuring a reliable financial plan as an individual. Most times, people, especially the income earners, dabbles with the perplexities of prioritizing their expenditures, saving for future expenditures, and checking on one’s spending behavior. Unfortunately, people abandon drafting and/or maintaining their budget plans due to the tiring responsibility and the uncouth method of addressing their budget needs.

There are many budgeting software and tools created to short-change the old-fashioned budgeting formula. But deciding on which one works best becomes the situation. As rated, the best budget app is EveryDollar, the Dave Ramsey budget app which was created by him in March 2013.

Every Dollar

Budgeting and organizing a budgeting plan is now easy and fun to do with the creation of the EveryDollar mobile app.

Gone are the days when budgeting requires pen and paper, spreadsheets, or in the head which makes the art of budgeting tiresome and uncouth. Now, with the EveryDollar mobile app, organizing and managing your budget is easier, interesting, feasible, and fun to embark on.

EveryDollar is an online budget management software/tool created by the finance guru, Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey describes the product in a word the terms, ‘Baby Steps,’  because of the ease of usage,  the financial tool enables users – including newbies – to orchestrate a reliable financial budget. It is very easy to operate and simple to understand. The tool can be operated through its iOS and Android app applications or through its website.

Users are ready to build their first budget once they create an account on the website here. Once an account is created, one is presented with eight optional categories to start a personal budgeting plan. These categories are default categories, and they are listed below:

Apart from the default categories, users can configure more categories and subcategories tailored to their wants. To fully optimize the use of those categories, Dave Ramsey designed a particular order that must be followed strictly to achieve the purpose of the project. This is called the Seven Baby Steps; to equitably assist users to execute a monthly balance that helps them to save towards their goals.

How It Works

The Seven Baby Steps is very important and instrumental to allow users save and realize their goals through a monthly saving scheme designed on the Every Dollar software. It starts with each month; allowing users to enter their monthly income, and then, assigns amounts to the Plan on each of the categories.

Below are the Seven Baby Steps that must be followed one after the other to guide users’ spending behavior:

The steps require that users must complete each step before proceeding to the next one. To view one’s progress report on the app, users will have to click on Baby Steps from the left menu bar to show you the dollars accrued or expended on budgeted goals. It is a clearer pattern of budgeting that enables users to grapple with their debts, and also, those who, probably have started to personally manage their own homes. The exciting part of it is that Every Dollar makesit easier for users to stick to the plan, even newbies and low-income earners who are yet considering or budgeting for investment and wealth management can easily stick to the plan too.

EveryDollar is free to use, however, there is a paid version of the app (EveryDollar Plus) which requires an annual fee of $99. The advantage of the paid version is that, unlike the free version that requires that users have to manually add transactions, with EveryDollar Plus users can connect their bank accounts to synchronize transactions automatically. The paid version also has a 15 days free trial, allowing subscribers the advantage of using the paid version for 15 days free to confirm the authenticity of the version before making payments. That notwithstanding, the free version does not make use of the app a difficult thing to do, because it still presents an easy work to input transaction details manually, in a matter of few minutes, depending on the number of transactions to input, and which in turn, quickly assigns it to a category.

The paid version also allows users to link their debit card or credit card accounts to automatically download the user’s transaction details.

EveryDollar has an edge over other budget apps and websites due to its functionality and ease of use, but it has its drawbacks, some of which can be stated thus: that once a user creates an ‘Emergency Fund’ category, it cannot be deleted again, and the app has no reporting features. Also, users cannot export information onto CSV file, and it requires a couple of months to get used to the technique if one has not used the zero-dollar technique before. Finally, it is required to subscribe to the paid version before it can be synchronized to users bank account. These are the identified drawbacks that Ramsey is yet to address. Besides that, most users have given out high rating to the EveryDollar mobile app. On the Google Play Store, feedbacks from users indicated an applauded comments from users responses, even enough to justify the efficiency and efficacy of the software.

Additionally, Every Dollar informs users on the amount they owe on it and counts down as users make a payment each month. Also, EveryDollar guides users through a zero-dollar budget process by informing them of the amount that is left for the budget – how much leftover or amount underspent, as well as the percentage allocation of where the income is heading.

Every Dollar is a revolution in the budget management niche, and it becomes indispensable when users discover it and give it a try, even as many users are increasingly sticking to it after years of doing a spreadsheet, paper, and pencil, and using other different budgeting methods that don’t work out in most cases.

Conclusion

The EveryDollar app has a free version and a paid version. Though the product is a very easy and simple tool to use, the paid version is much easier and a highly automated performance tool. I would like to recommend EveryDollar to any income earner anywhere in the world.