Do you feel like your finances are all over the place? Have you ever wished for a snapshot of your financial health? PocketGuard can help. PocketGuard is a straightforward tool designed to help you protect what’s in your pocket–and all of your online accounts!
Jump into our PocketGuard review to see if this financial tool is right for you and your financial goals.
What is PocketGuard?
PocketGuard is a tool designed to help you make the most of your money. With PocketGuard, you can…
- Link all of your accounts
- Track your balances and net worth
- Budget for and schedule your bills
- Monitor your cash flow
Once you create a PocketGuard account, you can start linking your other financial accounts. Options include to link your bank, credit card, loans, and investments. By linking all of these different components, you can get a better picture of your full financial puzzle.
To understand your finances more fully, you can also use PocketGuard to review your cash flow and your net worth. Since you have the ability to link all of your accounts, you can see your assets (think investments) and liabilities (think loans). Since your net worth is a combination of all of your assets less your liabilities, PocketGuard can help you easily track your net worth. Furthermore, PocketGuard can also serve as a fraud detector once you have your bank account linked.
Additionally, PocketGuard will help you make sure that you can cover all of your bills. With the recurring events feature, you can schedule and track all of your recurring expenses. Then, PocketGuard will send reminders for due dates and upcoming bills.
PocketGuard is available in both the App Store and Google Play, so you can use PocketGuard on both Apple and Android phones.
PocketGuard Cost
With PocketGuard, they have a free version and a paid subscription. The paid subscription has more features and streamlines its usability. You can either pay $12.99 per month or $74.99 annually to save 50%!
PocketGuard Review: Best Features
People who are looking for a new budget tool have been really happy with PocketGuard. From its intuitive design to its bill payment tracker, there are a lot of features that help set PocketGuard apart from other fintech tools. Let’s take a closer look at some of PocketGuard’s best features.
Simple Budget Interface
PocketGuard captures a surprising amount of financial information and distills it beautifully. After you link all of your accounts, PocketGuard gets to work crunching numbers. You will see your money displayed simply. Does something take up too much of the pie? Then, that’s a sign that you want to take a closer look at that expense.
Additionally, you can take a deeper dive into your finances by personalizing your reports. You can set up custom categories and create hashtags to help you further finetune your spending.
Whether you are setting up a budget for the first time or you are a seasoned budgeter, you will enjoy the sleek design and intuitive setup of PocketGuard.
Debt Payoff Planner
Another aspect of PocketGuard that many users love is the savings goals. You can determine which debt payoff strategy works for you. Whether you choose the debt snowball or the debt avalanche method, you can use PocketGuard to monitor your debt-freedom journey. PocketGuard will even track how many payment cycles you need to make in the debt-payoff planner.
Additionally, you can set up SMART goals to help you create a more realistic budget. PocketGuard will help you determine how much you can realistically put toward your goals while still following your budget parameters.
Bill Payment Tracker
Are you paying too much for cable? Wondering if your cell phone bill could be lowered? PocketGuard will negotiate better rates on your bills.
Once you’re happy with what your bills are, you can then track and monitor your bills. No more missed payments means more money in your wallet!
Apple Wallet Integration
Another exciting aspect of PocketGuard is the ability to integrate your Apple accounts. This integration is another way that PocketGuard works to make your finances seamless. By linking your Apple wallet and other accounts, you can see your cash flow and net worth. Plus, you can also keep a closer eye on your budget and your savings goals.
The setup is really simple. If you want to connect PocketGuard to your Apple Wallet, follow these steps:
- Click “Accounts”
- Click “+” in the upper right corner
- Select “Apple”
- Follow the steps in the setup wizard to link your account.
PocketGuard Review: Areas for Improvement
No PocketGuard review would be complete without also reviewing some of the shortcomings. While we do think that a lot of people in the Marriage Kids and Money family would benefit from this tool, there are some things to keep in mind.
Limited Sharing Functionality
Currently, there is no second log-in option. That means that if you want to manage money jointly, you need to share log-in information with your partner. As a workaround, you could create a joint Google account that you both utilize and make that your PocketGuard sign in.
Things get a bit clunkier if you don’t use joint finances for everything. If you want to keep your family and personal spending separate, you have to create another PocketGuard profile.
PocketGuard does let you make some customizations that would be helpful to manage money as a family. You can use hashtags and customize your categories. Additionally, as joint budget apps become more popular, it wouldn’t surprise us if PocketGuard addressed some of these limitations in the future.
Free Version Limitations
One of the best parts of budgeting apps is that they automatically track and categorize your spending for you. With the free version of PocketGuard, you have to manually import all of your transactions. There might be a hidden upshot to this, though. Many people say that either logging their spending by hand in a notebook or manually in an app allows them to be more intentional and reflective with their spending.
PocketGuard Competitors
PocketGuard is a solid budgeting app. However, before you download it, there are a few PocketGuard competitors you might also want to explore.
Simplifi
Simplifi lives up to its name. This tool is dedicated to streamlining your finances, and we really think it achieves its mission. Created by Quicken (Yup! One of the OG budget tools from the 80s!), Simplifi works hard for you.
In a few clicks, you can link your accounts and identify bills and subscriptions from your transactions. Then, you can set savings goals and start to earmark amounts of planned spending. If you aren’t sure what you can afford to spend, Simplifi will actually suggest amounts based on prior months.
Unlike PocketGuard, Simplifi allows you to invite other users to different “Spaces”. Once people have access, they can view and edit your budget within that “Space”. You can share as much or as little as you want. This is great for couples and also people who are working with financial planners. That way, you can share accounts without juggling a single login.
If you are looking for a full financial analysis, a suite of tools, and the ability to take a deep dive into your money, this isn’t it. But if you want to set up a budget with a partner, Simplifi is definitely worth considering. Dive deeper wtih our Simplifi Review.
Rocket Money
Rocket Money is an option to consider if you are willing to pay for an app. The feature that really sets Rocket Money apart from its competition is the fact that it will track and cancel your unwanted subscriptions.
Additionally, you can use Rocket Money to track your net worth, monitor your credit score, and stay ahead of upcoming bills.
You will want to note that Rocket Money has experienced some bumps in the road. When Rocket Money was known as Truebill, formal complaints were filed against the company for its unclear pricing structure. Unfortunately, not much has changed in that regard. Users should expect to pay between $6 and $12 per month, though it may vary.
Rocket Money fans enjoy the app, but this is one tool we recommend that you really research beforehand. Here is our detailed Rocket Money Review.
Monarch
Are you looking to manage money as a couple? Monarch is definitely a PocketGuard competitor that is worth exploring. While Monarch is still relatively new to the fintech scene, it garnered a ton of fanfare for how easy it is to budget with a partner.
In addition to allowing users to sync their accounts and track recurring expenses, Monarch also offers spending insight. You can track spending across your accounts and easily determine your savings rate. Plus, Monarch also allows you to access custom advice from experts.
All of these features and more are available in a sleek dashboard that you and your partner can easily navigate. Plus, Monarch works as both an app and a web-based tool. That means that you can work on the go and sit together at the computer during your monthly money dates.
Get more information with our Monarch Money Review.
Final Thoughts on PocketGuard Review
PocketGuard is a solid solution for budgeting at a reasonable price. However, if you are looking to manage your money as a couple, you might want to explore other options for a more seamless experience. If budgeting as a couple is not important for you right now, give PocketGuard a try as it might become your favorite personal finance app.
What surprised you about our PocketGuard review? What’s your favorite budgeting tool?
Please let us know in the comments below.
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