You will be able to choose a tracking tool based on how much effort you will keep putting in.
Pick the tracking tool you would still open in a week when you have overspent, and update it once a week in a ten-minute slot you already have. Most people who stop budgeting do so because updating it became a chore they kept putting off, rather than because their method was wrong.
The usual pattern goes like this. A busy week passes without you opening the tool, then a second one does, and now there are eighty transactions waiting to be sorted (an example figure). At that point the backlog feels like homework. What matters about a tracking tool is less its features than whether you will still open it in month three.
A spreadsheet is free and does exactly what you tell it. You built one in lesson 1.4. It has a list of transactions with date, amount, description, bucket and sub-category, plus a summary table that adds them up.
Its strengths are flexibility, privacy and permanence. You choose the categories, the layout and the summary. Nobody else sees your data. The file also stays put if a company changes its pricing or shuts down.
The weakness is that you do all the input. Each week you either type in transactions or download statements and paste them in, and then you tag the new lines. This gets faster because the same merchants keep coming back, but it never happens by itself. A spreadsheet that has not been updated in a month is just an old file.
Wei Ling, one of the course's example people, uses a spreadsheet. Once her filters are set up, it takes her about ten minutes a week. She tried an app at one point, didn't like how much access it asked for, and went back to her spreadsheet.
Budgeting apps save you the input step. Some connect to your bank accounts and cards, pull in transactions automatically and guess the category. Some banks also show your accounts from other banks inside their own app. They do this through SGFinDex, the national service that lets you consent through Singpass to share your financial information between participating institutions. Other apps make you enter spending by hand, which saves you nothing over a spreadsheet except a nicer screen. Automatic apps are convenient, and convenience is what keeps people tracking.
Before you connect any app to your bank data, check these four things:
What access it gets. Read-only access, which lets the app view your transactions only, is very different from access that lets it move money. How it connects. An app should never ask you to type your internet banking password into its own screen. Where your data is stored, who it is shared with and how you delete it. All of this should be in the privacy policy. What it costs after any free trial, and what happens to your data if you stop paying.
In Singapore, organisations that collect personal data have duties under the PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act). The law does not make every app careful, so read the privacy policy before you connect.
You also need to check the automatic categories. Apps often tag a PayNow transfer to a friend as a transfer when it was really your share of dinner. This is the same trap described in lesson 1.2. Plan on spending a few minutes a week correcting labels.
Farhan, the course's other example person, works long days in a showroom. He tried a spreadsheet first because it was free and he liked the control. He stopped after five weeks, because pasting in statements felt like work after a long day at the showroom. He switched to an app that pulls in his card spending, and he now spends ten minutes each Sunday fixing labels.
Daily tracking feels disciplined but usually lasts about a fortnight. It takes only a minute or two, but it has to happen every single day, and the first missed day makes the next one easier to skip.
A weekly 10-minute slot works better for most people. Attach it to a time that already exists in your week, for example Sunday evening after dinner. In that slot, pull in the week's transactions, fix any wrong labels, and look at how each category stands against the month's plan. A weekly session is enough to catch an overspend while there are still two weeks left to fix it.
If you use envelopes from lesson 2.2, you need even less tracking, because each envelope's balance already shows where you stand.
The first month, when you are keen, is not the real test of a tool. The real test is the week you overspent, feel bad and would rather not look. The tool that gets you through that week is the one with the least friction between you and the numbers. Neither a spreadsheet nor an app is better in general. The right one is the one you will keep using.
Before you pick, be honest about which week you are designing for, and choose the tool that version of you would still open.
Choose your tracking tool and set a weekly ten-minute slot in your calendar to update it.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).