PocketSmith Review: My Experience Using PocketSmith
Rating as of based on a review of services May 31, 2022.
Ranking
9/10
PocketSmith is like your own personal finance assistant. You can understand where you spend and then create a financial plan to better organize your spending.
If you’ve suffered huge financial blows due to lack of organization and planning in your finances, PocketSmith may be right for you!
Have you ever made expensive mistakes with your money simply because you were disorganized? Maybe you had the money to pay a bill but you didn’t have “your ducks in a row” and got hit with fees, interest or penalties—further adding to your financial despair.
Perhaps you didn’t end that free trial in time or anticipate how spending spring break in Cancun would trickle down to your Christmas plans. (Spoiler alert: you’re too broke to do anything for Christmas.)
You might feel like you never have enough time or bandwidth in your life to manage your finances, so you feel behind the curve with your money in every way imaginable.
It doesn’t have to be like that!
The folks over at PocketSmith have felt your pain and have created a solution to help people understand and manage their money better. If you feel like your chronic disorganization and lack of financial understanding is holding you back from reaching your goals, then the PocketSmith app might be exactly what you need.
What is PocketSmith?
PocketSmith is an app that acts somewhat like a financial personal assistant. It helps you manage and organize your expenses in a way that allows you to understand your complete financial picture.
There are also predictive features like forecasting that help you weight the pros and cons of making certain financial decisions.
PocketSmith features
The app has a pretty feature-rich list of capabilities. There are some notable ones you should know about.
Accounts and transactions
PocketSmith integrates with over 12,000 financial institutions worldwide. You can import your financial data into the PocketSmith app quickly and easily. There’s never a need to manually download, import or export files.
Once your data is synced from your financial institution into PocketSmith, you can find and organize your transactions as needed. This way you can categorize and label transactions to get an idea of how you are spending your money.
Budget and planning
This is where the “money magic” happens. A spending plan, a.k.a a budget, that you create and stick to can do wonders for your finances. PocketSmith can take your budgeting information and forecast daily bank account balances as far as 30 years into the future!
You can create realistic budgets for time frames that suit your lifestyle — daily, weekly, monthly or whatever works for you. You can schedule bills in your calendar and create “test decisions” to see how they will impact your financial forecasts.
Reporting
The PocketSmith app has a dashboard where you can see all your “financial key metrics” like your net worth and spending activity.
You can also see how your spending compares to your expenses with reports you can view over specific time periods. Your cash flow statement can also be found here and is automatically updated as you receive income and spend money.
Security sharing and communications
With all the data breaches happening these days, it’s good to know that your data is secure when you are interacting with PocketSmith. The platform uses two-factor authentication which means you’ll have to verify your identity with at least two steps. PocketSmith requires you to enter both your password and a code sent to your phone to access your account. This can help protect your sensitive financial data from theft.
You can also give access to your account to a trusted third party. They must also be a PocketSmith user and can be anyone you know and trust like an advisor, friend, or family member.
Email notifications are built into the app and can be customized to your preferences. With these notifications, you can get updates on your financial account balances, get reminders on upcoming bills or expenses and see where you stand with your budget allocations
Finally, if you’ve been using Mint.com to track your expenses, PocketSmith makes it easy to move your data over with the Express Migration tool.
PocketSmith plans and pricing
PocketSmith has three tiers of pricing:
Basic
This level gives you free access to some of the app features at no cost, though there are some limitations on how much data you can sync and have access to.
With the Basic subscription you get:
- Manual imports
- 12 budgets
- Two accounts
- Six months’ projection
Premium
This level is $9.95 per month or $7.50 per month if you pay for the entire year up front. Here’s what you get with a Premium subscription to PocketSmith:
- Automatic bank feeds
- Automatic and manual transaction importing
- Automatic categorization
- Unlimited budgets
- 10 accounts
- 10 years’ projection
Super
This level is $19.95 per month or $14.16 per month if you pay for the entire year up front. Here’s what you get with a Super subscription to PocketSmith:
- Unlimited accounts
- 30 years’ projection
Who is PocketSmith for?
Those who want to stay on top of their finances
PocketSmith is for the person who likes to keep a handle on their finances at all times. Being able to log into the app and receive email updates can be a valuable tool for someone looking for more predictability when it comes down to their financial life.
If you get anxious not knowing how a financial decision will affect your life—days, weeks, or even years from now, then PocketSmith could also be a helpful tool. Being able to forecast your financial future can certainly help you make better decisions in the long run.
Those who have a lot to manage
Another ideal user might be the person who has a lot going on—three retirement accounts, 14 non retirement investing accounts, two rental properties, a business and a host of other bank accounts that require tracking. This person could benefit from being able to look at all their accounts at a glance.
PocketSmith’s forecasting function could help them avoid cash crunches and make better, more informed decisions about taking on financial commitments and spending for the different parts of their business or personal life.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Features — Excellent budgeting features
- Financial dashboard — You can see your whole financial life in one place
- Multiple accounts — Links with 12,000 accounts
Cons
- Expensive — High cost for all the features
How does PocketSmith compare to other financial apps?
- Free Premium - $9.95/month ($7.50/month if you pay a full year upfront) Super - $19.95/month ($14.16/month if you pay a full year upfront)
- * Budget forecast as far as 30 years into the future * Integrates with over 12,000 banks/finance institutions * Can create weekly/monthly/yearly budgets * Dashboard - you can see your net worth, expense reports, spending activity
- * Two-factor authentication * Give access to your account to a trusted third party * Email notifications
- Visit Site
- Free, but if Trim negotiates your bill successfully, Trim will take 25% of your first month’s savings
- * You just text Trim to start using the service * Trim Savings - Trim finds you coupons and automatically applys them to your purchases * Bill negotiator - automatically negotiates users’ internet/cable bill
- Bank-level security with 256-bit SSL encryption, two-factor authentication, and read-only access
- Visit Site
- Basic - $9.99/year Premium - $39.99/year
- * Easily custimizable budget * Import from Quicken and Mint * Automatically updates all your transactions * iOS and Android app * Financial reports *Can link with over 12,500 financial institutions, plus Quicken and Mint.com
- *CountAbout promises not to sell your data to advertisers or anyone else *All stored data is encrypted
- Visit Site
The edge that PocketSmith seems to have with the paid product is the ability to import unlimited financial accounts into the app and forecast bank balances up to 30 years into the future. For the extreme control freak who needs to know what their bank balance will be in 2048, there could be some value in paying the $19.95 per month for the super subscription.
Aside from that, the decision-testing might be the real winning feature. To understand how a vacation, car purchase or simple trip to the grocery store for gourmet cheese can affect your financial life in the next calendar year, then PocketSmith could be a necessity.
Summary
At the end of the day, this is another financial decision you’ll have to make…to PocketSmith or to not PocketSmith. If you’ve suffered huge financial blows due to lack of organization and planning in your finances it might be a totally worthwhile investment to help you get back on track.
