A PocketSmith Review: What You Need to Know

When it comes to managing your finances, having an accurate and up-to-date understanding of your money situation is crucial. But with accounts scattered across multiple banks and institutions, gaining that clarity isn’t always easy. This is where a tool like PocketSmith aims to help.

PocketSmith provides a centralized dashboard to seamlessly connect all your financial accounts, from bank accounts to loans, credit cards, and investments. Beyond basic expense tracking and budgeting features, PocketSmith goes further with future expense planning and long-term forecasting.

Key Takeaways

• PocketSmith aggregates all your financial accounts into one consolidated platform for tracking daily balances and cash flow.

• Core features include robust and customizable budgeting tools, a calendar to track upcoming bills, and future projections of account balances based on your financial data.

• Signing up is quick, and pricing starts at $7.50/month for premium features like automatic bank feeds and unlimited budgets. Higher tiers provide longer forecasting.

• While useful for budgeting and planning, PocketSmith lacks deeper investment monitoring, retirement planning, and bill pay capabilities. The interface also has a learning curve.

In this detailed PocketSmith review, we’ll break down how it works, top features and benefits, pricing options, potential downsides to consider, and alternatives to compare it to. Let’s dive in!

What Is PocketSmith and How Does It Work?

Founded in 2008 in New Zealand, PocketSmith aims to help users not just track daily expenses but gain greater clarity and control over both current finances and future planning.

At its core, PocketSmith brings together all your financial information into a single platform:

• Bank, credit card, loan, and investment accounts
• Assets like property, vehicles, collectibles
• Debts from mortgages, credit cards, personal loans

Once connected, PocketSmith automatically imports new transactions daily so you always have an up-to-date view of balances, cash flow, net worth, and spending trends across the accounts you choose.

Using this data, PocketSmith enables you to create flexible budgets tailored to your lifestyle, whether it’s weekly, monthly or based on any timeline. The app tracks your categorical spending and how well your actuals match the budgets you set.

But the signature PocketSmith features focus less on short-term expense tracking and moreso on future planning:

• Forecasting account balances: Using your historical data, PocketSmith projects out checking account balances weeks, months, or even decades ahead based on your current financial trajectory.

• Custom “what if” scenarios: See how major life decisions down the road – from home purchases, career changes, or vacations – may impact your long term money situation.

• Schedule reminders: Get alerts upcoming bills and set savings goals right in the app.

For hands-on visual learners, the app also includes budgeting calendars, net worth graphs over time, income vs expense comparisons, and easy transaction searching.

Now let’s explore some of PocketSmith’s notable benefits and features…

Key Features and Benefits of Using PocketSmith

While budgeting and tracking capabilities might be common across personal finance apps, PocketSmith differentiates itself with planning-focused features and multi-currency support spanning international accounts.

Aggregating Your Financial Life

Getting reliable clarity into your overall financial position requires bringing together details across banking, lending, investments, and accounts of all types in one place. Manually aggregating all of this is impractical.

PocketSmith aims to automate this aggregation by connecting directly to over 12,000 financial institutions globally. Once linked to your accounts, PocketSmith imports new transactions automatically every day.

Whether you have accounts with multiple national banks or need to track international assets, PocketSmith incorporates details from 49 different countries into a unified view and converts amounts into your home currency.

This consolidation makes it easier to understand the big picture:

• Are you consistently spending more than you earn?
• How long will it take to pay off credit card debt if you maintain certain payments?
• Over time, are investment gains outpacing inflation on cash savings?

Answering questions like these is only possible when you can clearly see details across all accounts in one spot. PocketSmith enables this cruise control-like visibility.

Planning for the Future with Forecasting

While tracking past transactions can inform budgets, PocketSmith’s projections take personal finance management one step further.

Powered byimported spending data from your connected accounts, PocketSmith’s proprietary algorithms forecast out expected account balances weeks, months, and years into the future.

The software models factors like:

• Anticipated income deposits and magnitude based on payroll schedules
• Typical timing and amounts of fixed payments like rent, estimated tax installments, etc.
• Seasonal spikes in certain discretionary spending categories from your historical trends

With these inputs formulated, PocketSmith presents an estimated cash flow timeline showing you when account surplus and shortfalls may occur. Need $3,000 for a vacation next June but haven’t budgeted for it? The forecast visualizations provide that long range visibility into your financial trajectory.

For the longest range planning, the Premium and Super subscription tiers even support 10 and 30 year forecasts respectively. This glimpse into the financial future can profoundly impact decision making today.

Custom Budgets That Fit Your Lifestyle

People earn and spend money on different cycles – weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, annually. Rather than forcing you into the common monthly budget structure, PocketSmith grants flexibility to build budgets matching when you actually receive and shell out cash.

Use custom cycles like:

• Daily budgets for hyper precise tracking
• Weekly plans aligning with a Friday payday
• Bi-monthly budgets across twice per month pay periods

After defining budget timeframes, simply link your historical category spending to have PocketSmith auto generate an initial spending plan to review and manually adjust. Want to stretch your grocery budget but soften the blow of holiday airfare spending next month? Tweak categories to match your goals and priorities within your comfortable means.

Actual spending automatically fills within your budgets so you can course correct if needed before overrunning targets for shopping or dining out. This combination of customization and dynamic feedback helps budgets stick.

Handy Budget Calendar

Alongside budgets, PocketSmith offers an interactive calendar highlighting upcoming bills and large fixed payments synchronized from your expense history. Visually seeing $1,200 for rent due in 10 days or a $270 car insurance bill in two weeks maintains constant awareness.

The calendar also overlays your budgeted amounts by category for any given day or week, serving as a proactive indicator around available discretionary money until the next paycheck. On Wednesday morning the app might show just $61 budgeted through Friday for groceries and gas…cue packing PB&J’s for work!

This visual foresight into impending financial obligations and present spending capacity aids immensely for anyone living paycheck to paycheck or with less consistent income streams. You can also layer calendar reminders to start saving for periodic expenses like yearly Amazon Prime fees or domain renewals.

Between customizable budgets tailored to your flow of money and an organized calendar, PocketSmithace brightlines spending – both obligations and discretionary – while limiting surprise shortfalls.

Now let’s explore a few limitations…

The Downsides to Consider

Despite the many perks around forecasting and budgeting flexibility, PocketSmith isn’t without a few potential shortcomings depending on your needs and financial situation.

Less Focus on Investing and Retirement

First and foremost, while helpful for cash flow management across bank accounts, PocketSmith generally lacks deeper investment monitoring and planning tools for retirement goals.

The platform enables connecting investment accounts simply to track their balances, but falls short of Mint or Personal Capital’s capabilities like:

• Investment fee/performance analysis
• Retirement planning projections
• Integrated brokerage access

If maximizing 401(k) contributions or projecting how dividend stocks may fund early retirement are high priorities, alternatives narrowly focused in investment functionality may suit better.

No Native Bill Pay Integration

PocketSmith also surprisingly lacks any integrated bill payment capabilities commonly seen with other leading budgeting apps. While you can mark upcoming bills on a calendar within PocketSmith, these actual payments must happen externally via bank bill pay or provider websites.

As a standalone service this may pose only a minor inconvenience for savvy digital banking users. But missing out on bill automation and reminders found with Personal Capital or Mint means less convenience and opportunities for oversight.

Steep Learning Curve at First

Finally, prospective users should note PocketSmith’s menus and data visualizations represent one of the more complex interfaces among competitors.

Precision around forecasts and flexibility in configuration knobs makes for wide ranging functionality…but first-time visitors face a steep analysis paralysis inducing learning curve. Simply parsing necessary steps for connecting accounts proves less than intuitive.

Patience growing comfortable navigating PocketSmith’s dense features pays off over time. But until you grasp the lay of the land, frustration may mount due to this app’s departure from simplistic design in favor of packing analytical horsepower meant for power users.

Now let’s explore signing up with PocketSmith along with packaged pricing options…

Signing Up and Pricing Options with PocketSmith

Signing up with PocketSmith only takes a few minutes whether you use the web dashboard or iOS/Android mobile apps. Subscription costs generally start around $7.50 monthly for essential budgeting and planning functionality.

Hands-On With the Signup Process

Registering a new PocketSmith account online involves straightforward steps:

1. Provide your email address to get started
2. Create your unique username and password
3. Read and accept PocketSmith’s Terms of Service
4. Select between bundled pricing plan tiers (detailed next) catering to different budgets and use cases
5. Either manually import your latest bank account statements to sync transactions or directly connect financial institutions for automatic feeds going forward

The sign up experience proves hassle free without extended questionnaires beyond necessary disclosures. Consider setting a calendar reminder to cancel before any initial 30 day trials convert to paid plans if still evaluating fit.

Breakdown of Subscription Plans

Unlike some competitors, PocketSmith doesn’t fully integrate bank details needed for practical budgeting without a paid subscription.

But the platform does offer multiple tiers to cater to individual requirements and comfort with pricing:

Key Considerations By Tier:

• Basic: The free version only permits manual transaction entry instead of automatic bank feeds without a paid subscription. You can link up to two accounts with 12 budgets maximum during limited trial periods.

• Premium: This tier at around $7.50 monthly (or $90 annually) unlocks automatic transaction syncing with 10 linked accounts while supporting unlimited budgets. You also gain 10 years of projected forecasting data.

• Super: Need to monitor more accounts or want long range planning? The Super plan offers 30 years of projections and support for unlimited accounts at about $14 monthly after bulk purchase discounts.

If not satisfied within your first month, PocketSmith offers hassle free cancellation and refunds on paid plans. Look for occasional promotional discounts as well.

Promotions and Discounts to Know

PocketSmith doesn’t currently offer any exclusive partner deals or bundles with other financial services like some competitors. However, first time subscribers can unlock 25% off their first six months using the coupon code POCKET25 at checkout after selecting a paid Premium or Super plan.

The platform also periodically advertises holiday weekend or end of year limited time sitewide sales for new users to save on their first annual subscription renewal. Following PocketSmith on Facebook, Instagram or checking your inbox can alert you to future promotions.

Veteran PocketSmith fans seem reticent to lose their loyalty pricing attained from long term membership spanning years. That suggests the app delivers enough ongoing value to warrant such retention once the workflow clicks with dedicated daily use for budget rough-timers.

The Bottom Line: Who Should Use PocketSmith?

At the end of the day PocketSmith best serves users needing to:

• Aggregate numerous financial accounts spanning banks, cards, investment platforms and other holdings
• Move beyond solely tracking transactions to model future account balances based on imported financial DNA
• Implement flexible budgets matching their unique income cycles and variable outflows
• Visually map upcoming bills and target savings goals for proactive planning

On the other hand, certain individuals may find better matches elsewhere:

• Passive budgeters seeking only basic expense monitoring rather than future planning may save money using a free alternative like Mint
• Investors specifically wanting retirement planning guidance paired with portfolio performance insights would benefit more from Personal Capital
• Those requiring bill automation and reminders in tandem with their budgeting app may prefer Quicken

Now let’s recap some common Q&A’s around using PocketSmith…

Frequently Asked Questions About PocketSmith

Does PocketSmith offer a free version?

Yes, PocketSmith does provide a free Basic account option but with greatly limited utility. The free plan only permits manual transaction imports without automatic bank feed syncing central to effective budget tracking. Just two accounts get supported too. For sufficient functionality most need to upgrade to a paid Premium or Super subscription.

What happens if I go over my budget with PocketSmith?

One helpful safeguard provided within PocketSmith is customizable budget notifications if you overspend or under earn compared to planned amounts in categories like dining, shopping or transportation. Receiving in app alerts about blowing through 50% of the monthly grocery budget just 20 days into a cycle allows course correction before the end of a pay period.

Can I pay bills directly with PocketSmith?

Unfortunately no – a current disadvantage compared to some competitors is PocketSmith’s lack of direct bill payment functionality from within the platform itself. While you can schedule upcoming due dates for obligations on your Budget Calendar, paying these bills requires visiting individual provider sites or your bank.

Is PocketSmith fully mobile friendly?

Yes, PocketSmith does offer iOS and Android smartphone apps enabling remote expense and budget tracking, bank connection management plus view-only access to account balances, net worth amounts and limited projections. But certain advanced functionality remains exclusive to the full web dashboard version.

Combining PocketSmith’s robust budgeting and planning capabilities together with multi-currency support for international accounts positions the platform as a versatile money management companion for both daily spenders and long horizon financial thinkers alike once its nuances get mastered.

Give the free trial a shot to determine if its forecasts and customization suit your needs. With patience navigating the initial learning curve, PocketSmith may provide just the financial visibility you need for both present peace and future security.