I know I told you guys about Mint. But that was like a year ago…and a lot can change in a year! (My shopping habits, unfortunately for my wallet, are not one of these changes.) I don’t want to say my loyalties have changed…but my loyalties have changed. Instead of using Mint, I now use an app called Level.
It’s similar enough to Mint, but it’s more of an overview of my finances. Mint.com is more about categorizing each purchase and seeing where you spend your money. Level just tells me—oh hey! You told me that you wanted to save $400 this month…if you buy that dress in your hands, while it’ll look amazing on you, you may not reach your savings goal for the month. It tells me exactly how much of my income is spendable and how much goes towards rent, bills and savings.
So, let me give you a little tour of Level.
Welcome to the home screen. When I open up my app, it tells me exactly how much money is spendable that day, week, and month.
If you don’t spend all your spendable money one day, then it rolls over and recalculates your spendable money for the rest of the week and month.
Also, if you go over, it tells you how much you’ve overspent. Of course, I’ve never ever seen this screen before……
To set up your profile, Level has you add all your bank accounts and credit cards, figures out how much you make, how much you spend regularly (like on rent and bills, etc.), asks you how much you want to save a month, and then takes the rest in its own hands and spits back how much money you have left to play with.
When I first started using Level, they had the standard banks and what not, but I looked at the list again recently, and MAN, they’ve really stepped up their game! (Or should I say leveled up LOL…I’m so sorry. Stupid jokes just happen sometimes.) Anyway, they have a bunch of banks to pick from; and if it’s still not on the list, then submit a request, and I think they’ll figure something out for you.
Back to the app—there’s another quite helpful view, other than the Spendable one: the Activity view. Which (as the name implies), consolidates all the activities going on amongst all your accounts. They also give you a combined balance, which is nice, because then you can see how much money you’d have left if you were to pay all your credit cards off right now!
I recently deposited all my monopoly money, so my balance is kinda high.
As you can see from the menu on top, you can see all of your transactions, or limit your view to any credits that have been returned to you or bills that you regularly pay, or a custom search through everything.
Another nice feature they have is that when you make unusual purchases, they don’t have to come out of your spendable. Those are things you’d probably be tapping into your savings account for. After all, what else are you saving all that money up for?
So, for example—I recently moved to a new apartment and had to buy a new dining table. But since it’s an unusual purchase, that’s not something I want it to deduct from my spendable. And to take care of that, I just swipe right on the transaction in my activity view and tell it to not count it. It’s perfect.
You can also swipe left if it’s a recurring bill, and it’ll add it to your bill section instead of being a spendable J
Level also has its Alert Center and you can choose which notifications you receive…and just speaking from personal experience, it’s always nice to get those push notifications that are like HEY YOU JUST GOT PAID!
Anyways, I’ve had a pretty good experience with Level. And I hope that I’ve been able to successfully convey my love and adoration for this app…and maybe convince you to download it J Since, after all, it is a free app…and available on Android and iOS.
P.S. – Word on the street is they’re going to have a new feature that calculates spending trends soon!
Like, Totally Technical 