PocketSmith’s Customization Lets Darin Manage His Money the Exact Way He Wants

Read how Darin gets granular with his transactions so he can categorize them in an instant and make sense of his spending.

Tell us a little about yourself?

I’m a freelance consultant, living in Boston with my wonderful wife and Sumi, perhaps the smartest, most handsome, kindest dog in the world.

How would you describe your role in your household?

I handle most of our finances — checking expenses, monitoring our budget, and making investments.

What drew you to PocketSmith?

For years I’ve been looking for personal finance software that does what I need — syncing transactions consistently and letting me categorize them in buckets that I define, with a hierarchy, and rules to automate the repeat stuff. It’s a pretty simple need, but I’ve tried everything from Mint to Quicken to YNAB to Excel sheets and everything in between, and couldn’t find anything that was easy, fast, and did what I needed without loads of hassle. Eventually I heard about PocketSmith, tried it out, and fell in love.

How long have you been with us?

I’ve been using PocketSmith for about two years now.

What do you primarily use PocketSmith for?

Tracking our household expenses and budgeting.

How has PocketSmith changed the way you do money?

With a fast, well-thought-out interface and hierarchical, self-defined categories it has become MUCH easier to (a) quickly categorize transactions in a few minutes once a week, instead of letting them build up for months, and (b) categorize transactions in a way that we can actually drill down into and see, in practical terms, where we are spending money and where we should be cutting back.

What are your favorite features?

The speedy and streamlined interface is the first big one — everything was clearly designed with actual users in mind. So many personal finance apps require way too much clicking through different options to update a transaction or search for what you’re looking for.

The next is the customization. So many apps try to force you into their model of budgeting or categorizing, and that just doesn’t match the reality that every house thinks about their spend differently. PocketSmith has made it incredibly easy to structure your finances the way you think about them, and cut out anything else.

Got any tips?

Create pretty granular, layered categories. It makes it a lot easier to drill down and make sense of ‘where exactly is our pet budget going’ than just using high-level buckets and having to look through all the transactions within.

What’s the best money decision you made in the past 12 months?

Being more careful about how often we eat out — it’s fun but it plays an outsized role in our spend.