PocketGuard・Budget Planner App

I’ve had this app since 2021 and used it daily for budgeting. In the last year, the app started by not being able to connect with my credit union anymore. After several weeks, they told me they could no longer support my credit card connected to my bank. I was so committed to this app, I actually moved all my purchases to my AmEx. In the last month, the app stopped communicating with my AmEx. After about 3 weeks, they told me they could no longer support my AmEx. Ok, I get a small credit union, but my AmEx?! I signed up for a different app and bam! Immediately connected to my credit union and AmEx and haven’t had any issues. I had a lifetime membership and they told me to get a refund from Apple. Apple says I’m not eligible. Disappointed all around…

I’m coming from YNAB so I’m a little spoiled. But PocketGuard is cheaper since they have the lifetime subscription, if it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t have gotten it. I’m guessing that’s why they have the lifetime option because it tricks you into thinking you’re getting a good deal when you’re just getting a subpar app. With YNAB I paid basically $100 a year BUT the goal is to save money, right, so you have to cut spending anywhere you can, UX/UI is a luxury so I ditched YNAB after 10 years with them. I’ve played around with other apps and even excel spreadsheets. I got this because of all the overselling of the features especially the prediction feature. But I’m mostly just tolerating this app. My biggest gripe is that their big selling point the Plan feature (where you can get an estimate of what will be leftover or how much income/expenses are predicted) only works if your income and bills transactions are precisely the same each month. So if your paychecks are different amounts well then you can’t trust the numbers. Same with your expenses, if your utility bill is going to be up $100 this month well PocketGuard doesn’t know that so good luck making any smart predictions. I used to have an app that went away called Prism and that app actually connected to all your bills so it actually knew exactly what amount they would be. I miss those days. Seems like a small ask: Just tell me the exact amount of my upcoming bills please. Insights are okay but my banking app already does that with the pie chart of your expenses and stuff. So not a feature I *need* to pay for. The Rules setting needs UI improvements—it’s not visually friendly to use, it looks like some backend stuff with the if/then statements, nobody wants to think about if/then statements. Also whatever tool they use the pull in the transactions could use improvement with naming conventions and how it categorizes stuff, I know that’s case by case basis but nobody gets a budgeting projection app wanting to edit every single transaction. My Amex card always thinks my account is being hacked whenever PocketGuard pulls transactions. Here comes another annoying notification… Overall I’m underwhelmed and feel like I have no use for this thing aside from the fact that it combines spending across different accounts but I’m thinking about simplifying my life to one or two cards max anyway and at that point this app will definitely be useless to me. At this point I’m hoping they improve and that lifetime members are grandfathered in, worse case I’m out $140 and sticking to my banking app because it does the same thing for free