APPS FOR SELF IMPROVEMENT (PART 1)

I remember when I was a lot younger, all I could fathom about apps were games, movies, pictures and music. But as I grew older, my mind started to yearn for other things. Things like control, love, happiness, knowledge. Basically seeking self-improvement. I think that is the basis for achieving a better life.

I remember the first self-improvement app I ever downloaded (power of positive thinking). All the app did was to give a wise quote for each passing day, backed up with a calming sound. In a matter of time, I began to see changes in my life. I was able to make better decisions and contribute more to my society.

This review is going to be my first project series because I’ll be reviewing some self-help apps that assist us in our day to day activities. Improving our physical, financial, social and psychological well being. With that being said, the first app I’ll be reviewing in this series will be the Finance manager app.

FINANCE MANAGER

This is one aspect of our lives so many people take for granted, Me inclusive. Sometimes when I take a look at my end of the month estimated expenses, I am left in awe like “where did all this money came from?” If this is your situation too, then this app is one huge savior. Finance manager helps you make better-informed decisions about your finance. It helps to regulate the mismanagement of funds. At the end of the day, you end up with more money in your bank account. The app is pretty straightforward, easy to understand and a user-friendly interface. The app doesn’t require any special permissions. The app is packed with some helpful features which I’ll get into shortly.

Features

The app is quite simple though and it comprises of the following helpful features

• Latest transactions

• Repeating transactions

• Accounts

• Categories

Latest Transactions

This also doubles as the homepage of the app, it has a sidebar for easy navigation which I find really helpful. Okay, the latest transactions help you to enter your daily expenses or income. That way you can easily monitor and have a reasonable amount of control over your cash flow. I think it is really important because it gives that sense of financial discipline.

Repeating Transactions

Personally speaking, I have lots of repeating transactions I do carry out daily, some on a weekly and some are monthly. So instead of entering these transactions every time you carry it out, instead, you add them to this category. This way, they are being deducted from your total balance at the specified intervals (in the case of expenses) or added to your total balance (in the case of income). I find this to be really helpful because I get to see how I’m doing financially on a day to day basis and it always propels me to improve, to get more inflow of cash.

Accounts

This feature can be used to track the money one has in the bank. For me, I have two accounts, one for business and one for receiving a salary from my employer. As a part-time worker and also an entrepreneur, I can monitor my expenditure and cash flow on both accounts. So, anytime you make an expenditure, you can easily choose which of the accounts it should be deducted from. I find the app really helpful because at the end of the day, you get to see the final balance you are left with and also have an idea of how the money is being spent.

Categories

This works just like tagging, but in this case, you are grouping your expenses according to how they are spent. For example, you have a lot of things you pay for while going to school. So in this case, all those expenses will be grouped under the school category. The same goes for stipends that might be coming in as a result of you going to school. All of these will be in the school category. The same thing goes for every other category created. This feature helps you know exactly what is being spent on different areas of your life and helps in making decisions in allocating funds or finding ways to spend less after much scrutiny in that category.

Conclusion

This is the whole conclusion of the matter, that being financially aware helps you make calculated decisions that will impact your life positively. Money is not everything but money well spent is something. I think the whole concept of the app is to help improve our financial awareness and consequently improve our decision-making abilities.
Although, the app comes with a few limitations like the issue of security. Not everyone would like to have his/her financial records out for everyone to see. I just hope the developer would consider adding this to future versions. Also, there should be a dark theme option. Personally, I am an advocate for dark themes and having an option for that in any app makes a huge difference. It would also be a great idea to work on the user interface to add some appealing designs to it. This just my own opinion though. With all being said, it’s still a great app to try out.
Thanks for reading!

Links section
• Github repository:https://github.com/SecUSo/privacy-friendly-finance-manager
• Download link: https://github.com/SecUSo/privacy-friendly-finance-manager/releases/download/v2.0.2/pfa-finance-manager-release-v2.0.2.apk

Resources
The content of this post was created based on my knowledge of the project and my experiences while using the app. The images used for this review were screenshots taken from my device