EveryDollar App Tutorial/Overview from a Former Mint User

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll do a quick overview and tutorial of the EveryDollar budgeting system.

I've used Mint since 2012 and before that I used Microsoft Money.  Mint is free, but I have a ton of complaints about it's usability.  I also volunteer as a financial mentor and it has become clear to me that unless you are a bit of a budget nerd, Mint is probably not going to work for you.  So, I went looking for some different options.  I did a video recently on the pros and cons of Mint, YNAB, and EveryDollar, but this video will just be a quick overview and tutorial of EveryDollar.

EveryDollar is Dave Ramsey's budgeting app and is meant to be used with his entire budgeting system and philosophy which takes you through baby steps to build a baby emergency fund, pay down your debt, build larger savings, and eventually find some financial freedom.  Dave's style is a bit folksy and overly religious for me, but I think his ideas and strategies are sound and he has certainly helped thousands get control of their money.

There are two versions of the EveryDollar app - the free version and EveryDollar Plus, which costs $130 a year -- or around $11 per month.   The difference between the two is that with EveryDollar Plus you can link your financial accounts like your checking and credit card accounts and the app will pull the transactions in for you every day to tag and track.  With the free version, you have to manually enter every transaction.  In addition, the Plus version gives you access to the Financial Peace website which offers tools, education, and a community to start budgeting.  

Main Screen

Okay -- coming from the perspective of a Mint user, EveryDollar is super simple, customizable, and easy to understand.  Mint is free and links your accounts, but it's budgeting reporting is super confusing and unnecessarily difficult to use.  Here is the screen that you land on when you sign into EveryDollar on the web.  You can see that there are very few controls or screens to learn or to deal with.  These links on the side here just take you to other tools that Dave Ramsey's company provides and this is just help and settings down here.  So you are pretty much dealing with one screen.  

Budget

This main column is your budget.  EveryDollar gives you a bunch of categories by default, but these are all super customizable, so you can make this screen look almost exactly the way you want it to.  Up here is where you plan for your income for the month.  You can enter as many paychecks as you have, entering the amounts that you plan to take in for each one.  Then below are all of the Expense or Savings categories.  You can change the group name by clicking on it or delete the entire group by clicking on this button over here.  In addition, you can change each category name underneath the group again just by clicking on the name.  You can also delete them by clicking on the garbage can to the left.  You can add as many categories to a group as you like by hitting the Add Item button down here.  So, within minutes you can be up and running with a simple budget that looks exactly the way you want it to.  I'm just going to put together a super simple budget right now.  

You may have noticed that as you click on budget categories, the smaller column on the right will display more information about that category.  For example, if I click on Groceries, I can do some extra things.  I can see where I am in my spending against my planning, click on the star to make it a favorite category, set a due date, put in a note, see the transactions that are tagged in this category, or you can make it a fund.  Let's talk quickly about 

Funds

This is how EveryDollar deals with accounts that rollover funds from month to month.   There is only one account, your Emergency Fund, that is tagged by default as a "Fund" account.  Otherwise you have to turn this function on for each of your categories if you want leftover money to rollover to the next month.  Why is this helpful?  It is helpful for those accounts where you are trying to accumulate money for any reason.  For example, for insurance that is only paid every 6 months, you want to put aside a little every month and have it built up so that when the bill comes, you have enough money to pay it.  Or if you are saving to go on a trip, you can put aside a little each month to save up money to afford your trip.  I usually make utility categories into funds since they fluctuate throughout the year and the extra I save in the winter on electricity can help out with those bigger bills in the winter.  Categories that are marked as fund categories are indicated by this little piggy bank icon to the left.  

Creating Your Budget

Each month, you'll need to create a new budget.  Don't panic, EveryDollar lets you copy your budget from the month before, but it is kind of a weird concept to me.  You estimate your income up here and then based on that, EveryDollar tells you how much you have left to budget.  Let's say I get paid about $2,500 per paycheck two times per month.  I now have $5,000 to left to budget.  Meaning that I need to properly distribute this money among all of my budget categories.  Okay -- so let me do this for my simple budget.  Remember -- this is zero based budgeting, so we are using every dollar -- thus the name.  If you have money left over, you need to put it somewhere.  Unlike other budgeting systems, Dave Ramsey's philosophy has you concentrate on one savings item at a time.  So, any money you have left over should go towards some savings item that depends on where you are in his 9 step process.  The first step is to fund a $1,000 baby emergency fund, then you start tackling your debt smallest amount to largest, once you pay off all of your debt, you build up a larger emergency fund worth 3-6 months of living expenses -- you get the idea.   Okay -- so now your budget is set up, you just need some 

Transactions

As you purchase things, you'll be bringing each of those transactions into EveryDollar and tagging them with the right category.  EveryDollar calls this "tracking."  As I said before, you can link your checking and credit card accounts if you spring for the Plus version or you can put them all in manually if you want to stick with the free version.  Entering transactions manually is a little laborious on both the web and the mobile app.  On the web, click on the transaction button up here to open the transactions screen in the right column.  Then hit the button to Add New.  Type in the amount, the date, and the vendor (which unfortunately EveryDollar doesn't auto fill for you) and then pick a category.  You can scroll or start typing the first couple of letters to select.  Once you click to add new, it will show up in the column here.  This column toggles between how much you have spent for the month and how much you have left or Remaining.  Click on the amount to toggle.  Transactions that are automatically imported are a bit easier.  They show up as a badge up here.  Click on new and you can open the transaction to set the budget category OR you can drag it onto a category to the left.  You can also drag to tag in the mobile app.  

While we are on the transactions screen -- let me point out that you can click to see all tracked transactions.  This is what EveryDollar calls transactions that have already had a budget category assigned to them.  Or click on Deleted to see any transactions that you got rid of.  As far as I can tell, there is no way to see only the transactions from a specific account -- they are only listed together by date.  Search is fairly straightforward -- type in all or part of a vendor name, amount or memo to show those matching transactions.   

Mobile

If you are like most people, you'll be tagging transactions from your phone on the run most days.  EveryDollar has a notification badge that shows you how many transactions you have to tag, but I've found it to be significantly delayed, so you don't get the notification of new transactions right away.  In addition, EveryDollar doesn't let you know if you have overspent a budget category.  Transactions show up in these little bubbles, which I find kind of hard to read, but you can slide them into your categories just like on the web.  It's a nice clean interface and you can switch screens to see the Planned, Spent, and Remaining balances for your budget categories.  EveryDollar doesn't have a specific iPad app, they just use the mobile app twice as big.

End of month

With zero-based budgeting you have some chores to do at the end of the month.  Any budget category that has been overspent needs to be balanced using money from another category.  You should not start a new month with overspent categories.  You cannot borrow from the future. Unfortunately, EveryDollar doesn’t give you a lot of help with this — you have to subtract and add on your own to balance your accounts. In addition, any category that is not a fund that has money left over should be emptied into the savings item that you are working on — emergency fund, debt, paying off your mortgage, etc.   Again, EveryDollar does not really help you to do this by making calculations easier — it’s all manual.

Once you have taken care of your budget from the previous month, you need to create a new budget for the month is coming up. EveryDollar allows you to copy last month budget for ease of planning.  Just hit this button, Start Planning for the next month to get started.  Finally, let’s talk about EveryDollar’s

Reporting 

There is not much to it!  If you click anywhere blank on the screen, you'll see a little report area come up over here on the right.  Essentially, the only reporting EveryDollar does is total your planned expenses for each category group, the total you've spent for the month in each group, and how much you have left over -- or the Remaining.

Okay -- so that was my overview of the EveryDollar app.  Join me in my next video where I give my Pros and Cons.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!