The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video I will review the Toshl personal finance and budget app.  This is part of a series where I give you my thoughts on a variety of budgeting apps. Toshl is a European app — it appears to be based in Slovenia.  It’s free version has limited the number of accounts and budget items that you can add. The pro version for two dollars a month has unlimited accounts and budget items, but does not include linked banking accounts. For five dollars per month, you can upgrade to the Medici level which allows for linked financial accounts. Toshl is available for iOS, android, and has a Web app. It syncs across all of the platforms by pulling data from the cloud. Linking accounts was quite easy. It even asked whether I wanted to import past transactions or for importing to start today. After having reviewed a number of these apps, I’m always interested in how the developers have chosen to set up the screens. T...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video I will provide a review of the Saru Personal Finance and Budgeting App. This is part of a series where I review budget apps. The Saru app is a free budgeting system that is available on iOS, Android, and believe it or not, PC software. Based on the way this app looks, I’m guessing it started out as a Microsoft mobile app. There is extremely limited information about it online, so I don’t know the history, but that’s what the interface looks like to me. In addition, you can sync between devices through a Microsoft login (another giveaway).  It has some ads, which you can get rid of by paying a nominal one time fee. I think it’s around two dollars.  The ads are not really a big deal, but a couple times I got into situations where I could not get rid of the ad without killing the app. In addition to having a throwback interface, Saru embraces a more traditional budgeting philosophy than some...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I will review the Money Manager 365 budgeting app. This is part of a series where I give my thoughts on a variety of apps for financial budgeting.  Money Manager 365 is an app that is available both for iOS and Android platforms.  It does not have a website component, but you can sync multiple devices.  I should say at the outset that this app doesn’t not link with your bank or credit card accounts, so it is manual entry only. Perhaps because of this, Money Manager 365 offers most of its services for free — you can upgrade to a Pro (or VIP) account, which gives you the ability to sync more than 2 devices and get rid of ads for just less than $1 per month.  Everyone has their own way that works best for them for budgeting. I am partial to apps that automatically link to your accounts and pull in transactions as they occur. Otherwise, I think it is easy to miss things. However, I know ...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video I will do a quick review of the Emma finance and budgeting app. This is part of a series where I give my thoughts on a variety of budget systems. OK – Emma is a personal finance and budget tracker that comes out of the UK. It is available for iOS and android platforms – there is no web app.  They offer a free version which does allow you to automatically link your financial accounts, but upgrading to Emma Pro for $5 per month gives you a bunch of additional features including export, custom budget categories, split transactions, etc. Signing up for Emma allows you to use your Facebook, Apple ID, or your phone number. The set up process takes you directly into the screen to link an account. This is very easy and straightforward, and as I said before, is available even to free users.  It syncs between devices by storing your data up in a cloud account.  Emma protects your data by requiring y...

Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video, I will review the Dollarbird personal finance calendar app. This is part of a series where I review apps for financial budgeting. What I have learned from reviewing a bunch of  budgeting apps is that people think about budgeting in lots of different ways. This app is not really a budgeting app as it turns out.  It SEEMS like a budgeting app.  You put in transactions, you categorize them, you produce some reporting. But the big difference is that with budgeting apps, you set a budget. That means that you determine how much you want to spend for a period — say a month and then you report on your actual spending against this plan. The Dollarbird app is a different animal. It is the most stripped down, simple app that I have reviewed so far. Normally in budgeting apps, there are accounts, within the accounts there are transactions, then there are Budget categories, and finally reports both o...

Hi everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I will review the GoodBudget app and system. This is part of a series where I give my thoughts on a variety of apps for financial budgeting. Goodbudget is a budgeting platform that is available on iOS, android, and through its website. This is another app that does not link with your bank or credit card accounts, so it is manual entry only. That said, it does have an import feature, so you can import a bank file to get started. It has a limited feature set available for free, but offers a paid version for about $7 a month to unlock all of the features. As I’ve said in other videos, I am partial to apps that automatically link to your accounts and pull in transactions as they occur; however, some people prefer to enter their spending manually. For those who do and don’t mind paying a monthly fee, GoodBudget offers a much fuller feature set the most of its competitors that do not link to financial account...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’m going to review the budgeting function of the Personal Capital service and app.  This is part of my series on budgeting apps.  Personal Capital is a financial management platform. Whereas many of the apps I am looking at do only budgeting, Personal Capital shows your budget, debt, and investments all in one place.  The service is free. The reason they can provide these financial tools for free is that they upsell you on their other services — financial advice and wealth management, which they provide for a fee.  I will only be considering the budgeting portion of their services. Perhaps I will do another video on the other tools that they offer. Personal Capital’s website and app are pretty slick looking.  It is, however, fairly obvious that budgeting is a very small portion of what they are offering — and definitely not the main emphasis. That said, for a free service, the ...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I'll give you my thoughts on Clarity Money.  This is part of a series where I review budget apps. I have used a variety of budget systems over the years.  I was a long time user of Mint and did a YouTube series on budgeting with Mint.  Now I use YNAB, but I’m always open to looking at other apps to see what tools or techniques they might be offering.   A while back, I did a deep dive comparative analysis of 3 different apps: Mint, YNAB, and EveryDollar.  This involved using all of these platforms in parallel for several weeks.  In this series, I won’t be doing that level of analysis.  Instead, I’ll give you my thoughts after linking an account and attempting to put in and use a budget.  In this video, I take a look at Clarity Money.  A general rule with budget apps is that the ones that provide a way to link your bank and credit card accounts either cha...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I will review the budgeting app and website Mvelopes.  This is part of a series where I give my thoughts on a variety of budget apps. Mvelopes is a budgeting website and app.  It has been a around for a while -- long enough that the most recent iteration is called Mvelopes 5.  It allows you to link your financial accounts to the software to pull in transactions.  It is not free -- there is a free trial period, but after that, you'll need to choose from one of their three price points -- $6 per month gets you essentially just access to the budgeting software, $10 per month gets you more learning and debt management tools, and $19 per month comes with a quarterly meeting with a financial coach. I've used a variety of budgeting apps over my adulthood.  Most recently, I've switched over from using Mint for many years to YNAB.  That said, I'm always open to checking o...

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll talk about combining your finances in a way that is healthy and financially fruitful for your marriage or serious relationship. I've taken some informal polls and found that couples decide to handle their money in a bunch of different ways.  The methods seem to break down into 3 basic types: Traditional - both partners contribute to and take from the same pot.   Separate - These partners work their long-term financial relationship as though they are still roommates.  They each have separate accounts and they split the shared bills down the middle -- like mortgage, utilities, and groceries.  Or one person pays the bill and the other Venmos them half the money.  And finally, a Hybrid - of those two system.  This involves both partners contributing a certain amount of money to a joint pot.  Sometimes they will each contribute a percentage of their earni...