They say ‘You need to spend money to make money.’ And damn they are right! But with money you need to be really cautious as it’s both a boon and bane. I really don’t need to elaborate as to how money is a boon or bane. But I’d definitely want to talk about how to manage money or the lack of it 🙂
Before we start, I’d like to confess that I suck at maths. No not 12th standard maths, I meant basic maths like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. There have been times when I messed up even while using the calculator. If a person can’t calculate using a calculator, that explains it all!
Then came along the smartphones, followed by Siri and the likes of her. With Siri (Google Now, Cortana) my life got a little better as I could ask these virtual assistant to calculate for me. But again, limited to basic calculations and in time of e-commerce. You just can’t rely on simple maths of your finances and transaction as you need to keep a track of everything.
From movie tickets to groceries, EMI’s to salaries most of the transactions now take online through our smartphone. We get text alerts and notifications but later in the day when we sit down to figure out all the transactions we are dumbfounded. In fact most of us don’t even track transactions each day, we check them at the end of the month when the monthly statements comes. That’s when we lose it!
But it’s not our fault, technology has made things so simple that we overuse it. Wait! I just wrote – ‘technology has made things simpler.’ Why am I stressing on it? Well because smartphones and Siri solved half of my problems. The calculation bit is sorted but what about managing my money. I swear I mean this –
Shut Up and Take My Money but put an end to all income and expenses, my investments and give me a report or analysis of my funds and spends. My dad suggested me to hire a CA for all these things. But you know the millennials like me prefer to talking to Siri and not a human being.
Hence, I started my search for an app that could help me with all the aforementioned tasks. And I wasn’t surprised to find plethora of them. But as with most search results, I zeroed down on a handful of it. And after installing a few, testing them for a few days. I was left with an app called Money View.
What I liked about Money View app was that it did whatever I wanted from a finance app. In some cases even more than that, such as – Split bills and get alerts etc.
But if you are thinking, I was swept away by all the features and services MoneyView had to offer then NO! The fact is that I’m not that easy to convince, yes I was happy with all the features and services. But how could I let a 3rd party app access every bit of money I make or spend. I can bet that anybody would be apprehensive about it. So I researched a bit more and then found that unlike other money management apps, with Money View you don’t have to share personal or bank account details, doing away with any security concern.
Once I was convinced that it works exclusively on the SMS system, I was worry free about my bank login details and information being phished. In fact, all you need to do is spend less than a minute to set up your profile. Once you have created your profile the app takes over and automagically showcases a report.
So let’s go step by step:
1) Search for Money View in the Google Play store
2) Go through the description to see if this is what you want? (They haven’t missed out a thing!)
3) Download it after you are convinced that it does what you want
4) After downloading, Create your account or Log In if you already have one –
5) Once logged in, you will reach the homescreen –
6) If transactional SMS are found on your smartphone then you reach the Homescreen else you have to select your bank and subscribe for free SMS alert from your bank to start bank’s finance tracking.
8) Once you have registered SMS alerts you will be on the homescreen
There is a lot more that you can do with app like – Do savings for you thanks to Green Account feature.
I’ve not shared each and every screenshot of the app walk through as it contained personal banking information. But here are a few – 
The Unbiased Verdict
Overall the Money View app is the best solution to almost all finance related problems. But as my primary phone is (was) an iPhone, I was not able to install Money View on it. No they are not biased towards the Android users but the restrictions of iOS is what has kept them away from it. The founders of Money View would be happy to know that Money View is one of the app, I switched from iPhone to an Android smartphone as my primary phone. The other app is Truecaller that has limited functionality on iOS.
But as nothing is perfect and we are not biased, here are few things we would want to see in the future versions of Money View –
- Lack of support for smartphone’s fingerprint sensor to be used as unlocking instead of archaic PIN
- In the UI, I don’t understand the need for a Google+ and Share button at the bottom
- An app for iOS that could pick information from email like TripIt does (Here goes my app idea)
So with that we end our unbiased review of the Money View App. Go ahead and download it by clicking here.
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. During our usage of the app, we never used the Green Account or any other investment feature. We only used the app to track our income and expenses. Henceforth, we can only recommend this app for that functionality. We can’t share our opinion about investments and other features of this app. Lastly, even though the Money View app is free, I am still blatantly yelling – Shut up and take my money as there is no other app like it!
