Managing your Budget with Lunch Money
I talk a lot about the importance of managing your budget and understanding where your money is going (check out Money Management for Newlyweds if you haven’t already). But what is the easiest way to do that? I was a regular and dedicated Mint user for many, many years. When Mint decided to sunset their product and migrate everyone over to Credit Karma, I had a small meltdown. But after some quick google searching, I discovered there were a lot of other alternatives on the market. I tried several before eventually landing on Lunch Money.
If you are looking for a budgeting tool, check out the good and bad of managing your finances with Lunch Money from my personal experience.
Easy to Get Started
If you were a Mint user, you can use their easy migration from Mint functionality. I ended up exporting all my transactions from Mint and importing them into Lunch Money. It was pretty simple, and I only had to make a few minor tweaks to get everything situated.
They also utilized Plaid which helps connect all your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investment accounts, etc. You simply enter your login information and give Lunch Money access to your details. This will import all your transactions, and attempt to automatically match them to a category.
Budgeting
I think the best functionality is easily their budgeting tool. Each month you can set up a budget for each category. Lunch Money will show you what you spent in the month prior, so it makes it easy to identify what you think you might spend that month. You can also see what transactions made up the prior month’s budget (or how you are trending in that month), so you can identify where your money has been going.
You can also set up recurring expenses, which in my opinion is the biggest improvement over Mint. It even allows for flexibility for bills that are not fixed amounts each month. For example, I can say that my electricity bill is usually between $100-$120. I find that this helps me do a better job of forecasting what I am going to spend in the coming months. It gives me a lot of visibility into recurring expenses that I need to plan and prepare for.
Insights
My least favorite part of Lunch Money is the insights piece. This could be that I am just used to the way that Mint did it, but for some reason I find that it’s a bit harder to derive insights from the graphs and charts they provide. They have a couple different sections that provide insights about your spending: net worth tracking, trends, and stats. They also have a calendar function that shows you how you are spending overlaid on top of a calendar.
The stats show you where you are spending the most money (in terms of most expensive purchases and most frequently purchased from). If you are trying to get a handle on your spending, this can be a particularly useful tool to identify areas where you can cut. The trends section is more graph heavy, and also can show you your savings rate over a defined period of time. If you are setting goals, this is a great tool to see how you are reaching them.
What Could be Better
So there are a couple things I wished Lunch Money did better. The first is I wished it helped to manage household expenses better, and not just my own personal finances. I could add my spouse’s accounts, but there is no way to really differentiate my spend vs my spouse’s spend. Mint didn’t do this either, and in my opinion, I’d really love for budgeting tools to include these tools. It helps to understand how we are each spending and how we are building out wealth together, but also separately.
I also miss the goal setting functionality that Mint used to offer. It was nice to be able to define a goal and have it built into your budget (e.g. paying off your house earlier, saving for a child’s education, or a down payment on a house). Lunch Money doesn’t have a simple way of doing this, so it leaves you to figure it out on your own.
I wish there was more education built into the product, rather than me having to educate myself. For example, what if there was AI that you could chat with to ask how you should leverage the savings you had that month — should I invest it? Put it towards my mortgage? Put it in my savings….? Or ask the AI what category you should cut spending in based on your personal preferences? This would be like your own personal advisor who could help you make informed decisions, using your own personal data. I think that would be a game changer.
Overall, Lunch Money is a super solid application that helps me better manage my money. There is something about being able to see what I am spending that helps me feel more secure and ready for what life may throw at me. It also helps me identify areas where I have an opportunity to improve. I encourage everyone to have some budgeting tool, and to spend 10–20 minutes a week going through and actively managing their budget with it. Lunch Money is a great option for those looking.
Do you use a budgeting tool? If yes, which one? If no, why not?
