How A Small Widget On My iPhone Home Screen Saves Me $1000s

A super simple way of reviewing your spend daily

A super simple widget showing today’s bank balance (Photo by Author)

Core Intention

Today, I am going to introduce you to a small widget that helps me avoid ‘bad’ spending.

Of course, the definition of what exactly is a ‘bad’ spend is highly personal. For me, spending money on Online courses (but never actually taking the course later) is an example of a “bad” spend. For you it may be different. Regardless of what actually constitutes a bad spend, the intention is to identify patterns and avoid them in the future.

My intention with this widget is four-fold:

1. Help me avoid making similar bad spends in the future;
2. Whenever I pick up my iPhone, act as a gentle reminder that I need to spend money on only those things that matter and encourage me to balance spending and saving;
3. Do the above in a very easy way i.e. I should fill just one field/text every day … no more than that.
4. It should take me less than 10 seconds to do this once every day.

We all know that tracking and reviewing things regularly is the best way to spot trends (good or bad) and then take corrective actions.