Let’s face it – budgets have been tight for a lot of people the past couple of years, but this is all the more reason to have a system in place that keeps us out of the red. With the Budget with Back in Black app, budget tracking has never been simpler. It’s a cohesive blend of old-school budgeting and modern technology that lets users track their income against fixed expenses, financial goals and spending. The developers of Back in Black refer to the “envelope method” of budgeting and have created a non-intrusive, but still powerful tool that remains uncomplicated.
Budget with Back in Black is user-friendly and features access to all the pertinent parts of budgeting from the home screen. Set income amounts, enter fixed expenses and apply a budget for all other spending with minimal navigation. Entering new purchases to track spending is also fairly effortless and the home screen displays both your spending and expenditures at a glance. Other features include the ability to quickly make adjustments, set reminders for bills or other expenses and to set goals like savings and credit card debt reduction.
The real beauty of Budget with Back in Black is in its simplicity. Rather than make budgeting a tedious and overly complicated process that only a financier or accountant would appreciate, Back in Black provides a budgeting tool for the rest of the population. It takes the very basic concepts of tracking spending against income, allocating a set amount to necessary categories, and then making sure you spend less than you make to accomplish a balanced budget. You can also see how much unassigned income you have left over to apply to financial goals. Budget with Back in Black is as simple as budgeting with pen and paper, just as tangible, but far less repetitive because it carries over all the data from month to month (per the most recent update).
While its simplicity really is its strongest point, that doesn’t mean simple is without flaws. One feature that is missing that would be beneficial is an interest calculator for revolving debt goals. By including a financial goals feature, Budget with Back in Black assures it covers the basic bases, but for those who really want to pay off debt, they’ll have to calculate the actual pay off amount and rate themselves and then adjust this section of the app accordingly. Other goals, such as saving for vacation, home improvements, building an emergency fund and so on are far simpler. There is also the ability to create custom goals (and expenses) in order to meet all budgeting goals.
Budget with Back in Black is a truly simple to use, simple to apply-to-real-life budgeting tool that anyone with income and expenses can use. With the goal to get you and keep you in the black, this is a budgeting app that performs nearly flawlessly and yet for something so basic, it isn’t clunky or terribly ugly – in fact, it’s pretty much ideal.
