EveryDollar: Personal Budget Reviews

by Ponyparent

My husband and I purchased EveryDollar to help keep us both on the same page about our budget, after ready Dave Ramsey’s books. At first it was great, just set the budget and drag and drop. Then our bank had an outage on EveryDollar , three months later our bank still has an outage. I’ve spoken with technical support for the last three months and they have no idea how long it will take to get the bank back. All the while the Mint app is connected to our bank, which is free. So I keep asking and keep getting the same “ we hope to have it fixed soon” message. I finally got so fed up I contacted iTunes to get a refund, but of course, we had canceled the subscription to not renew at the year mark, we couldn’t get any sort of refund. Which we didn’t know, because we followed the instructions from the every dollar company on how to get a refund. So now we are out WAY too much money for an app that literally doesn’t work, and the company has stated there is nothing they can do for us because we purchased the subscription through iTunes and not online. My suggestion, don’t waste your money. Find a different budgeting app that is more reliable or at least cheaper, because if you bank loses connection you won’t see a dime back, which to me seems cruelly ironic.

by Trevor5151

I really want to like it more. The User Interface is a plus for me. Conceptually I like EveryDollar way better than any of the others I have used. If you want to only use the free version and add all of your transactions it works great.

My issues are with the paid version, and downloading transactions from my bank. I started using it and loved EveryDollar . After a couple of months I started to notice transactions missing. I started paying more attention, and compared it to a competitor who I still have my accounts linked to. The competitor shows all transactions, and this app does not. I put a request into support, and received feedback that they weren’t experiencing any issues with my bank. Was asked to update my login information with my bank to see if that would resolve the issue. I did this and went another couple of weeks having the same issue. I emailed again, and never received a response. I let it go for a little bit, and then emailed again. It has been more than two days, and still no response. My biggest issue is TRUST. If I can’t trust the transactions that are being downloaded, EveryDollar becomes useless, and doesn’t allow me to budget correctly.

Again, I really want to like EveryDollar, but can’t if the version I paid for doesn’t work appropriately.

by Cantreviewwithnonickname

I tried EveryDollar for a week, and in general, it has some very good features. However, once you have signed up for the “plus” account, it seems you can only add bank accounts that are electronically linked, and not all banks are supported. I have 3 accounts, all of which I access online regularly, that are not supported by this app. (They are, however, supported by other budgeting apps I have used.) I would have been okay with it if I had the option of adding and tracking the accounts manually. (They also proudly stated in their reply how there are over 200 banks supported, and to check the list, as if I was going to close out the accounts I had just so I could bank with one of the ones they actually supported. Talk about missing the point!) It can’t be that hard to add unlinked/offline accounts as an option. I’ve used both mvelopes and YNAB in the past, and both let me do this.

I was hoping for a better budgeting app, but at a cost that is so much higher than the other apps out there, without even providing a way to track all of my accounts, it just seems like a huge waste of money. (I know part of the value of the subscription is supposed to be access to the other features, like FPU. But if all you need is budgeting, then those “extras” are pointless.)

by Runningriver

I get that apps are designed to make money off of its users. But this just seems a little bit ridiculous. For a guy who tries really hard to sell that he cares about people learning how to budget their money, and having the best life for themselves, he is sure charging a lot for a super basic budgeting system. I don’t want all the extra classes and videos and everything else that comes with EveryDollar when you spend $130. All I wanted was to track my spending. I spent time plugging in the numbers for my planes spending, only to find out that there is no easy copy and paste feature for the actual spent tab, meant to help you track your budget. You have to retype everything a second time, even items that are consistent like car payments and mortgage and insurance/health insurance etc. Or, you can link your bank account. Obvious choice, you want to link your bank account. But in order to do that you have to buy the entire subscription for a year including all of the other things. Really frustrating. Guess I’m going to look for another app. There should at least have been an option to pay for only linking your bank account, for a lot less than 130.

by Kita_GSD

I do like EveryDollar and it has helped me keep track of my spending much better than I had been. It also shows me how much I am really spending on items that I can cut back on, like eating out. Before, I really didn't realize how much we were spending and now I can see it add up as the month goes on. I like being able to split transactions into different categories to track each cost. But the help section is lacking and there was no real tutorial that I saw so I kind of had to learn as I went. The one thing I still can not get an answer to is the income. I can put in a planned amount but sometimes our income is more or less. When I put the actual received amount in as a transaction, it doesn't change my overall monthly amount. So it doesn't account for the over/under. This may be user error, but I've tried everything to get it to work properly and it won't. So I just change the planned amount to what we get paid. Which is fine, although the next month's budget shows the wrong amounts as planned income and I have to change, and it is not at all what the help section says should happen. It seems like the plus version would do it for me, but I am not paying $120 a year for an app to help me budget and save money. And honestly, I think that is shady of Dave Ramsey to even do that considering he preaches about cutting out unnecessary expenses. I'd give EveryDollar 4 stars but the lacking help section and fee for this app plus makes it lose at least 1 star.

by Gabbymay

I love everything about EveryDollar EXCEPT saving funds! If you are following the Dave Ramsey principles for financial peace university you should be saving for things like tires and annual insurances throughout the year. This is the idea behind funds however they are not intuitive at all. What happens to the money when you withdraw from the funds in relation to the overall budget? When you withdraw from the funds and you look at your remaining balance, the numbers don’t make sense and don’t add up. Tutorials are not helpful at all. They are very basic and show you how to put money in and barely how to take money out but do not explain the overall impact on the budget as a whole as seen in EveryDollar . What does remaining mean in relation to the funds. Does remaining include the overall amount in the funds? Or remaining amount for that months budget? It seems when you withdraw from the funds it screws everything up and the remaining balance is off by thousands if you’ve made a big purchase. Incredibly frustrating! I’m about ready to throw in the towel and go back to a good old fashion Excel spreadsheet.

by Mldjr

I’ve realized that the more you use EveryDollar the more you get into it and you really do see where your money has been going and you can redirect it to the right place. Only reason it is not 5 star review is because you can’t absolutely do everything on EveryDollar that you can on the website on a Mac or PC so that can be inconvenient (minor). I had an issue with my income being incorrect and the glitch was fixed within a couple days. You just have to use the help feature. The $10 is worth every penny for the benefit of money you save from using this budgeting tool and to me is not a factor in the grand scheme of things when trying to fix your financial situation even with a tight budget. Once you get a hang of it nobody says if you find a way to maintain your budget another way that you can’t cancel the subscription. You will still have most of the features you need with the free version. I feel like to expect this to all be free and not have to pay for this convenience that this gives you would be a bit a sense of entitlement. Not a good trait. Pay the 10 bucks and use the heck out of it.

by Deal Deals

Since our retirement we really track our spending and EveryDollar is irreplaceable for doing that.
The amounts shown in "remaining" however have never added up correctly. Even if I remove our budget line item for emergency fund. The total does not correspond when I manually add the remaining to spend. For us, it would be better if that ONLY remaining amount only included the amounts to spend.
Since the latest update there is a glitch....when I enter in a line item for expenses, it used to show, via a green line, that the spend amount has been entered, it doesn't do that anymore on SOME of the items entered. Specifically on our recurring monthly expense items.
I've recommended EveryDollar so many times, yes it takes a few months to become accustomed to using it, however...those few months are WELL worth it. Wish those people would start using it, because I can see the money being thrown out the window by those I have recommended EveryDollar to...😢
We are so happy to finally be in complete control of our finances.

by Steph1234567892

I love EveryDollar and the user friendliness of it over the other highly rated apps in it field. My only complaint is that there is no way to set up your allocations on EveryDollar so a written form is still necessary for those that get paid multiple times a month. I think for almost $10 a month that there should be all of the tools that Dave Ramsey has in printable form on his website on EveryDollar as well.
MAKE THE ALLOCATIONS AN OPTION ON EveryDollar !
All the other things like lump sum payments can be set up using the “Fund” feature, break down of savings, and irregular income planning by setting up as many categories as you desire BUT it is lacking this and this is a huge part of being successful. PLEASE MAKE THE ALLOCATIONS AN OPTION ON EveryDollar and I will gladly give this five stars!
Also as a side note but not a deal breaker or loose of any stars is that it doesn’t like to stay connected to my PayPal account/credit card so I have to re-login when I want it to up day per my paying off that debt and any online purchases I do through PayPal not very many for me so not a big deal.
Thank you!

by Isthisnametakenyet74837483

I like EveryDollar for budgeting. There used to be an issue where if your bank account got disconnected in the middle of the month, then you’d have to recategorize all your transactions over again once the connection was restored. It was a pain. They seemed to have “fixed” that. I use quotes around “fixed” because the already-categorized transactions now stay where you had them, but EveryDollar reimports the duplicate transactions and notifies you that it deleted the duplicates—repeatedly. There is an orange dot in the Transactions tab that will not go away. You tap on the transactions tab, get the message letting you know EveryDollar deleted the duplicate transactions for you. Ok. Go back to your budget tab, and the orange dot appears again on the Transactions tab. Does not matter if I try to look at the duplicate transactions, it doesn’t help. There is also no way to permanently delete them.

While the old way was annoying because you may have to redo your transaction categories, this is annoying because the notification won’t go away. Please fix!

by Lsr_99

I like EveryDollar so far! I think it’s really going to help my financial organization. The only thing missing is being able to share it with your partner! Maybe i missed that feature somehow, but being able to share with a spouse or significant other your finances also impact it would be nice to have separate budgets but be able to view both of them. Or even better, put in both incomes while being able to distribute that into both shared budgets and individual budgets. Ex: say my spouse and i both have a joint ‘giving’ budget being able to have both our spendings in the budget reflected would be nice. Meanwhile, we may have individual lifestyle budgets that could be viewed by both but no impacted by both of our spendings. And to go a step further each be able to assign accounts (credit/debit cards) to a person if you know only 1 of you use that card so it only shows up for them to assign the expenses to. Not sure how to turn this into an efficient reality but it’s a concept i’d love to see them try out in EveryDollar !

by Ambeautiful

EveryDollar is pretty wonderful. I was kind if doing my own thing on the note function on my iPhone but this is definitely better. It’s very easy to use, customizable, I love how it can link with bank accounts and with the baby steps app.
I do love how you can make certain items “funds” so that you can save for bigger things like when your car insurance is due, Christmas, other things you’re saving for. It has ability to repeat items, set due dates, remind you when the due date is coming. If you make a purchase, say at the grocery store but some of that goes into the grocery fund and some of it goes into vitamin fund you can split it. I really could go on and on about how wonderful EveryDollar is.

The only thing I wish it had was the ability to remind you when something is due only once a year. I know I can make a fund, but sometimes I don’t need a fund to remind me once every 12 months that a charge under $100 is due on a certain month of the year. I just need a reminder or a list that my AAA membership fee is due in June and add that to my budget. I feel like every month there is a random yearly charge, whether it’s my AAA membership, yearly Zoo membership, Xbox Live, etc. Now, if they added this feature EveryDollar would be the best app ever. Although it really is nice to have a budget for larger expenses like car registration or car insurance.

by ICPOWELL

EveryDollar is great in that it is a logical way to budget. FPU has excellent information.

EveryDollar keeps kicking my bank account out and requires me to use a lesser level of security. Given that I have to pay $100 a year for the luxury of connecting my bank account I think it should work seamlessly. I have not changed anything on my account in over a year; yet every two months or so I have to delete my bank info and put it back in and the sift through the double charges. I’m not using a small bank either, it’s one of the largest in the country so there is no reason this app shouldn’t support it perfectly.

I don’t want to use a different app and I’ve even switched bank accounts when this app stopped supporting a credit union I was with - that was a pain. I hope Ramsey solutions puts some money behind EveryDollar to improve it. Especially if you are going to advertise in it and charge $100 a year for the premium feature.

by DC_Dave

EveryDollar and corresponding desktop interface is by far the best out there. It’s very customizable.
I’ve never been good at budgeting because I get paid bi-weekly and I have a variable income. I also travel unexpectedly for my job which throws off my budget by adding reimbursable expenses throughout the month. Through the help and suggestions of the this app support staff, I know now how to work EveryDollar as an effective tool with all those budgeting variables.

You work your current month budget with the paychecks from the previous month. Then I keep a “hill and vallley” account with just enough to cover any short months where my checks may not cover expenses. So far I haven’t had to use that account. For the travel expenses, I created an expense and income category of reimbursable expenses. I know how much I get per day for meals while traveling and I simply add that to the reimbursable lines as the month/travel has gone on. This has been a huge money saver for me. I’m controlling every aspect of my finances by budgeting. It’s the foundation for everything I’m doing with my money. And I highly recommend spending the $120 for financial peace university which as of now includes this app plus for a year. Worth. Every. Penny. (And no I don’t work for Dave Ramsey but it’s a great program for getting out of debt)

by Dleepero

EveryDollar is wonderful. The layout is very simplistic which is great for easily seeing where I’m at in terms of my spending. Believe it or not the function that sold me on EveryDollar was the ability to not only name my budget lines, but the budget categories as well. There were a few apps I tried where you were locked into the names they used. I truly felt like I got to completely customize my budget.

Bill reminders and linking your bank account are locked behind the paid version, which is fine, the developers made a great product and should be compensated as such. If you’re not willing to penny up and get the paid version, the free version is still marvelous.

I cannot tell you how many times the thought of “I should make a budget” has crossed my mind, If you’re in a similar position, stop reading this review and download it already! You’ll be glad you did. I am about to pay off my second credit card and am almost ready to tackle my auto loan. I’m never looking back.

by Kingxicano

I thought I wanted to stick to Dave Ramsey‘s paper budget printout. It seemed too much of a bother to get on the computer to do my budgeting but boy was I wrong! EveryDollar does all the adding, subtracting, re-adding, re-subtracting automatically for you! If I need to make a small adjustment to my budget I was having to re-calculate the whole month! What a hassle. Now I can make any adjustments so easily and this really keeps me on track. I prefer to do it on the large computer screen but it’s also so very handy to have the budgeting app on my phone for when I’m out I need to add in a transaction. Another thing I like to do is look at my bank screen on the computer, and use my phone for this app so I can add in the transactions. There are no advertisements or gimmicks. Since beginning Dave’s program in mid February we have paid off a total of $14,000 in debt and saved another $14,000 towards our emergency fund. EveryDollar was pivotal in helping me to organize our household budget. The best part is that my husband has been really impressed!

by Drummer44jesus

Been using EveryDollar for a few years and love it. Before then I had a complex spreadsheet I made for budgeting but when I married my wife that had to go.
We love the ease of use for setup and and maintaining the budget. And with the cloud-based syncing of data, my wife and I can each stay current because we share the same account.
There are a couple of quirks with EveryDollar . First, for unused funds in one category item to carry over from one month to the next that category needs to be setup as a Fund or else that money will “disappear” from the budget going into the new month. EveryDollar by default does not set a new category item as a fund; you have to change it yourself. Second, EveryDollar will not load the budget if you are not able to receive cellular data or connect to wifi. So if you are off the grid or traveling international without a data plan then good luck.
Haven’t tried the Plus feature so I can’t speak to that.
Thank you Dave Ramsey and team for blessing us and others with such a great service.

by Tyler-Rai

I read all of the reviews before signing up a year ago and a lot of people were having trouble with their paid subscription accounts. So I went the free route .... All I say is take your time signing up because some boxes are actually checked for you. To include the automatic reoccurring subscription. **I have never tried the paid version**

I downloaded EveryDollar because I watch Dave Ramsey videos online. Before EveryDollar I was doing a paper budget ... which I loved. So I just moved my paper notes to my phone. Another reason I went with the free version is because I’m used to having to make daily transactions deductions to my budget. It really does help me to stay on track ... forces me to actually check my checking account balance almost daily. Then inputting the amount into EveryDollar and placing it into the proper category allows me to see what, where, how much and how often I spending my money. Makes me feel as if I am using cash. It has become a habit for me to check my app for the available balance in a category before I go spending my money.

by CindyLuAshley

I have used just about every budgeting app on EveryDollar Store and they don’t seem to keep me coming back like Every dollar.
- I love the simplicity of the tracking methods and the quick data each budget category provides from synced transactions.
-With EveryDollar I find the more I use it, the more focused I become on where to save and structure my finances to reach certain financial goals.
-The only improvement would be implementing auto-categorizing of the synced transaction and prompt for approval rather than sorting every single one AND giving a category every month. With automatically giving a category (from past saved transactions) but still listing the transaction for approval, you are still reviewing the transaction but not having to do the same leg work every month when you are syncing transactions to place into the budget. This makes only it mush faster and you can still change the category if needed for a change in a specific transaction.
-Overall, this is the best app for me. I can easily track and update everything as well as see bank transactions and how my money is being spent every month.

by Leongwhyte

If you’re serious about keeping tabs on your budget, EveryDollar is a must-have! The free version is nice. However, for $100 per year, you can link your bank and or credit card accounts to track your spending. EveryDollar reminds you to create a budget for an upcoming month two or three days before the new month starts! It automatically copies the previous month’s info which makes it easy to tweak budget items and amounts. EveryDollar is intuitive because you can create a fund (like a Christmas gift shopping fund, or a vacation fund) and tuck money away each month knowing that when it’s time to pay for that cruise, you can easily transfer the funds and pay without worry. EveryDollar also allows you to enter long-term payment accounts; car loan information for example, can be entered and you can more or less keep track of what is owed, on EveryDollar . This has made life so much easier for my family! I love Excel, but for $100 per year, I don’t have to spend hours each month tracking where the money went!! Thank you Mr. Ramsey!!

by BusyAFMom

I have used EveryDollar for a couple of years, and even paid to take the FPU classes; but, recently I contacted support to get help because—all of a sudden I can’t sign in!! It keeps asking for me to “sign in or create account!” It took quite a while to get my budget where I needed it and now I can’t get to it!! Support wasn’t much help either, the prompt let’s you know that those with the PAID FOR version of EveryDollar will be serviced first😳! I’ve been trying to get this fixed for weeks. I’m going to have to go back to Mint or GoodBudget, if the Dave Ramsey crew, can’t get this straightened out. I will NOT pay for the “plus” version and am starting to wonder if this glitch is only affecting those of us without the paid for version. I sincerely hope that is not the case.

We are a recently retired military family and I’ve talked up Dave Ramsey and his books and the Financial Peace University study for years...word of mouth is VERY powerful; I hope I am WRONG about this “glitch” being a ruse to get people to subscribe to the paid app.

I hope EveryDollar creators can get this GLITCH corrected quickly... very disappointed, this has been going on for at least two (2) months.

by Jack_0811

First of all being the fact that I signed up for a 14 day trial and then immediately was charged for it. How is that a trial if I’m paying for it right away? To make matters worse I paid through Apple. Everdollar says they can’t refund those types of payments. That’s convenient. Also they don’t give the option to choose the monthly subscription. “Want a 14 day trial? P.S. we’re going to charge you a full years subscription before you’re able to decide if any of this is what you want 😉”.

On a lesser note but still irritating. I use a credit card for everything for security purposes so no place I make purchases can possibly have access to the accounts where my personal cash is located. Just in case a place of business gets hacked then I won’t be dealing with an empty account for up to three months. Everdollar of course advises against the use of a credit card even if in my case when it’s not accumulating debt, it’s just a security measure. So when I use the card it shows up in this app as debt even though it’s not debt it’s normal spending that I will refund using my cash from a separate bank. So I can’t even use EveryDollar normally because it just thinks I’m constantly going deeper into debt.

by Anmateo715

First, I have to say my wife and I really enjoy using EveryDollar to track all of our expenses! I love having the ability to drag and drop new transactions into each category. I also like being able see when we go over our under or our projected expenses and having a visual representation of our remaining amounts per category. Having access to budgeting resources and financial peace university is also a huge plus!

However, I would really like to have the ability to see which account the transaction came from on the transaction details screen. This would help tremendously in sorting transactions since my wife and I use several different accounts for different purposes. Additionally, I think it would be helpful to have access to a graph or chart that shows spending/saving trends per category over time. This would give users more insight into their spending habits and their ability to accurately project expenses each month.

Overall, this a great app that is close to being the perfect budgeting tool!

by Quiet Please

I love EveryDollar and recommend it to everyone!! I have really been able to get my family finances in order and have started saving a lot. If you’re looking for a budgeting app, your financial situation is most likely not great, just like mine before using EveryDollar . So here’s a money saving tip, you don’t need to pay for premium service. Enter everything yourself and be very hands on with all money coming in and going out and you will really start to see results. Good luck!
One complaint only and I guess it’s minor. There was recently an update where retailer names will automatically be suggested when entering an expense. Please get rid of it. The local grocery store is not listed and many other places I shop are not listed either. Please go back to the way it was before. It was great. The only thing that would have made that better would be to save the names from my previous entries and then suggest those instead of what it suggests now.
Thanks, love EveryDollar .

by Like_a_gazelle

Since 2004, I’ve used Quicken for our personal financial management. As far as the budget goes, EveryDollar blows Quicken’s budgeting tool out of the water. Every Dollar is so user friendly, and the zero dollar concept is much more effective than Quicken’s how much you make- how much you spend method. I love that Every Dollar makes you assign every incoming dollar. If your like me, and tend to overspend in certain categories, you’ll have to take from another category to balance out to zero. Knowing this has helped me re-think impulse buys. I also love that my husband and I both can see and use EveryDollar from our cell phones. This means that I don’t have to call him and ask what was the charge or that charge. He can go in and assign it to the appropriate category himself very easily and quickly.

I’ve only just started but already I think it’s going to be a great tool for my husband and I to complete all the baby steps.

by QueenELC

We started with the basic this app app 3 years ago and quickly upgraded to the premium because we couldn’t stay on top of loading our purchases. Game changer and worth every penny! My husband and I can both use the same account to make it easy to be on the same page. Easy to change budget amounts. Can’t change the line item name. Sometimes it logs me out but not a big deal since I remember my info. The emergency savings “goal” I haven’t quite figured out yet because you can put a goal amount but when you save the amount for the month and drag it into that line item, it still shows incompleted. The line items carry over from month to month but I wish there was an option to flag line items as quarterly, annually of every 2 months so I don’t have to remember. Overall a great app to use with your spouse and start telling your money where to go and start winning with your money!