pocketsmith.com

Website: pocketsmith.com

What it does

PocketSmith was in pre-release stage when we reviewed it. Some of the features had not been finalised at the time of our review, although we liked what we saw. PocketSmith is similar to Who Stole My Money – but it differs from it and the other websites in that it’s based on a simple calendar and has a focus on forecasting.

You can look at a summary of your planned and actual spending over any period and analyse it in different ways. Sally said she found the layout and graphics encouraging. Kate loved the calendar and the ability to set multiple goals.

Who it suits

Some reviewers found this website tricky at first – but the more experienced and finance-geeky budgeters were enthusiastic. Several reviewers thought it was the website most able to double as a small business tool.

Smart bit

The calendar is extremely smart. Loading your planned spending and income into the calendar is easy; downloads of bank statements feed into the calendar as well. You’re told what day you’ll achieve your goals and you can easily see how this is affected by different spending plans.

However … this appears to be the only website where the data you load in (for example, what you spent on groceries rather than personal data) may be aggregated in a non-personally identifiable way with data from other users and supplied to third parties such as advertisers or research companies. The company doesn’t currently do this, but the privacy policy gives it the right to do so. If anonymous data aggregation bothers you, ask about the privacy policy before you commit to any online budget website.

Cost

The company told us that while access to the full version would be under $10 a month, there would always be a free cut-down version.