Mooch: Budgets For You 4+

First, let me start by saying I believe that this app is a great idea. But I hope it will get to the point where it works flawlessly and allows me to budget the way I want it to, versus the way the app wants me to.

For those who are looking to try the app, it’s very simple. There is a page that holds your “envelopes” which are your bills/expenses. You simply connect an account, create an envelope, set the date and amount due, and it automatically deposits the money into the app and withdrawals for you. By allowing them to hold your money, they give you interest earned in return. So over time, you end up earning (a small amount of extra money depending on how much you save) just to budget.

However, it has very simple flaws that make the experience difficult to make this my exclusive budgeting solution. For example, you are unable to adjust the date of your envelopes. If my phone bill changes from being due on the 15th, to the 10th or 18th, I have to cancel my envelope (lose my earned interest), and recreate the envelope.

There is also the issue of short term savings. They ask that you budget to almost a year in advance for a saving envelope. For small time savings, such as saving up for the holidays or an anniversary, this app doesn’t help at all.

They are making updates every week and I hope that these issues are updated. I suggest checking in on this app in the next few months to see what all has improved.

Hello! Thanks for your time to write out such a detailed review, it's really helpful for app improvements. We've added short term savings goals and edit envelope features to our future releases. It should be wrapped up by this winter, feel free to check in anytime hello@amoochlife.com :)

With each paycheck I have mooch automatically take the money out an allocate it to a certain expense or savings goal and then I know that whatever I have left in my checkings is left for me to spend. When a certain bill comes up I’m confident that mooch will have that money back in my account in time for me to make my payment. It makes it easy to budget and make sure that every dollar I own is being allocated and keeping up with savings goals. For me it works because the money is out of site and out of mind. I joined mooch almost immediately after app release and have seen it come a long way. I used to be frustrated by some of the limitations but I see that the app developers are actively listening to their users and am confident they will only make the app better with time. Some functionality I hope to see added with time is recurring expenses that are not on a standard monthly basis. (I have my dogs food autoshipped every 10 weeks and would like mooch to manage that money). I would also like to see more flexibility with savings goals by having the ability to add a lump sum of money when the folder is created and throughout its savings period. Sometimes people have cash already allocated to a savings goal that isn’t in mooch’s system yet and sometimes people get bonuses and other surprise money they would like to allocate. Nonetheless, I am optimistic these features may be added with time and I can work around this in the mean time.

Hi there, thanks for the feedback and sticking it out with us since the early days! We do read and listen to every feedback and have implemented many of the suggestions. The lump sum for savings goals is something we're working on. So hope to have it out soon. More improvements to come this year :)

I loved the idea of cash envelopes for keeping track of expenses, but the thought of having to take out cash after every pay period and organize into envelopes seemed like a lot of work, and I’d have a lot of anxiety over losing the envelopes. Mooch app allows me to have virtual cash envelopes, where they auto draft funds each time I have a paycheck, and then return the funds to me a day before the bill is do. It works really well. They also give you a day by day breakdown on how much you are able to spend to stay within your goals. My only downside is that most of my bills are due on the 1st of the month, but mooch has a cap limit on deposits, so I have had to offset the dates of a few of my bills so they don’t try to transfer on the same date. I also recommend users making their bill due date a day or two early as sometimes the money isn’t returned by the due date you set. Other than that, it’s a great app!

Hello, thank you for your feedback! We're working on the cap limit for deposits, other than that we're glad you're liking it so far :)