ANDROID: Looking for android budget app

[nite_monkey]

I'm looking for a simple money tracking app for android. I don't need it to have a bunch of fancy features. Pretty much all I am looking for is a digital version of those things you get with your checkbook that has a spot for description,expense,income,and new balance. I want to be able to be at walmart, or a fast food joint, and be able to just open the app, and input what I purchased, and how much it was, and then the app will subtract that from my total. I could also do the same for income (for example, a paycheck). It would then show me a list of all my transactions, and how much money I currently have in the bank. I am not looking for something like mint.com where It "attempts" (and for me, fails) to automagically read my online banking account, and add my transactions for me. It has to be manual. Don't want any automatic stuff that likes to break itself.(I'm talking to you mint.com!) A huge plus for me would be the ability to either A. view/edit all this from a website/program on my computer (syncing the app and program together somehow, dropbox maybe?), or B. backup the app's database to the cloud or somewhere not on my phone.(again maybe dropbox/google drive).

Right now I have a google doc spreadsheet that I manually add everything to. I can access this via the google drive app on my phone, and also via the google drive website on my computer. This works ok, but if I have to add/remove a transaction somewhere in the middle, I have to do a bunch of editing to get it all correct and what not. (yeah, I could use equations(I think that is what they are called?) to automatically update the total, but I am too lazy to do that.)

I would rather not have to pay for the app, and while not completely necessary, it would be nice if the app didn't have ads. (don't go out of your way to look for an ad free app is what I mean here)

[ewemoa]

IIUC, the following should meet the criteria of not having to pay for the app (source code should be avaliable too) -- not sure about the other criteria though:

Budget
Daily Money
GnuCash

[nite_monkey]

I thought I would really like GnuCash, because I have heard of it, but didn't know that there was a windows version. I installed it, and really enjoyed the desktop version, but then I installed the android version, and as far as I could tell, the only thing I can import from the desktop version, is the account names. I couldn't get it to import the transactions. Didn't really like that, so I did some more looking, and ran across CalendarBudget. It's online only, and completely manual. It doesn't have an actual android app, but the mobile version of the website looks pretty cool, and is very easy to use, so I just created a widget from a chrome bookmark of the website. I think I found a winner!

[Deozaan]

I'd recommend You Need a Budget (YNAB) for PC/Mac (you just missed it on sale on Steam for about $15) to manage your budget and then use the accompanying Android app.

It includes Cloud Sync (using Dropbox) from your desktop to Android (and vice versa). I've been using YNAB for about 5 years and it's pretty great. I know you don't want to pay for the app, but YNAB is worth it, IMO.

[nite_monkey]

YNAB sounds pretty cool. I don't currently have to pay monthly bills other than netflix and my phone bill, but I may have to check it out if I can ever find a job that pays enough for me to move out on my own.

[Deozaan]

It's not just for monthly bills. It's so that you can put every dollar you own to use, rather than thinking you only have to pay $50 a month in your phone/netflix bills and the rest can be spent on whatever, whenever. When you discipline yourself and assign your dollars to something, you're less likely to get caught off guard when your semi-annually (every six months) car insurance payment comes up. Or when your bi-annually (every 2 years) car registration comes up. Basically, it encourages you to put aside a little bit each month (essentially as "savings") so that when your car breaks down or that $300 insurance payment comes due, you're not suddenly scrapped for cash, because you were smart and thought ahead and broke it down into $50 monthly payments to yourself.

Etc.

What I described is Rule 1 of YNAB's Method. But there's a whole lot more than that, and you can read about YNAB's Method here (click on each of the four rules for details).