Money Lover Review (Expense-tracking app)
A lot of people asked me recently about the app I use to track my expenses. To the best of my ability, I answered them personally – I use an app called Money Lover. It is available for Android, Apple, and Windows platform. They use the freemium model – free use, pay to unlock features. Here is the website.
There’s many reason why I love the Money Lover app more than other types of expense tracking app. I’ve been tracking my expenses for a while (~10 years, give or take), and I’ve used the pen+paper method, custom Excel spreadsheets, and many other expense-tracking apps.
First up, free expense tracking apps exists. But as of mid 2014 when I stopped using the free ones and used Money Lover exclusively, the free ones suck. The apps would freeze, or it would limit features, or it’s simply not user-friendly enough.
Secondly, I maintain that the best expense tracking method is the method that works best for you. If you are comfortable with the abacus, go for it (lol).
Here is my Money Lover review, as the 9 things I personally love about the app.
Note: This is not a sponsored post. I do not earn money from this endorsement.
1. They are made by our ASEAN friends
When I first downloaded it, I didn’t know that it was made by a team of Vietnamese developers.
How awesome is that? I’m so happy that they are making it globally. I’m so happy that I get to support our ASEAN buds.
2. You can create ‘Wallets’
You can make multiple ‘wallets’, if you need to track expenses separately. For me, I only have 2: Income (where I track all of my net worth) and Expenses (where I track all of my spending).
I imagine you can add ‘Business expenses’ wallet too, if you need it. Anything. Personalise it.
3. You can make pretty graphs!
I like beautiful graphs. They make me happy. When I view the overview of my expenses, my categories (I have 16 categories, here for breakdown) look like this:
Nice, no??
4. You can assign your own categories, with a cute icon
The basic icons are:
Not enough? Need more icons?
5. You can get more icons if you want (some free, most icon packs cost RM3.50)
Look at all the options you have!
Yes yes you have to pay for some of them, but honestly, in the perceived world of ‘boring’ personal finance, I love that they include so much effort in providing great graphics. Anything that makes you excited over doing your finances are a-OK for me.
6. You can use the widget to easily submit and track your expenses
This is my second screen on my Android device. See the widget? All I have to do is touch the ‘+’ sign and add my expenses. It’s fast. I don’t have to open the app and find the right page before submitting.
To submit an expense, you set 4 things: category, date, amount, and notes.
7. You can see your spending habits over time in ‘Trends’
I’ve shown this a couple of times, but you can easily check your spending trend using this app.
You can check by category (say if you want to track how much you spent on groceries for the past year), or by month (below).
8. You can make notes of your spending and search for it
I mentioned this in passing in No 5, but I love to add notes when I track my expenses.
Last time, my landlord wanted to know when I last serviced the air con. How would I remember! Thankfully, I searched the app and found that I paid for it in July.
It’s handy that way 🙂
8. There’s so many features
You can track progress of existing debts, or create budgets for specific categories. You can set recurring transactions (although this was buggy last time, I hope they fixed it), and turn on ‘travel mode’ (which I’ve yet to try).
9. There’s so many tools!
Okay to be fair I don’t use a majority of these. I do export it into CSV and Excel for backup purposes. But the array of available tools are impressive!
Let’s address something, though. Money Lover is a bit expensive for an app, but you get what you pay for.
Let’s face it. You can get free apps. You can get the ones that sell for RM3.50. If you’re on a strict budget, give those a go, they’re probably good too.
Money Lover app costs USD4.99. I bought it last year, in July for RM16.68 (I literally searched the app and found the notes I made during the time). With the exchange rate right now, it’s at least RM20.
I love this app, so I am endorsing it. I think it’s worth every cent. Do you agree or disagree? What app do you use? What method do you use? Share with me!
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I personally use Money Lover myself and find the mobile app an absolute joy to use when tracking my daily expenses aswell since i last purchased it in Feb 2016.
By all means, buy the app and support the developers! It costs around RM20 after conversion – a small price for such a rich expense tracking app.
Keep going with the good write ups!
Kan! I really like this app too. The widget makes it easy to track expenses.
Thanks for your comment, Ian C!
I just started using this app on Feb 16 as well, this is my 2nd month recording my expenses on it.
really like the app but I haven’t buy premium yet. 😡
You can get away using other expense tracking apps. Granted, many don’t give full features unless you get premium.
Money Lover is close to my heart because its ASEAN-made. It’s also a tad more expensive than others. Get another type if you’re cash-strapped!
Why the angry emoticon la
1 question I would like to ask you. how would you record expenses in different currency. for example MYR and USD.
Omg I’m still trying to figure out the best way to do this, actually. I hold MYR, USD, GBP, bitcoin, and ether, so it gets confusing sometimes.
Usually, I estimate to nearest RM equivalent and just record that. No sense tracking expenses in different currencies.
Do you have a better way? Do share!
Hi Suraya,
actually the angry emotion is : + ‘ + ( I thought is crying emotion. lol
anyway, I just bought premium. there is a lot functionalities that I personally use now.
like event expenses recording and also multiple wallet and budget tracking.
for the question I asked about how you would record diff currency expenses, I found a way I can keep track of that. I use different wallet for different currency type, each wallet can set a specific country currency. that is how I do it now.
and 1 thing on the travel-mode. you have to first create an event, for example:- UK visit , and then you turn on travel-mode and select UK visit event. then all your expenses recorded will be linked to UK visit until you turn off the travel-mode, this way you can keep track all the expenses for this special event and easily differentiated them from daily/normal expenses.
cheers!
and moneylover have their own blog, which also teaches tips n tricks of using moneylover. do check out the link http://note.moneylover.me/
Hi,
Im exploring a tracker app and am exploring money lover after reading your post. Do you link your bank accounts to the app? Is this generally safe? I am very tempted to do so but I am concerned about the security. What do you think?
Hey NC, personally I haven’t. Same reason as you – concerned with security. I don’t see a need now but maybe in the future if I need it I guess, see how it goes :/
Hi! Is the app a one-time buy or do I have to pay for the Premium every month like a subscription? Been thinking of buying the app so I can add more wallets and also because it’s been really convenient and handy so far. Thanks a lot!
It’s one-time purchase 🙂
Hi Suraya,
I use expenseIQ for the past 5 years and I actually did start my spending tracker using money lover in 2012 but somehow I ended up with ExpenseIQ in the end.
Actually ExpenseIQ is based in the UK Google Playstore so it might not be famous for Malaysian but you can actually check it out.
I can’t wait for their Christmas sale (half price premium account for £19.99) .
Premium package supports cloud backup and unlimited wallet. I think now is the right time to buy the Premium Version since CIMB Cash Rebate Platinum has rebate for overseas spend and Pound is so cheap at the time being. 🙂
Love your write up. Keep on being frugal on spendings!
Thanks for the tip, Asyraf, that app sounds like a contender to Money Lover!
Is is this app can import from other formats such as CSV? I have been using Expense Manager from 2012 but now the app little bit slow to open. I don’t want to lose all my data.
Hi Suraya,
Wondering if you have link up MoneyLover to your banks?
My concern is similar to yours – security hence I havent decided to purchase this app or not. Cheers!
Hey k,
I’m concerned about security too, and decided to not link my banks to the app. Only use it to track expenses, that’s it.
I heard Money Lover app is much pricier now. If you’re not going to use all the features I’d recommend trying other apps
Been using this apps since 2016. I wonder if the developer is able allocate a function for a customise icon fo the wallet instead of the stock & purchase one. Because i have a few account to managed. It’s convenience to switch between wallet or looking for transaction while at looking at the wallet icon
Hey George,
Sometimes they offer free icons during special occasions or holiday seasons -you can use those 🙂
I can’t believe this post has comments that date way back 2016 haha hello I just joined the workforce this 2020 and I’m looking for a budgeting app and came across this post. Are you still using Money Lover until now? Thank you!
yes, I am! 6 years using it now and still love it!
Hi Suraya! Any chance you’d be doing an updated review of Money Lover?
Hi Christie! I don’t have plans for that, but good idea, will add to article ideas list 🙂
In case you haven’t, check out this article on budgeting styles. If tracking via app doesn’t work for your lifestyle, there are other ways: https://ringgitohringgit.com/money-management/budgeting-style/
Adoi I just wanna get into tracking budget and this app cost 75myr now (apparently this is with 50% discount!!) so still contemplating purchasing it.
I’m blown away by how costly it is now!!!