Know where you stand without opening anything
Nobody quits a money app. They just stop opening it.
Most days in the first week. Some days in the second. Then one Sunday you notice it has been three weeks, the numbers in it are fiction, and catching up feels like homework — so you leave it another week.
It was never the app. It is that checking costs a decision. Unlock, find it, wait, read — four steps you have to want, in front of a question you were only mildly curious about. Mild curiosity loses that fight every time.
So take the decision out. Put the number where your thumb already is.
The forty seconds that actually decide it
Not the end of the month. A shop, a thing in your hand, and the small question of whether this one is fine.
You are holding something that costs sixty euros. The question is not what you spent last month — it is whether this is fine. Normally you guess, because finding out properly costs more attention than the question is worth, and then you find out at the end of the month when it is a fact rather than a choice.
With the widget up, the answer is already on the screen in your hand: fifty-three per cent of the month gone, and it is still green. You put it in the basket or you put it back, and either way you decided with a number instead of a feeling.
A budget you look at on the 30th is a receipt. The same budget on the 18th is still a decision, and there is a fortnight left to make it.
Eleven questions. Pick the one you keep asking.
Each of these is a widget, and you only need the one or two that match the thing you actually wonder about. Put those up and ignore the rest.
† These two read the bills you have set to repeat, which is part of Pro. They install on the free plan like the others and wait until there is something to count.
Half a second is all it gets. That is all it needs.
These are the real ones, at the size they will be on your phone. Look at them the way you actually will: for a moment, on the way to doing something else.
Each one leads with the figure you came for and puts the context under it in small type. Half a second gets you the number. A second longer tells you what it is measured against.
Not the app’s front door. Budget widgets open your budget, spending ones open your analytics, and Add Transaction opens the form itself — one tap from a locked phone to typing an amount.
The same widget, twice in one month. Green while you are on pace, amber once you are not — the app decides that itself, from how much of the budget is gone against how much of the month is. From across the room you have already got the answer.
There is no red anywhere in it. Going over a budget is a thing to work with in the week you have left, not an alarm to flinch at and then start ignoring.
Nothing to pull down, tap or wake up. If the number changed, the number on your screen changed.
Right on a plane, right in a lift, right in the aisle of a shop with one bar.
Nothing to set up, nothing to check on, nothing to connect. Put it up once and stop thinking about it.
One of them gets you before you even unlock
On iPhone the streak goes on the lock screen as well. It is the only one of the eleven that does, and it is the one that has earned it.
A balance is something you look up when you want it. A streak is something you can lose without noticing, and the moment that decides it is the one just before you unlock the phone and start spending — which is exactly where the lock screen is.
Twelve months in a row and two to go until the next badge, read in the half second it takes to check the time. Nobody wants to be the person who broke it on a Tuesday because they were not thinking.
All eleven, on the free plan
No widget you have to pay to put up, and nothing held back on the ones you do.
- ✓Every one of the eleven, on iPhone and on Android
- ✓The streak on the iOS lock screen
- ✓As many on a screen as you want, in any size they offer
- ✓Nothing to connect — they read the accounts you already added
Bills Due This Week and Upcoming Bill both read the bills you have set to repeat, and setting bills to repeat is part of Pro. On the free plan they go up like the others and wait, because there is nothing yet for them to count. The other nine have something to tell you from the day you install the app.
What people ask before they put one up
No. Whatever you last logged is what the widget shows, so the number is right when you glance at it — with the app closed, with no signal, and without you having done anything to make it so.
Yes, all eleven. Two of them are about bills you have set to repeat, and repeating bills are a Pro feature, so on Free those two install and sit empty until there is something to show. The other nine work from the day you install the app.
Yes. The same eleven are built for both, drawn from the same design so a household running one of each sees the same widget. On iPhone the streak also fits the lock screen, which no other one of them does.
It opens the screen behind it rather than the app's home. The budget widgets go to your budget, the spending ones to Analytics, the bill ones to your recurring transactions, and Add Transaction goes straight to the form with nothing in between.
It takes a long press and about ten seconds
Install Wealtie, add one account, then hold down on your home screen and pick the question you keep asking. Ten seconds now, and you stop spending them every time you wonder.
