How Labels On Wallet Helped A Student Bid Goodbye to Junk Food

Many personal finance management apps are built to make you feel miserable about the way you manage money. There are red flags when there’s too little money in your account. There’re too many nosey nudges when you overspend. And, there are constant reminders about how you’ve failed yet again! In short, checking these apps feel like a vicious circle of reminding yourself how poor or bad at managing money you are.

At BudgetBakers, we try to steer clear of this. We want you to look at your finances with an open mind and arm you with the ‘knowledge’ that you need. To make good decisions and to take control over your life. We’re talking about positive changes, turning your life around and being in the driver’s seat of your finances.

And, we’re more than delighted when we hear that our users make lasting changes in their lives, thanks to the information that Wallet provides them. This week, we have one of our young users, Tudor Plugaru, a student at the Technical University in the Republic of Moldova, who has found a way to use Wallet to be more responsible not just about his finances, but also about his eating habits. He used Wallet’s charts and labels in his own way to make some great changes in his life. Here’s Tudor’s story:

Why I started using Wallet

My main goal when I started using Wallet was to track my money. I found that even before the month ended, all my money would have gone! It has been almost a year that I have been using Wallet now.

All about tracking

Tracking my spending opened my eyes to where exactly my money was going. There are many things we spend on that we do not think too much about. Wallet made me more conscious about my spending choices.

Labels, my favourite feature

I know of many people who say that bank connections is their favourite feature on Wallet. But for me, it is hands down Charts and Labels. I love how Wallet lets you filter your records with Labels and that we can even use them in creating and managing budgets. In charts, I mostly check the income and expense structure and the spend by categories, and spend by labels charts.

Busting bad habits with Wallet

It goes without saying that as a young student, I like to eat easy, tasty junk food. But I noticed that over time, I was spending a lot on eating out. It wasn’t so evident to me because the spending wasn’t so huge each time. But however small the amount you spend may be, when it happens every day and when it adds up, the number becomes huge and leaves a dent in your wallet. So I decided to track specifically my consumption of junk food on Wallet.

I created a Label called junk food and also set up a budget with this label and put a spending limit on it.

The first few times I was amazed at the speed at which the bar on my budget was turning orange. It got me thinking that whether all this money that I was spending on junk food was in fact doing me any good.

In some time, I slowed down on the spending, because I had a clear idea about how much I could spend, thanks to the budget forecast chart.

It was a good exercise in being mindful of what I put in my mouth by tracking just how much I spent on the food.

Now, I have a clear idea how much I can spend on junk food and eating out that I take care to strike a good balance. I don’t believe in restricting myself, but I don’t want to go all out as well.

The biggest lesson I learnt

Wallet just reinstated my belief that money has to be tracked. Especially, in a country like the Republic of Moldova, where every Leu (our national currency) is important. It allowed me to make good spending decisions, without having me spend too much time figuring these things out.

Wallet visualizes your spending decisions for you and that is when you can really understand how even a small payment you make has an impact on your monthly savings. I used the analytics provided by the app in a constructive way to modify my spending habits and take control of my finances.

Habits die hard. We're glad that Wallet helps you with this. @PlugaruTudor on how Wallet helped him eat healthier https://t.co/NiGwwbLPLx

— BudgetBakers (@budgetbakers) September 8, 2017