What is Emma?
You know that we only share ideas that will benefit us and our readers. We’ve recently learned about a budgeting app called Emma, and that’s what we want to share with you today.
Emma is a budgeting app that combines information from all your bank accounts, credit cards, investments & savings accounts. It was founded in 2018 by two Manchester University graduates and was the first UK-based management app to launch in the US and Canada in June 2019. How cool is that?
How does it work?
Wouldn’t you love to visually see an app that shows you exactly where your money goes?
Emma is like a ‘fitness tracker for your money’. You can connect the app to all your accounts using bank-level encryption for maximum security. It can then sync all your budget items (eating out, transport, groceries, etc.) to the day you get paid. That’s a really good idea because you don’t have to try to remember and run the risk of forgetting!
By getting real-time information and accessing historical information from your accounts, the app tracks all your payments & expenses by category throughout the month and makes you aware of future commitments such as bills & subscriptions. I really like this idea because it helps you to stay within your budget.
It is particularly helpful as the app shows you how much money you can really spend, and Emma will send you weekly reports and notifications when you are spending too fast. You may even decide if you want to use this information from the app to boost your budget.
Who should use Emma?
Anyone with a smartphone who struggles to stay on top of their finances. can use the app. The app is available on the Apple & Google app stores and setting up an account is surprisingly easy. Just search for your bank, credit card or investment provider and link them up within the app as you normally would using your security details.
So far, more than fifty thousand folks have downloaded the app from the Playstore. I’m confident that it can help me to sort out my finances so I have downloaded it too. The app itself is free to download and that is a real plus.
The process is very simple, user-friendly and self-explanatory. You can even connect digital banks such as Monzo, Starling Bank or Revolut in a few clicks using Touch ID on iPhone for maximum security.
What do you get?
After downloading the app and connecting your account/s you will be able to navigate between 4 main sections, which are summarised below.
Feed: With a similar feel to Instagram or Facebook, you can scroll to view expenses, subscriptions, spending summaries and reminders.
Analytics: This gives you a detailed breakdown of income and expenses across all your accounts. You can set up budgets and view your expenses by category or merchant.
Accounts: This is where you can manage your individual accounts and add some more, which are split between Everyday, Savings & Investments categories
More: Here you can carry out requests, sign up to ‘Emma Pro’ and access various offers such as energy provider switching or remortgaging.
What banks can you connect with Emma?
- American Express
- Bank of Scotland
- Barclaycard
- Barclays
- Capital One
- First Direct
- HSBC
- Halifax
- Lloyds Bank
- MBNA
- Metro Bank
- Monzo
- Nationwide
- Natwest
- Paypal
- Revolut
- Royal Bank of Scotland
- Santander
- Starling Bank
- TSB Banks
- Tesco Bank
- The Co-operative Bank
- Virgin Money Credit Cards
- Virgin Money Savings
What do I personally like about Emma?
Everything! Namely, you are advised when you are nearing your spending limit. This can help you to avoid such things as using your overdraft amounts. I’ve also linked up Emma to my Monzo account that I use specifically for holiday money and spends so I think this is a winning combination.
Also, I was relieved that for such a good app, it does not take up much device storage space. I use several apps on my phone at the moment and I notice that it always says that I am out of space whenever I try to download a new app. With the Emma app, however, I was able to download it without any issue at all.
Now, over to you. Download the Emma app and see how you too can benefit from using it. Do let us know what you think in the comment section below.
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