Welcome to 2014 Toshlers! May it be an exciting one.
Here’s a little tip of what we like to do on January 1st.
1. Open up Toshl and set the time span for the entire 2013.
2. Switch to tags view.
3. Marvel at how much you spent on coffees, booze, transport or whatever tickled your fancy in 2013.
Gives you a good sense of perspective and probably serves up a few shockers. If there’s anything particular bothering you, perhaps it’s time to start a new budget as a New Year resolution. ;)
Guest post by Aviva Tabachnik – Partnerships Executive at MyCurrencyTransfer
I’m delighted to have been invited by team Toshl to talk about a subject very close to my heart. Yes, currency is a little boring. Yes, it can be very annoying with lots of numbers and rates. However, I think it’s also well worth sharing with the wonderful Toshl fan base a small finance tip that has saved me a fortune over the past 12 months. Namely, ‘‘0% commission slogans on currency are a myth.’’
Here are my top 10 currency commandments for scoring a better deal, whether you are transferring money abroad OR buying holiday cash:
1. Ignore 0% commission – it’s purely a marketing gimmick designed to confuse. A terrible rate with 0% commission leaves you out of pocket
2. All currency companies make money the same way: they apply a transaction fee (think 0% commission) and add a markup away from the ‘real exchange rate.’
3. The markup applied is the strongest indicator of whether you have scored a competitive currency quote
4. The closer the rate you are offered is to the ‘real exchange rate’ the better the deal. The wider the difference, the worse the deal
5. Use a reputable currency converter tool to check and benchmark the difference between ‘sell rate’ and the ‘real rate’
6. Airports are the world’s most expensive place to exchange currency. They typically add markups of over 10% away from the real rate of exchange
7. Buying currency online for home delivery or airport pickup will always lead to preferential exchange rates
8. If you are sending large amounts of money abroad, consider the use of a non-bank foreign exchange specialist. They can offer 85% cheaper quotes than your bank
9. Don’t fall for the trap of ‘dynamic currency conversion’ when paying for goods abroad. If they ask you whether you want to ‘pay in local currency or your home currency’ always select the local currency.
10. Once you’ve bought currency, don’t fret over currency fluctuations and whether you could have held off longer or booked too soon. Not even the biggest currency analysts of top banks know with 100% accuracy which way the market is moving.
Aviva Tabachnik is a keen personal finance writer & partnerships executive at MyCurrencyTransfer – an OPP award winning foreign exchange comparison website.
Sometimes you need to know how much you spent in an exact time span so you how costly were your holidays or to file an expense report at work. I’m sure you can think of many other situations. In the web app on toshl.com you can do it easily and quicker than you can say “omgthisiscoolerthanapinkflyingdolphin”. Here’s how.
1. Set a custom time span
Just click on the name of the month and an overlay will show up with the time span settings. Click on the custom timespan tab. Set the custom dates you want or use one of the preset options. Click Save. All the data in the web app is now displayed according to those criteria.
We noticed a lot of people don’t find the time span settings right away, we promise to make it more obvious in the next version.
2. Export the financial data
In the navigation bar, click on export. You’ll notice that the default option for export has now changed from the name of the current month to the custom time span you just set. If that’s the range you want, just click on the file type or service you want it exported in. Once you click, it will be downloaded to your computer or transferred to the service you selected. People using Toshl Finance for free can download their data in CSV, while Toshl Pro users can also export to Excel, PDF, Google Docs or Evernote.
Toshl monsters are rejoicing, racing go-karts all around the place, while some of them hang from the chandelier clinking champagne bottles. More than one million people have registered on Toshl Finance so far and the number keeps climbing up quickly!
Take a good look at the cake and you’ll see which mobile platforms people on Toshl use the most. Layers of the cake represent the share of a mobile platform with Toshl users.
We’re incredibly grateful for your support. We’ll keep on doing our best to improve your finances. Great new developments are already afoot in the Toshl Labs. We’ll keep it mostly under wraps for now but, let’s just say that those with a receipt documenting passion and bank account promiscuity won’t be left wanting.
Each day we are amazed by how awesome people using Toshl are. We get a lot of great feedback on what they would like to see in the future versions as well as questions about how things work or how to resolve a problem. To make this process easier we’re introducing a new support system on our website.
