With great travel comes great responsibility. That’s not exactly how the original phrase goes, but we’re using our artistic license here to make a point. Getting your finances in order ahead of and during travel, is essential to keeping your leisure time enjoyable and stress-free. The financial part can even be fun if you do it the right way. I.e. by using the Toshl Finance apps, of course. 😉😊

To explore how tracking your finances works on a trip, we partnered with Yanely, better known as MissBeHelpful on YouTube.

She made some really great videos with her first-hand accounts both of her experiences of traveling in Barcelona, as well as her finance tracking with Toshl during that time. Check out the videos, as well as some extra questions we asked Yanely below.

 

 

How did you first come upon the Toshl app?

I was a teacher fresh out of college and really struggling to manage my credit card debt which was almost $20k in total! I had way too many unnecessary expenses at that time and I definitely wasn’t budgeting, so I google searched budgeting apps and I read a few articles. I downloaded a couple of different apps and I remember thinking that Toshl was one of the easiest ones to use. (I was also glad it was free because I was broke.)

 

What did you like the most about it?

I liked that I was able to get started in no time! I literally had a budget with a spending/saving goal in a matter of minutes. I loved the visuals, the fun little monster and the notifications reminding me to enter my expenses before bed. As with all budgets, if you don’t use it consistently, it really won’t work for you. The reminders helped me stay consistent and keep the budget up to date.

 

Are you using it on Android or iOS phone?

I use it on my iPhone 7.

 

Did you try the Medici premium plan?

I tried Medici premium for a month since I was traveling for the summer and I figured it would be best to have everything in one place. When I started out I was in a lot of debt, so paying for an app wasn’t high on my list of priorities, and I don’t recommend paying for apps when you’re still in debt. But now that I’m debt-free and I have a nerdy passion for personal finance I’m a lot more willing to invest in apps and services that I know will help me reach my goals.

 

 

Who would you recommend the Toshl app to?

It’s definitely great for new budgeters who want a simple and quick way to get started. I work with a lot of HS and college students who use mostly cash and debit cards to make transactions, so I recommend the app to them. Also, people who aren’t interested in budgeting tools that have strict rules which you need to follow to the T. There’s a lot of wiggle room when it comes to how you use the app which is great – you can choose as many categories as you want for an expense and you can decide if you want to budget by category or by a certain time frame.