It’s the small things we overlook—a cup of coffee here, a cab fare there—and next thing you know you’re staring at your online banking summary wondering how another paycheck slipped through your fingers.
Common Purchases was created with the philosophy that we are creatures of habit and consumers of predictable expenses. So if we can simply track our little costs and remember to record them, a budget might finally be more than wishful thinking.
This app lets you create categories of all the common items you buy, with default prices that you can always adjust and icons to upload from your photo library or the app’s list of images. Unlike other finance apps that make you type in each purchase every time, Common Purchases takes only two taps to record and deduct expenses from your account total. (The app comes with a security pin option to keep pesky friends from viewing your meager savings).
The clutter-free interface has other sections for tracking deposits and searching through purchase history by month or date. It also offers breakdown reports of the categories where you spend the most money and reads your location when you enter each item so you can look it up later using Google Maps.
They don’t all have to be habitual buys, either. The app leaves room for some spontaneity with a tab that lets you type in random purchases without constantly creating new item categories.
That said, making an icon for buying iPhone apps and logging this one for 99 cents would be a great place to start.
