Copilot.Money Budget App Review & Why It's 100% Worth It

I write a lot about how to make money online, but what about how to keep it?

As much as industry-leading apps have dominated the financial tracking industry for years, longevity and dominance are not always the best factors in determining the best solution for an app – especially in a category like finance.

After being frustrated with budgeting apps like Mint, YNAB, and Pocketguard, I wanted something easier to use, visually appealing, and an app with in-depth customization.

Enter Copilot: a beautifully designed financial hub for your finances that lets you connect, customize, and conquer all of your accounts in one place.

Copilot is a finance management tool that helps you track your accounts, subscriptions, bills, and net worth. It has an extremely well made interface that makes it easy to manage your money and see where it's going.

The app also connects to your investment accounts and send you notifications when you get paid. It's a helpful tool for gaining control of your money and improving your financial planning. After using it for a little over 2 years, I think it's finally time for me to declare how much I absolutely love this app. Seriously. And no, I wasn't paid to say that.

Is Copilot Safe?

One of the first things I looked for was how secure the app was. I mean you're giving it access to read your financial data. What if this got exposed?

Well I did some digging to figure out how it works.

Copilot uses 256-bit encryption to protect your data at rest and Transport Layer Security (TLS) to protect it in transit. They don’t store your bank login either. They partner with data aggregators like Plaid and Finicity which act as the middleman between your info and their app.

Key Features

With a bunch of useful features, Copilot can help you manage your money, track where it's going, and understand your long-term trends. I'll walk you through it's main features & what I like (and dislike) the most.

I'll give my own examples throughout this but I'm going to remove sensitive financial information so some numbers might look funky.

Account Management

With an easy to view graph, you can see every account you'd like to track on one page. This includes checking, saving, credit cards, investment, loan accounts, and even Crypto wallets!

If the platform currently doesn't support automatic tracking of one of you financial accounts, you can add it manually.

On this page you can view your assets and debts in graphs ranging from 1 week to 1 year ago. If you don't want to see your debt, you can hide it!

You can also add financial accounts to your account page but disable them being added or subtracted from your net worth.

Investment Overview

If you're an avid investor, this page will be wonderful for you. Easily track your investment earnings or disappointing losses from a single page.

Again, you can view the last week or up to a year depending on preference. Add IRA, stock, and other investing accounts to this page for a better understanding of your overall net worth.

Transaction List

On the transaction page, you can view up to years of history on a single page. As you begin to categorize each transaction into your budgeting categories (which we'll go into later), you'll have everything populated on a single page.

You can search transactions if it's been a while, or add them manually if they're external or completed in cash. Filter by date, price, category, and even account to get a granular view of your spending trends.

Copilot makes it super easy to understand and manage your finances with personalized insights and automatic transaction organization.

Budgeting & Categories

Stay on top of your finances with Copilot's budgeting feature, which is tailored to your unique spending habits and includes automatic detection of recurring bills and subscriptions.

Budget Rollovers make it easy to track spending across multiple months and avoid unexpected expenses. If you're not somebody who budgets, that's totally fine too. Copilot allows you to customize and adjust as needed, or simply add transactions without a budget if that works better for you.

• Customize your budget categories to suit your needs
• Establish custom rules for categorizing transactions
• Roll over budget excesses on a per-category basis from month to month
• Set up variable budget categories for different months
• Quickly adjust and balance your budget categories as needed

Simple Dashboard

Once you've tailored all these pages to your spending and budgeting habits, you can view an overview of it all on the dashboard. Honestly this is my favorite page (and the one I check the most).

The dashboard will show you a graph and budget line based on how much you've set your target spend rate for that month. You'll see how close or far you are from your budget, and at what time of the month you exceeded expectations.

You'll also see a review of your finances from the last month, including how much you made and spent. This page further shows you any recurring purchases that are coming up and the current income you've made this month.

Once the month is over, you'll see your month in review. This highlights how much you spent & on which categories you spent things in. Useful if you're trying to analyze your own habits.

Pretty Graphs

Everything we've spoken about is displayed in pretty graphs on each page of the app. Why wouldn't you use an app with pretty graphs?

Jokes aside, these interactive graphs help you quickly and easily understand your overall financial situation. You can customize the range of dates to view or add indicators such as net worth, cash flow, savings rate, and more.

Demo Mode

Copilot recently added a demo mode that lets you show sample financial data. This is great if you're trying to show the app to friends, family, or you're writing a review about it.

When I first wrote this review it wasn't a feature but I mentioned that it should be added & it was a few months later. Pretty cool.

Some Missing Features

They're still a fairly new company and have a bit to work on before I'd consider it closer to perfect. Some of these include

Platform availability - Currently Copilot is only available on iOS and macOS devices, leaving out those on Android or Windows. Hopefully support will be added in the near future because that makes up a large portion of those who could benefit from the app.

Connectivity issues - This doesn't happen too often, but some of my accounts will need to be reverified every few weeks for security reasons. It mainly happens with Amex, but once happened with a Chase account. I've also had it happen with my Coinbase account. This is probably the worst problem the app has.

Household Support - If you're looking to share budgeting information with a spouse or partner, Copilot doesn't currently offer any support for this. Being able to include accounts for a partner and view them individually and together would be very helpful.

Who Should Use Copilot?

The great news about Copilot is pretty much anyone can benefit from it. From a recent grad looking to keep tabs on their first job to a retiree managing multiple investments, Copilot kind of just adapts to what you need.

The app is well suited for those with unique spending habits or multiple sources of income. The customizable categories, budget rollover feature, and interactive graphs make Copilot a great tool for anyone trying to take control of their money.

I will say it's a *tad* bit expensive if you're really penny pinching– but I think it's worth it for what you get out of it.

How to Get Copilot?

Currently Copilot is available on iOS and macOS. The desktop version has started to pilot to certain users as of a few weeks ago. With its crisp computer + phone interface, Copilot is quickly becoming one of the go-to financial apps for those looking to get their money in order.

How Much Does It Cost

With pricing starting at $8.99 per month or $69.99 yearly (which comes out to a little under $6 a month), Copilot is still significantly cheaper than mainstream budgeting apps.

Using the code PENGUIN will get you a 1-month free trial, which let's you access every feature. It gives you more than enough time to get the feel for it.

You can create your own code in the app and share it with friends/family to extend your premium subscription.

Conclusion

There's not much else to say besides you should totally check out Copilot.

It's got a great interface and a range of features to help you track your accounts, subscriptions, bills, and net worth, & connects to your investment accounts.

You can also set up notifications to find out when you get paid. Again, just try it for a month, it's completely free. I got hooked and will be using it unless something even better comes out! Happy budgeting! 🙂