An expense tracker for students.
So the money lasts until the end of the month.

What a student budget actually looks like

Most student money arrives once a month — a grant, a loan instalment, help from parents, wages from a part-time job — and leaves in three big streams: rent, food and transport. Everything else is smaller and harder to see: phone, a semester ticket, books, a night out, the coffee between lectures.

That shape is good news. You don’t need a complicated system. You need the fixed costs known in advance and the daily spending visible, so that the last week of the month is not a surprise.

Setting it up in ten minutes

1. Accounts. Your current account card and cash. A savings pot if you have one. Enter today’s balance for each — no need to go back in time.
2. Categories. Keep it short: Rent, Groceries, Eating out, Transport, Study, Phone & subscriptions, Going out, Other.
3. Recurring. Rent, phone and streaming as recurring entries: they record themselves on their day, so the month starts with the fixed costs already in.
4. Income. Log the monthly transfer as income when it arrives, and side jobs too. Then the month shows a real balance, not just spending.

Logging in seconds, from Telegram

Students live in their messengers, so the fastest way in is the bot. Send an amount, say 4.50, pick a category in two taps, and it is already in the app. No app to open, no form to fill in. Details in the Telegram bot.

Prefer talking? A voice message like “lunch 6.20, bus 2.80 and printing 3” becomes three drafts, each in its category, which you check before saving — see tracking expenses by voice. Typing an amount by hand is free; voice and receipt photos use AI actions.

No Telegram? The web app works in any browser and installs on your phone’s home screen like an app.

One number to watch: what is left per day

Set a budget for all expenses, or just for food, for the month. The budget screen shows what you have spent, what is left and roughly how much you can spend per day until the end of the month, plus where your current pace leads. A note arrives at 80 % and at 100 %.

Example: 380 € for food and fun, 210 € spent by the 18th. That leaves 170 € for 13 days, about 13 € a day. One number like that changes more than any spreadsheet. More on limits in the budget planner guide.

Shared costs with flatmates

For the shared flat, make a project: a separate ledger for rent, internet, cleaning supplies and the shared fridge. Invite each flatmate with a personal link, as an editor or read-only. Everyone logs what they bought, every row shows who added it, and a filter by person shows who paid for what. Your personal spending stays apart.

To be honest about the limits: the app does not split bills automatically or calculate who should transfer what to whom. You see who added what and settle up yourselves. If you lend a flatmate money, record it as a debt — one account per person, with a reminder on the due day. Projects are part of the AI plan and can be tried for free first; invited flatmates can stay on Free. More in shared budgets.

What it costs

It is free to start, with no card. A new account gets 7 days of Pro with 20 AI actions, which is enough to see whether voice or the bot suits you. If you want to keep everything for good, Lifetime is one payment of 19 $, with no subscription to forget about during the holidays.

There is no bank connection, your data is never sold, and you can export everything to CSV at any time.

Questions

Read next

• Log expenses by voice. One sentence, several transactions.
• Track Apple Pay purchases automatically. Pay in a shop — the expense records itself.
• Automatic expense tracking on Android. Pay with any card — the expense records itself.
• An expense tracker in Telegram. With a full app behind it.
• An expense tracker without a bank link. You log it — in seconds.
• How to track your expenses. And still be doing it in three months.