When I travel, I like to keep track of my budget. It gives me insight and peace of mind, plus I can share some helpful insights later on with fellow travelers who are asking for advice.

Track your travel budget wisely

So far, I have always made due with the Notes or Excel app on my iPhone, and recently I checked out the XE Currency Converter app’s add-on for travel expenses.

What that one offers that Trail Wallet doesn’t, is it automatically calculates the daily exchange rates and incorporates additional costs for your payment methods, such as when your bank charges you to withdraw foreign cash.

What I love about Trail Wallet

And the comparison ends there. Trail Wallet, to me, is the perfect app for keeping track of my travel expenses. It’s snappy, it’s easy, and it is beautiful.

I love anything that makes task management look exciting. I love colorful diagrams automatically generated from my numbers. I love that my budget tracking now results in a cool infographic. No more boring excel sheets or dull notes for me :).

Trail Wallet is designed to help you stick to your budget. It has categorization built in so you can easily see where your money is flowing. It remembers the settings for your last input so adding a new one is as easy as adding a number and if necessary switching the category.

Before, I would remember all expenses and add them later in the day. With the app, it is easy to add a payment on the spot.

Suggestions

One thing that would come in handy: if the app would cache (remember) notes added to previous payments and automatically suggest them in a new item when typing the same letters.

And another improvement that would come help those traveling together and sharing expenses: add travel buddies and enable a way to track who paid what.

For now, you can solve the travel buddy thing by tweaking the existing tags option to show who paid what.

Calculate the real price

Helpful tip: if you pay by debit or credit card and your card issuer charges for those payments, or for the cash you withdraw while on your journey, be sure to incorporate those costs in the app’s settings where it prompts you to manually adjust the conversion rate.

For example, if your bank charges 2% for cash withdrawal (like mine) and you pay mostly in cash (like me) then multiply the app’s suggested exchange rate with 1.02 and save that value in the settings.

Who is it for?

The Trail Wallet app comes in handy for people on business trips, digital nomads and backpackers alike. I like it so much that I’ll probably keep using it even when I’m not traveling.

Free trial & premium version

It is a premium app. You can install it, try it out for free and add up to 25 payments, giving you plenty of opportunity to see if it works for you. If you make short trips and delete data after each trip, you can even keep using it for free I guess. Otherwise, the $ 4.99 full version is definitely worth it.

Happy budgeting!