I always enjoy reading about software that people will actually choose to pay for and endorse, so here’s some of mine.
Deliveries: We probably buy more than we should over the Internet, but this helps us track what’s coming and when. The bonus feature that I enjoy is the calendar syncing that add arrival dates so I can see when things are coming out at a glance. It has some fiddly bits, like a couple of the delivery services don’t expose an API Deliveries can hit to automatically update but being able to manually set delivery dates is a decent workaround.
Flighty: If you travel a lot by plane, Flighty can you help stay up to date with all the connections, delays and flight times in one polished app. This past summer, we did a multi-week, many-many flight trip to the East Coast, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, with connections galore and this app was my go-to. It knew about delays sooner than the boards at the airport in some cases, and had lots of extra info about flight ETAs that were fun to know, like how long you taxied for. Another bonus: it syncs with your calendar (if you’re noticing a theme…) which would auto-update as flights moved or got rescheduled, leaving one less thing to think about before travel.
Timeshifter: With that same big trip, jet lag was a concern and this app was truly clutch. You enter in your flight information and sleep patterns and it gives you a regimen of when to seek and avoid light, when and when not to drink caffeine and other tips leading up to the trip. We followed it fairly well, but not perfectly, but landed in Amsterdam after an overnight flight feeling adjusted and honestly had no noticeable jet lag for the trip.
Macrofactor: I saw a trendline on my weight earlier in the year that I wanted to reverse so I pulled out a calorie tracking app (again) to attempt to lose some weight (again). In reading about nutrition, I saw Macrofactor pop up a few times. This app works by “simply” taking the number of calories you take in, looking at how your weight changes over the previous week and using that to figure out how many calories you typically burn. It then spits out some calorie goals for the upcoming week. Best of all: it’s the first weight management thing I’ve done that’s ever worked, and I learned a lot about nutrition along the way.
Raycast: I’ve shied away from using the Spotlight-esque apps over the years but decided to give Raycast a go. I use it probably a few hundred times a day now. It has simplified logging into my next Zoom meeting, rearranging the windows on my desktop, gives me a more useful calculator and unit conversions tool, and the quick links make it so much faster to go to the same 3-4 URLs I go to during the workday.
YNAB: Having a budget gives me a great peace of mind and YNAB works perfectly for me. It’s a more powerful version of the envelope system of budgeting (“give every dollar a job”) and it’s nice to see how our spending breaks down and how particular goals trade-off. We’ve been using it for our budgeting software since 2017 and I’m positive money would be a greater source of stress if it were not for YNAB.
These are a few of the daily go-tos, and is undoubtedly an incomplete list, but these are the few I rely on and willingly pay money for.