Personal finance and budgeting is one of the most important things that anyone can do to avoid money problems. Budgeting software can help you create your own customized plan, whether you want to save up for a big purchase or just keep on top of your spending so that you never owe creditors late fees again.
Best budgeting and personal finance apps will help you manage your money. Personal finance software is easy to use and can help save you time by automating bill payments, eliminating duplicate transactions, maintaining a spending log and more. Plus, there are great budgeting apps that make it easy for anyone to get started budgeting!
There are tons of personal finance tools and apps to help you manage your money. Some of them are free; others charge a monthly fee or a minimum balance. The problem is, that many of these tools and apps only do one thing well, like focusing on investing or making budgeting easy. The best finance tools do it all—from the basics, like creating a budget and tracking expenses, to helping you save more money without thinking about it too much.
Many personal finance experts recommend using software to manage your money, but not everyone wants to invest money in a program, especially if they are just starting their finances. There are many online personal finance apps that you can use on your phone or tablet. We reviewed several of them and suggest the following four as the best apps for managing your money.
What are the best budgeting apps?
Our top pick for the best budgeting apps is Simplifi by Quicken. For a small monthly fee, Simplifi provides attractive and flexible visualizations that make it easy to track the flow of your money. And its features can be applied to several approaches to budgeting, a unique feature among the services we tested. Simplifi has strong guidance on how to use its tools to create budgets and save for the future.
Mint
Mint has a free mobile app that syncs with your checking, savings and credit cards to give you a complete picture of your financial life. It’s a great choice for people who are just starting out with budgeting.
Mint is designed to help you get on top of debt and build savings by providing tools like an automated budget planner, an interactive spending tracker and customized recommendations based on your financial information. It also helps monitor progress toward goals by keeping track of all account balances so there won’t be any surprises at tax time or when using other apps like TurboTax or Mint Bills (which connects directly to the Mint app).
PocketGuard
PocketGuard is a budgeting app that allows users to track their expenses, set goals, and analyze the data they collect.
Users can import bank transactions in order to automatically categorize them in their budgets. The app also has a built-in expense tracker so you can manually input information about your spending habits.
PocketGuard’s premium version ($4 per month) gives you access to all of its features including:
- A breakdown of how much money you spent on food each week/month/year;
- An overview of your overall monthly spending habits;
- A log of every purchase you’ve made with links back to the original receipt (if available).
You Need A Budget
You Need A Budget (YNAB) is an easy-to-use budgeting app for beginners. It takes into account your income and expenses and helps you create a budget that works for you. YNAB also has tools to help you get out of debt, track cash flow and stay on top of bills.
- Get started with YNAB: If you’re just starting out with budgeting or personal finance, this app is a great option because it will walk you through the basics of setting up a monthly plan based on your income and spending patterns. After that, it keeps track of where every dollar goes so there are no surprises when payday comes around again next month!
- Track your spending: To make sure that all those dollars work hard enough each month—without going too far over budget—you need to know exactly how much money has been spent before making any more purchases (or taking on new debts). This feature makes tracking expenses easier than ever before!
YNAB (You Need a Budget) is an excellent budgeting app for beginners. With this app, you can track your spending, see where your money goes each month, and get out of debt faster than before.
YNAB has a 4.6-star rating on the App Store and was named “Best Personal Finance App” by TechCrunch in 2013. The app has been featured on many other lists as well—the Wall Street Journal listed YNAB as one of its top six money apps for 2017, and Forbes included it among the best personal finance apps for 2018. It’s also great for couples!
Wally
Wally is a personal finance app that helps you track your spending and save money.
Wally is free to download, and it’s easy to use. It’s available on iOS and Android as well as on the web. If you’re looking for an app that will help you stick to your budget, this could be it!
Wally gives its users financial goals, like saving for something specific or simply having enough money in the bank at all times (aka “the buffer”). Users can also set up automatic savings accounts with Wally so they don’t have to worry about remembering their savings goals every month; Wally will remind them when it’s time to save again!
Level Money
This app will help you track your spending, set budgets and goals for each category of spending in your life, and see a clear picture of where all your money goes. You can also set a goal for the month, week or day so that you don’t have to do it manually every time. The app is free!
The best part about Level Money is that there are no ads and it works offline too. I love using this app because it makes budgeting easy—just swipe left or right depending on how much money you want to spend in each category (you can customize these categories as per your needs).
Clarity Money
Clarity Money is a free budgeting app that helps you save money. It links to your bank account and allows you to gain a better understanding of where your money is going by providing recommendations, insights and alerts. The app allows you to set up recurring payments, track expenses and see all of your accounts in one place. You can also create budgets for individual accounts so that way you can see how much money is coming in vs going out each month or pay period as well as how much money is spent on certain things like groceries or entertainment per month or pay period.
Clarity Money also offers an overdraft protection feature called “Bump” which will transfer funds from another linked account into one of yours when there isn’t enough money available for an outgoing transaction such as paying bills or buying groceries at the store (or something).
Acorns
Acorns is a mobile app that rounds up your purchases, investing the difference. You can choose to invest in a portfolio of ETFs (exchange-traded funds), individual stocks, or individual bonds. The app helps you build a diversified investment portfolio using pre-set default portfolios or one of your own choosing.
When you’re ready to make an investment, there are three ways to do so:
- Set up automatic recurring investments with fixed amounts from your bank account each month. This is an automated way to save money by setting aside preset amounts of cash for investment every two weeks or month—and it makes it easy for you to put money into your portfolio even when you don’t have extra cash lying around. Or, if you want more control over how often and how much money gets invested into this account than the automated process provides, simply set up recurring transfers directly from your checking account whenever you want them made (for example $100 per paycheck).
- Invite friends and family members who use Acorns to join their accounts; as part of the invitation process, everyone gets $5 automatically deposited into their Acorns App! And all new users get access to our $1 Stocks Club – no strings attached!
Digit
Digit is the best budgeting app for people who want to save automatically but don’t have much in their bank accounts to work with. Digit doesn’t charge fees, require a minimum balance or deposit, or impose any restrictions on how often you can use it. It simply asks you if you want to save $5 every week and then puts that money into a savings account at Ally Bank (or another financial institution of your choice).
If you’re looking for more ways to spend less and save more, Digit also offers suggestions based on the information it has about your spending history. For example: If it seems that you’ve been buying Starbucks lattes every day, Digit might suggest that instead of spending $400 this month on coffee drinks alone (because yes—that’s totally possible), consider making one big purchase instead—like an espresso machine—and brewing at home from now on.
Goodbudget
Goodbudget is a great budgeting app that is easy to use and provides a lot of features.
Goodbudget also has several unique features that set it apart from other apps, like the ability to create custom categories for things like groceries or gas, which helps you manage your spending better by focusing on the things that matter most to you. The other thing we love about Goodbudget is how it handles recurring transactions—it automatically adds these transactions so they don’t disappear into the abyss of forgotten bills. Plus, if you add any new income or expenses after the fact, Goodbudget will update your budget with those changes automatically as well!
Here are the best budgeting apps that you can download today.
There are a lot of options out there, and it can be overwhelming to figure out which one is right for you. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! We’ve picked some of the best personal finance apps that have been around for years and have proven themselves with millions of users. There’s something here for everyone.
Here are our top picks:
Mint App: A free budgeting app with all the bells and whistles, Mint helps you keep track of your income, expenses, and savings goals so that you never overspend or fall short on paying bills again. It also lets you set up automatic transfers into savings accounts every day so that even if something comes up in life (like an emergency room visit), there will still be money set aside just in case. That way when something crazy happens—and it will—you won’t have to worry about starving because your paycheck didn’t cover everything this month!
PocketGuard App: If spending was an addiction (which let’s face it…it kind of is), PocketGuard would be like going cold turkey from whatever vice plagues us all from time to time (*ahem*justme*ahem*) by helping us manage our finances better than ever before through simple yet effective tools that help guide us towards better decision-making skills when managing our finances.”
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of apps out there that can help you take control of your personal finances, no matter what kind of budgeting strategy or saving model works best for you. Whether you’re looking for a visual representation of how your money is coming and going or a simple way to keep track of transactions from all the different accounts connected to your life, we believe that all four of these apps have something to offer their users. When choosing which app suits you best, just remember to keep in mind what kind of budgeting experience you’re looking for. Once again, good luck!
Apps have changed the way we live our daily lives. Downloading apps to your smartphone is like having a personal assistant on your phone that you can use 24/7, wherever you are. There are a few great budgeting and personal finance apps that can help organize your financial life and keep you on track so that you can save money for your future goals or for unexpected expenses.