Personal finance software is great if you really want to be able to manage your money. There are a lot of options that you can choose from to keep track of your finances and this post talks about several free personal financial software that you can choose from. There are several ways to manage a personal budget including pen and paper, spreadsheets, and other software. However, many times it’s hard to separate the free from the paid ones. Let us then try and make things clear with this article: we take a close look of the best personal finance and budgeting software seeing how easy they are to use, what features you can expect, etc.
It’s quite easy to manage your personal finance or budgeting with the best personal finance or budget software. But as you are probably aware, these software solutions don’t come for free. This is why you need the best free personal finance and budgeting software you can get your hands on.
Personal finance can be tricky. With so many free tools available, how do you know what’s best for your situation? This list of the best free personal finance software includes the most necessary ones to keep your budget balanced.
Sometimes, you need to cut your expenses, save some money and learn how to manage it. Personal finance and budgeting software is just what you need in such circumstances. When money matters, it pays to do your research and know what the best free personal finance and budgeting software are so that you can have a firm grip of the potential options.
Tips for Choosing Free Personal Finance Software
While choosing a free personal finance software, you should look for the following things:
- Available on maximum platforms. You will be adding transactions and other stuff frequently on the go, so you need a solution that is available on the platforms you use for your desktop and mobile devices.
- Provides all basic personal finance features. It should have all the necessary features and they should work flawlessly.
- Simple. We cannot stress this enough, if your personal finance software is cluttered with features and confusing, you will end up not logging your transactions on it at all.
- Best free personal finance software are always secure, please make sure you choose one that offers encryption.
EveryDollar
There are dozens of free tools available for budgeting and personal finance management. If you’re looking for a good one, Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar is a great place to start.
EveryDollar is built on the 7 Baby Steps from his financial advice book, “The Total Money Makeover.” The app allows you to link your bank accounts so it can automatically populate your income and expenses into a budget based on these numbers. Once created, the app will also provide useful tips on how to improve your finances as well as information on local businesses that offer discounts!
If you’re married or living with someone who shares their finances with you (like I do), then be sure they download EveryDollar too so that both parties can access their budgets at any time through either web browsers or mobile devices like smartphones or tablets!
YNAB (You Need A Budget)
YNAB is an excellent option for someone who wants to be more proactive and hands-on with their budget. YNAB promotes a more active approach to budgeting, encouraging users to track every transaction in order to build a clearer picture of their spending habits.
YNAB is not geared toward investing, so if you’re looking for software that will help you manage your investments and track long-term goals like retirement savings or college savings accounts, then this might not be the best choice for you.
Mint.com
Mint.com is a free app that helps you track your spending, saving and investing. It also has a budgeting feature to help you stay on top of where your money is going each month. The best part? Mint is owned by Intuit (the same company behind TurboTax), so it’s intuitively designed for ease of use.
If you want an app that will help keep track of all your finances in one place, Mint is the way to go because it won’t cost any money—although they do offer premium features such as personalized advice and goal tracking for $20/month.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a free app that helps you manage your budget, investments, and all other aspects of your financial life. Personal Capital is a software-based financial advisor with no minimum investment requirement.
Personal Capital’s free version includes its basic features:
- An expense tracker to help you stay on top of your spending
- A net worth tracker to show how much money you have in relation to the money you owe
- Investment management tools that can be used by investors at any level of experience with investing
LearnVest
LearnVest is a budgeting and personal finance software that offers financial advice. LearnVest was acquired by Northwestern Mutual in 2017, but the service remains free to use.
LearnVest is certified and authorized as a financial planner by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc., and has been ranked among Inc.’s 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America every year since 2013.
LearnVest requires you to set up an account with your personal information before using their service. You can then link your bank accounts and any other accounts you want tracked. LearnVest tracks all of your transactions from these linked accounts so it knows where you’re spending money, how much you’re spending on everything from groceries to entertainment and even where the bulk of your paycheck goes each month (whether it’s saved or spent). This data helps users create budgets based on their own spending habits so they can save more money without cutting out major expenses or compromising their quality of life too much.
Once you’ve created a budget based on what makes sense for your lifestyle (and been given advice about how much you should spend on certain items), LearnVest will send emails when there are changes in your finances that may affect those budgets–for example if an unforeseen expense comes up like car repairs or medical bills–to remind users about maintaining healthy financial habits even when life gets busy or stressful
PocketGuard
PocketGuard is a free personal finance app that offers premium services. PocketGuard can help you manage your money, keep track of your spending, and set up and stick to a budget. It also helps users find ways to save money which makes it an invaluable tool for budgeting beginners or those who are trying to get out of debt.
The app’s features include:
- Budgeting tools – Create budgets for every category in your life including groceries, entertainment, clothing and more! You can even have “override categories” (like emergencies) where you can designate extra funds when needed. This feature has helped me so much during my journey towards financial independence — knowing that I won’t go over-budget gives me peace of mind!
- Bills tracker – Know exactly when bills are due so you never miss the payment deadline again! You’ll also be able to manage automatic payments for each biller manually so there’s no guesswork involved with future bills—this could especially come in handy if any billers change their payment due date unexpectedly; just make sure they don’t forget about those changes too quickly… 🙂
Level Money
Level Money is an easy-to-use budgeting app that gives you a big picture view of your spending and shows you how much you can afford to spend in a given month. It’s available on both iOS and Android, so it works anywhere!
The app securely connects to your bank account, so all you have to do is log in and start using it. The best part about Level Money is its simplicity — it’s easy for anyone to use, even if they’ve never tried any kind of budgeting software before.
Many no-cost budgeting options are available
- There are many no-cost budgeting options available.
- Many of the free options are just as good, if not better, than paid ones.
- Some free options offer a free trial to see if you like it before paying for it.
Mint
Mint is a popular personal finance app that downloads transactions from your bank and credit card accounts and helps you track your spending and create a budget. It is 100% free and has a clean, user-friendly interface.
To get started, you will need to provide Mint with access to your online banking accounts, either by entering the usernames and passwords yourself or through an integration with your bank. Once you’ve done this, Mint will automatically download all of the information it needs to help keep track of where all of your money is going.
Mint also offers tools for tracking investments, setting up bill reminders across multiple providers (like utilities), creating budgets based on a percentage of income or number of paychecks per month, finding out how much interest accrues on loans over time (for those who have debt), setting savings goals for specific things like vacations or Christmas presents for family members, managing expenses between different people in shared households using categories like “food”, etc.,
AceMoney Lite
AceMoney Lite is a free personal finance software for Windows. It supports multiple accounts of various types, such as checking, savings, credit cards, loans, debt accounts. You can download transactions from your banks or financial institutions like PayPal and import them into AceMoney Lite. You can categorize your transactions and create reports based on these categories.
AccountEdge Basic
AccountEdge is a free personal finance software that works on both Windows and Mac. It offers a simple interface that enables users to easily manage their personal finances on their desktop or laptop computer.
It has a simple user interface that makes it easy for users to create, manage and track their finances. Users can also import data from Excel or Quicken files into AccountEdge Basic.
Buxfer
Buxfer is a free online personal finance software that allows you to track your bank accounts, credit cards and cash transactions in one place. It’s available for both Windows and Mac OS X.
Buxfer supports multiple currencies and allows you to track your investments as well. The interface of Buxfer is very good with clean design that looks great on any screen resolution including those on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets.
GnuCash
GnuCash is a personal finance manager that can handle both double-entry accounting and multi-currency. It’s an open source, cross-platform program that can be used on Windows and Mac.
GnuCash has a number of features that make it a robust tool for managing your finances:
- Double Entry Accounting
- Reporting Tools
- Multi-Currency Support
- Transaction Scheduling
One major benefit of GnuCash is its ability to import data from TurboTax®, Quicken®, Microsoft Money®, Excel® spreadsheets and more. This makes it very easy to set up your account in the app once you’ve got your data in order elsewhere.
Microsoft Money Sunset Deluxe
Microsoft Money Sunset Deluxe is the latest version of the software, and it’s a great way to manage your financial life on the go. It’s available for download from Microsoft’s website and it works only with Windows computers.
Microsoft Money Sunset Deluxe isn’t being developed any more, so if you want to use this program after 2021, you’ll have to find another one (if there are any). That said, Microsoft Money Sunset Deluxe is easy enough that anyone can use it—even people who aren’t computer savvy will find it simple and straightforward.
When it comes to free personal finance software, there just isn’t a better overall alternative than Mint. It’s free, secure and won’t pester you to upgrade to a paid version like some of its competitors.
When it comes to free personal finance software, there just isn’t a better overall alternative than Mint. It’s free, secure and won’t pester you to upgrade to a paid version like some of its competitors.
Mint is also one of the few personal finance apps that offers both Windows and Mac versions—and they’re both good. The Mac version is particularly nice because it automatically imports data from your bank accounts using the account numbers you enter into the app (you don’t have to manually enter each one).
The interface is clean and easy to use. You can view all your transactions by category or payee or create budget goals for yourself if you want additional guidance in managing your finances. One downside: There isn’t an iOS app yet so mobile users will have to use their web browser on their smartphone or tablet instead of downloading an app directly onto those devices
Personal finance features to look for
Desktop or mobile?
Have a think about where and how you’ll use your personal finance package. Most of us tend to spend money on the go, so having a software package that allows you to log and track outgoings means a mobile and app-based solution makes a lot of sense. Most packages offer both desktop and mobile solutions, however.
Reporting capability
While personal finance packages are great at helping you manage money and track spending, they’re also vital for producing reports. This data can subsequently be used for tasks such as filing your taxes or for sharing with an accounts person who does the job for you.
Easy integration
You’ll want to check that any personal finance software you’re considering will ideally work in tandem with other packages. This is crucial when it comes to logging items like expenses. Check your package can be used to move figures from one place to another for much more efficient tax filing purposes.
Help and support
As is the case with any software package, it’s always good to check there will be help at hand should you need it. Some personal finance packages come with free support, while others have it as part of a paid-for plan. How much help you will need depends on your confidence with the software.
Conclusion
We hope these solutions will help you find the best free personal finance software for your needs. If you’d like to take a look at more paid solutions, you can browse this page. Good luck and happy budgeting!
Nowadays setting up a personal budget and following a plan to achieve your financial goals is easier than ever. Given the amount of free personal finance and budget software programs, you have no excuse not to take control of your finances, save money and plan for retirement.