Financial software is a tool used for recording and analyzing your personal finance information. With Quicken Personal Finance Software, you can view your income, expenses, financial goals and net worth, organize your bills and remind yourself of upcoming payments, and more .
Mint
If you’re looking for a one-stop shop in your personal finance software and want a full-featured tool that still keeps things simple, Mint is the choice for you. Mint is a web-based tool (with mobile apps, of course) that will help you track spending, design a budget, manage debt, set goals and combine all your accounts (including the weird ones like balloon mortgages) in a single place. Many users love its simple, clean UI — the 2021 design refresh is getting raves — and at-a-glance financial dashboard, with net worth right there at the top.
While Mint and Quicken have long been the top contenders for full-featured financial management for everyday finances, Mint wins as the best personal finance software by being both free and slightly simpler than Quicken. Life is complicated enough already, and you can start your new era of fiscal responsibility right now by saving yourself the $42 annual price tag for Quicken Deluxe.
Mint makes setting up a budget a simple and straightforward process: Once you’ve set up your accounts, Mint takes a crack at categorizing your expenses for you. New in 2021, you can bulk-edit to make category adjustments.
Other powerful additions for 2021 include subscription monitoring, which helps you keep track of the subscriptions that seem to proliferate with every free trial. Mint will even tell you if those subscriptions change price. And personalized Mintsights offer guidance and suggestions to tweak the habits and behaviors that Mint “sees” in your financial activities, in order to help you pay down debt and save more. Mintsights are personalized for each user.
One feature our testers particularly appreciated was Mint’s free credit-score tracking and education. This feature gives you the “why” behind the numbers, breaking down on-time payments, credit usage, and average age of your credit and showing how your behaviors in these areas aid – or hurt – your overall rating.
Quicken
Having been around for several decades, Quicken is one of the most established personal finance software on the market. You can use the software to manage various aspects of your financial life from budget creation to debt tracking, savings goals, and even investment coaching. The software features Excel exporting, which allows you to manipulate and perform additional calculations on your data. One of the more advanced features includes bill paying, which allows you to set up payments for your bills right from the software. You can even use it to track the value of your assets to have an accurate calculation of your total net worth. The app is robust enough to manage both your personal and business expenses and even handles property management functions like rental payments from tenants. The software starts at $35.99 and is available for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
Personal Capital
To be blunt: Personal Capital is what you graduate to, from Mint. Both personal finance managers are free, easy and friendly to learn and use, and will show you a comprehensive view of your finances.
Personal Capital, though, has foregone budgeting and bill-payment tools to focus on next-level concerns. Features like its 401(k) analyzer, what-if Retirement Planner, and projected portfolio values are exactly what you need if you have the good fortune to arrive at the phase in which “How am I going to save some money” has become “What am I going to do with it all?” It’s next-level personal finance software, best for people who have gotten to that next level.
Mvelopes
The traditional envelope budgeting system helps you stick to a budget by using envelopes to manage your money. Once you’ve broken down your budget, you put that amount of cash into different envelopes. So, if you budget $100 for gas for the week, you place that amount in a “gas” envelope. Once you’ve spent that $100, that’s it. Mvelopes takes this same approach to budgeting, except that it’s done digitally on your phone and computer rather than with physical cash.
Choose the financial goals that are most important to you, then add your bank accounts and set your income. Mvelopes will help you create a budget and set up your “envelopes.” The software tracks your spending and shows you what you’ve spent from each envelope to keep you on budget throughout the month.
The basic version starts at $5.97 per month, or $69 a year, with the higher-priced options providing additional features and coaching options. You can try Mvelopes free for 30 days, too, before deciding which plan is right for you.
Yotta
When financial pressures increase, it’s easy to turn to measures like the lottery. You could win so big. But you probably won’t, and the money you spent trying is just…gone. Yotta has come along to turn that model on its head.
Fundamentally, Yotta is a free app that lets you save in an FDIC-insured account…and then gamble with it. But not really a gamble. The creators of Yotta found a way to keep the thrill while replacing the risk with an incentive to save and upping the odds of winning.
Yotta provides a savings account with a middling yield (.2%, which is still better than many brick-and-mortar banks — Wells Fargo’s standard account earns a measly .01%). But the potential to win real money increases along with your savings balance: every $25 in your account gets you an automatic (and free) ticket to that week’s “lottery.” Every night, Yotta gives away money — the smallest prize is 10 cents, and the largest? $10,000,000 for matching all 7 numbers in the Sunday night drawing.
TurboTax
You may not necessarily need TurboTax to manage your finances throughout the entire year, but when it’s tax time, the software can come in handy. While it’s one of the pricier tax preparation tools, it’s also consumer-friendly, walking you through your tax preparation to help you accurately file your tax return. Entering your tax information is fairly simple—you can import your W-2 information from your employer or take a picture of it and the software will transfer the information into the form.
If you’ve used TurboTax in previous years, the software will remember much about your personal information and ask whether there have been any major changes. The most basic version lets you file your federal and state return for free if all you use is form 1040 with no attached schedules.
On the higher end, TurboTax Live connects you with a CPA or Enrolled Agent to give you personalized advice and answer questions about your tax return. Paid versions of TurboTax include a feature to help you uncover deductions you may not have known were available to you. While you can use TurboTax on the web, you can also download the software to your device for added security.
YNAB
Give every dollar a job! That’s the friendly mandate of You Need a Budge ($11.99 per month), a tool that’s as much a philosophy as it is an app. YNAB is the best personal finance software if you want to truly understand your money and its management.
The YNAB software (desktop software for the big view, as well as solid mobile experiences) comes within an entire ecosystem that offers all the support, education, and encouragement to help you go the distance with a budget after the glow of that New Year’s resolution has worn off. The YNAB universe includes a blog, videos, a podcast, book and more.
Whether a dollar’s job is to be spent or to be saved, YNAB helps you think through your whole financial picture to ensure all your money is doing the right job for you. Definitely take advantage of the 34-day free trial; that’s a month to get the hang of it plus a few days to think it over.)
FutureAdvisor
If you’re a DIY investor looking for low-cost access to a financial advisor, FutureAdvisor is a great option. The investment software provides personalized recommendations to help you diversify your portfolio, which you can follow or not follow as you see fit. You’re eligible to sign up for the software if you have at least $5,000 in investable assets. FutureAdvisor manages the assets you transfer into the account for a flat annual fee of 0.5% of the managed assets, billed quarterly at 0.125%. When you transfer your assets into the account, FutureAdvisor works to consolidate them into accounts with its partners, Fidelity or TD Ameritrade.
Conclusion
Managing your money is a long-haul commitment, one that’s worth taking an hour or two to get right. Don’t be afraid to take the best personal finance software tools out for a spin. Every product we mention here has a trial version, and we highly recommend that you take advantage of it.
Think about who you are and what you want. Has history shown that you’re more likely to use something that asks little of you, or one that pulls you so deeply into its intricacies that you forget to eat? With something as real as your financial goals, will gamification appeal, or turn you off because it feels frivolous?
Then take 2-3 tools for a test drive with some real-world scenarios. Think of a few questions you’d really like the answers to, such as:
- How much do I spend eating out each month?
- How long ‘til I pay off my credit cards if I up my monthly payment by $50?
- How much should we be saving each month to meet our retirement goals?
You get the idea. Try to get the answers to your questions out of each tool. If you do this, chances are you’ll know which product you’d like to stick with.