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With hundreds, or even thousands, of apps out there for financial purposes, it’s hard to narrow down the best ones. A good financial app is a tool to make your budgeting and financial management easier and more streamlined, and we know how important it is to find apps that are easy to use, but also rich in resources.
We have collected twenty-one different personal finance apps that can make your life, budget and savings goals that much simpler. We have broken them up into categories to make comparisons and purpose that much easier. With so many different types of apps available, there are resources available that match all levels of personal financial management goals, budgeting and money management. Properly handling personal finances can not only helps manage your cash flow, but to also avoid high interest short term loans sometimes needed when unexpected expenses occur and you’re without an emergency fund for moments like this.
Full Financial ManagementMint – https://www.mint.com
Mint is a product of Intuit, the same company that creates TurboTax. Mint Personal Finance helps you track your income and expenses as a budgeting tool, but also monitors your full financial state. You can log your expenses and sync with your bank and credit cards to keep an eye on your full financial state in real time. As a robust piece of software, you can use Mint at tax time as well as to help track spending in various tax-related categories to make your finances even more streamlined.
Quicken – https://www.quicken.com
Another full personal finance tool, Quicken will sync with your bank and cards to keep track of your balances, the budgets you have created, your investment accounts and daily transactions across all of your banking and credit use. You can monitor your spending trends and use the same software account with your desktop, over the web or through the mobile app. Quicken is a nimble grandfather in the world of financial apps. The Quicken software has been around for decades and has improved and become more adaptable for dedicated financial users over time.
Albert – https://albert.com
If you want the convenience of a personal financial assistant in your pocket, you can get him using the Albert app. Albert is a combination of artificial intelligence and a bit of human guidance who offers you personalized information about your overall financial health. Albert will create a budget for you and monitor your spending habits, income and your various bills. Albert will also automatically put money into a savings account for you. He can also let you know when you are reaching the end of various free trials.
Prism – https://www.prismmoney.com
Prism will help you keep track of your bills and bank accounts in a single location. You can align all of your various bill payments and monitor your balances in a single location, which lets you skip logging into various credit card sites. You can set up payments directly through the app to be sure all of your funds get where they need to go at the right time. This app is especially useful for those who pay bills out of multiple accounts or at different parts of the month as it minimizes the need to visit different accounts on a revolving payment basis.
You Need A Budget (YNAB) – https://www.youneedabudget.com
You Need A Budget, or YNAB, is a personal budgeting software that has been popular on desktops and through the web for years. The YNAB app is a companion to the larger software platform that gives you access to your accounts, budgets and transactions. You can make changes to your budget categories and amounts through the app, and it syncs with your other devices and platforms.
Monefy – http://www.monefy.me
If you want a simplified budgeting experience, Monefy skips the complex interface and tools and keeps it very simple. Add new income and subtract spending. You select the category when you add the income and expense and you can keep up with your spending quickly without more than a click and tap for each entry.
Spendee – https://www.spendee.com
Spendee is a highly visual tool that is useful for budgeting and keeping track of spending. It is very user-friendly and brightly colored to make spending easier to track at a glance. You can set up budgeting categories and analyze the budget rather than just track spending. If you spring for the Premium app, you can also sync the app with your bank accounts to automatically log expenses, share savings wallets and work across multiple devices.
Toshl – https://toshl.com
Another highly streamlined budgeting app, Toshl keeps things simple by linking to your accounts and automatically categorizing your transactions. There are simple categories that keep things from getting bogged down with complex labels as spending occurs. You can enter purchases manually or they can sync automatically. Extra funds in each budget category roll over for the next month automatically.
EveryDollar – https://www.everydollar.com
EveryDollar uses a zero-based budget method and is tied to the teaching and principals of Dave Ramsey. Every dollar in your budget through this app would have a purpose and they would all be allotted to various budget categories. You can import your monthly transactions from your bank to keep up with spending and the assigned budget categories, and you can also split expenses across multiple categories. The app keeps running totals for the month to show you how much is left in each category and links to money management advisors when you need planning assistance.
Mobills – https://www.mobillsapp.com
Mobills tracks your spending and your progress toward certain budget categories. You can set up your budget categories and then monitor your spending in each so that you can slow down your transaction in each area as you need to. Mobills includes digital charts and visuals which make it easy to monitor money spent and remaining in each category as well as your overall financial management. You can also add bills and due dates to the app to keep up with your monthly bills.
PocketGuard – https://pocketguard.com
PocketGuard monitors your banking to track your spending and assign categories to various budgets. The app uses a read-only, encrypted technology to link to your various bank accounts so that you can see how much you’ve spent and how much you have left to spend for the day in various categories you’ve assigned as a budget. All of your purchases, subscriptions and bill payments factor into the PocketGuard analysis, which tells you how much you have left to spend every day before going beyond a safe financial point.
Dollarbird – https://dollarbird.co/
Dollarbird is a calendar-based budgeting app that lets you add and remove expenses across a calendar rather than in a financial grid. You can see your expenses on a daily basis and the AI functions of the app help you to sort the entries into various budget categories. The app is graphics heavy and includes infographics to help you see your spending and budget on the calendar model or as a timeline. With the Premium version of the app, you can set up multiple users on the account to track family or team spending as well.
Trim – https://www.asktrim.com
Save money by analyzing your bills and subscriptions to see where you can save money on a regular basis. Trim accesses your various bank, credit and financial accounts to monitor your spending and look for savings. Trim will cancel unused subscriptions, negotiate your cable bill and even look for lower insurance rates.
Clarity Money – https://claritymoney.com
Clarity Money helps you manage your subscriptions as well as helping you keep an eye on your budget and spending goals. You can save money through the app in a variety of ways. Link up your bank accounts and credit cards to the app and then Clarity will analyze your spending for you and identify ways you might be able to save money. The app points out subscriptions that might be going unused and areas where you are over budget. You can also use the app to set up a savings goal where you transfer money automatically from the bank periodically.
Birch Finance – https://birchfinance.com
Birch Finance is an app that is designed to maximize your various reward card privileges. This app is not to help you pay off your balances on old credit cards, but rather to aggregate your spending by tracking your credit card transactions through the app. All of your credit card transactions over a six-month period are graded as an A to F based on how smartly you maximized the rewards available through a given card. An A means you maxed out the reward potential. An F means you missed at least 40% of the opportunity.
Twine – https://twine.com
Twine is designed for mid-level investing. The online brokerage is not as large as big brokerages like Vanguard but offers more services than the automatic robot-type advisors like Betterment. The goal of Twine is to make investments simple and hassle-free. You use the app to set goals and then a streamlined interface lets you focus on the achievement toward the goal. The app does require an account minimum to begin investing.
Personal Capital – https://www.personalcapital.com
Personal Capital makes it possible to link all of your investment accounts and see all of your investments in a single location. This presents a big picture scenario of your investments as well as some information about spending and other finances through the app. The app includes interactive cash flow tools and in-app advisors to guide your investments and assets.
Acorns – https://www.acorns.com
Acorns is a micro-investing mobile app. Every purchase you make creates spare change, and Acorns takes that change and invests it, on your behalf, into exchange-traded funds, or ETFs. This allows you to build up a seed account for future investments and large purchases. Every purchase made with a linked card or bank account will round up and start your savings process. The app also allows you to make one-time investments as well as other reoccurring investments to help grow your savings over time. There is a monthly fee of $1 to replace the transaction fees you might otherwise be charged.
Mylo – https://mylo.ai
Mylo is a money-saving app that helps you build up a savings account balance by rounding up your various purchases and investing the change on your behalf. This makes it very easy to start saving and then investing money. The entire process is automatic once you set it up, and your investment manager will handle all of the actual investing transactions meaning you can essentially set it up and leave it running to build savings mindlessly.
Credit Karma – https://www.creditkarma.com
Credit Karma is used to monitor your credit score. This is a free app that pulls your credit scores from both Equifax and TransUnion so that you can keep track of where you are in terms of good credit. The app not only pulls the numbers for you, but it also provides insight into certain aspects of your score and the app can monitor your credit on a weekly or daily basis for changes and updates.
Good Budget – https://goodbudget.com
Good Budget takes advantage of the age-old type of budgeting with digital envelopes. You decide on the “envelopes” you want to use to save your money and then you label them as a way to track your spending and control your budget. You can customize every category based on your own goals and routine spending habits, and you can tie your banks to the app as well to log your income in every category as well as your spending to see how they affect your budgeted amounts. You are provided 10 regular digital envelopes and 10 annual or “extra” envelopes for categories like Christmas spending or travel.
Technology provides a large assortment of tools and resources to make your daily life and your daily spending more rewarding. With the right app you can easily track your spending, your bills, your budget and your investing to reach your financial goals, avoid payday loans and keep yourself on the right track to future financial success.
