Do you like to manage your finances, but you’re not sure where to begin?
Read on to explore the best apps to manage your budget. We have done the heavy lifting for you by searching the web and app stores so you can dive in, start saving money, and live better financially!
1) Best Overall: Mint
Mint has long been a famous website and application for budgeting. Mint provides additional budgeting tools along with accessing your investment accounts. However, Mint has a strong budget portion, while the investment part sounds a bit like an afterthought.
Mint is an excellent choice if you want to keep a super-comprehensive budget. As many categories as you like can be established, and transactions can be categorized on the move. Mint pulls transactions automatically from your bank and credit card accounts, and they all are at one location. Mint also analyses your expenditures and offers insight into where you should improve. Lastly, the app has a nice payroll feature that reminds you of payments.
2) Best Debt Payoff: You Need a Budget
You Need a Budget, also called YNAB, is a handy personal finance application designed around the four rules of YNAB. The rules: give every dollar a job, embrace your actual expenditures, roll with the punches & age your money – to create a better budget, and help you gain control of your expenditure. Import transactions to any budget category from your checking account to obtain an accurate image of your expenditure.
Keep the budget balanced when you mistakenly spend over (or underfunded a certain category), by modifying the budget category. Detailed reports demonstrate how your expenditure progresses over the month and help you spot areas where you can improve your expenditure.
3) Best for Budgeting: Acorns
This app enables us to begin investing with virtually no hassle. You just set up it and go.
You can use Acorns to complete your transactions and make recurring withdrawals to your account or improve your account through a one-time transaction. When you shop with several brands, the brand partners will automatically invest in your Acorns account.
4) Best Visuals: Mobills
Mobills organizes your expenditures in categories so that you can keep track of your spending is continuing toward your budgeted amount. In order to reduce your spending as needed, see how much you have to spend in each budget category. The budget planning app provides interactive charts that allow you to evaluate your financial life; you can use them to make changes when you need to achieve your broader financial goals. Link your credit cards to the app so that your total balance can be seen and limits spent all in one place. Add all of your payments or bills and due dates to keep track of when payments have to be processed.
The free version of the app has minimal functionality while upgrading to the paid version gives you complete access to all the app features.
5) Best for Financing: EveryDollar
The EveryDollar app uses a zero-based budget strategy suggested by personal finance expert Dave Ramsey. The zero-based budget offers every dollar a purpose, hence the app’s name, EveryDollar. An in-built monthly expense tracker lets you connect to your bank in order to import transactions to keep up with your expenses. You can even split expenditures between multiple budget items. The tracker tells you how much you spent so far for the month and how much you have left to spend.
With the app, you’ll be able to connect with money management experts who can help you plan your finances. You can access your budget via an app or a desktop computer. All new customers are given a free trial of the premium version of the app. You can upgrade them permanently via the app menu. If you’re looking for additional advice on budgeting, check out Budgetable.
6) Ideal for Shared Expenses: Spendee
Spendee is a visual app that syncs with your bank accounts. Automatically downloads and categorizes transactions. It also helps you to share certain portions of your budget with others.
Assign your money to virtual accounts, and this app will keep you on track. You can even share particular wallets with your mates, helping you to promote accountability while you work towards your goals. However, you don’t have to share your entire budget, which is vital if you want to keep your privacy. Spendee also offers a travel mode that supports multiple currencies when you are abroad.
7) Best Tech-savvy: Albert
Would you like to have a personal finance assistant? You probably want to have Albert. Using artificial intelligence aspects combined with human advice, you can obtain personalized info about your current financial health – and what you can do to enhance it.
Albert automatically generates a budget for you based on your revenue, spending habits, and bills. Not only that, but Albert helps you set aside money in a savings account, analyses your statements to help you find where you overpay, and even notifies you when a free trial is about to end.
You can use Albert for free, but if you’re willing to pay a tiny fee, you can text human experts to get a little extra support in achieving goals like spending more and paying down debt.
8) Ideal for Bill Payment: Prism
Prism displays all your bills and financial statements in one app, giving you a complete outlook of your finances. It touts 11,000 billers, which is more than any other application – including larger banks and many smaller utility firms. Add all of your bills to this app. Prism automatically monitors your bills and sends reminders on the due date to help avoid late payments. By scheduling payments to be received on the same day or several days in advance, you can use the app to pay your bills itself. Prism eliminates the need to log in to multiple bill-paying accounts.
The Bottom Line
Technology gives you the opportunity to comprehend your finances and enhance your money management skills. It’s always worth taking a deeper dive to find the right technology for you.