How many apps do you have on your phone to help you manage your finances? Among the games and social media, is it just your banking app and PayPal? If so, it’s high time to change this! Nowadays, a range of personal finance apps helps you know what you’re spending. These personal finance apps can integrate seamlessly with your bank and track upcoming payments, as well as show you your credit score.
1. Mint
This free app from Intuit has all the features you could need. After linking your debit and credit cards, Mint will begin showing your incoming and outgoing transactions. The app will then break them into categories. This helps you see how you spend your money and what you spend it on. Mint also helps you keep track of your spending, bills, and budgeting.
On top of this, Mint also helps you get to grips with your credit score. The site doesn’t just display your credit score but also shows you the factors that make up your score, helping you to understand your credit health. Mint also lets you manage your utility payments and track your investments right from the app.
2. Personal Capital
Want to become financially savvy? This holistic solution to money management lets you manage your investment portfolio and assets alongside your everyday spending accounts. You can track your spending and have a monthly budget after you connect the app to your bank. However, this app’s best feature is the way it lets you keep track of your investments. Sort by asset class, account, or individual security and optimize your portfolio.
You can find ways to diversify your portfolio, manage risk, and even discover any hidden fees you may be paying. The app’s built-in intelligence allows you to compare your portfolio with major market benchmarks. This lets you find out whether you’re on track to meet your investment goals. The Personal Capital company is so invested in investing it even offers registered financial advisors who can give you personalized advice tailored to your financial goals.
3. You Need a Budget
As the name suggests, You Need a Budget is a brilliant app for people who… need a budget. Also called YNAB, the app has four important rules to help you get to grips with your spending: 1, Give each dollar a job, 2, Embrace your true expenses, 3, Roll with the punches, and 4, Age your money.
After importing transactions from your checking account, you apply these transactions to each budget category. This will help you to build up a picture of what you actually spend. Then, keep your budget balanced by adjusting the budget categories for accidental overspends or under-budgets. When you’ve done this, you can view reports showing how your spending is progressing through the month. You can see spots where you can improve your spending.
YNAB is a paid app, but you can always test the app out for free in the first 34 days. After your trial, a yearly plan costs $14.99 a month or $98.99. With the typical new user saving $600 in the first two months and more than $6000 in the first year, according to YNAB, this could be well worth it.
4. Prism
The Prism app has the ability to show all your financial accounts and bills in a single app to get the full picture of your finances. With more than 11000 billers, small and large companies alike, all you need to do is add your bills to the Prism app for them to get tracked automatically. Prism will then send due date reminders, thus preventing late payments. You can then pay your bills by scheduling payments on the same day or several days in advance. Prism means all you need to do is log into one account to pay your bills; this app is free.
5. EveryDollar
Like You Need a Budget, EveryDollar helps you give every dollar you make a purpose. EveryDollar uses the personal finance expert Dave Ramsey’s zero-based budget method. In this budgeting method, every dollar is thought to have a purpose.
After you import your bank, you’ll start to see your transactions in the app. You’ll see how much you’ve spent this month so far and how much is left in your budget this month. This helps you keep up with your spending.
You’ll even be able to chat with a money management expert through the app for help with your financial planning. Also, you can look at your budget not only on the app but also on your computer.
This paid app is only $9.99 for a full year if you decide to keep going after the free trial.
6. Spendee
Most personal finance apps are just for one person to use. That’s the thing that sets this app apart. Spendee is the only financial planning app that lets you make shared wallets. These shared wallets allow you to manage shared expenses or budgets with your family or friends.
After importing your bank transactions, the Spendee app automatically categorize them to see how you spend your money every month. For more accurate budgeting, you can even add your cash expenses manually. On top of this, you can even set a budget amount for each spending category to track your progress towards that amount and prevent going over budget.
Spendee also has a bill tracker functionality. This tracker ensures you remember to pay each bill, preventing late payment penalties. You can even make a category specifically for a special event, like a trip, to keep yourself on budget and keep an eye on your spending.
There is a free version of Spendee. That said, this version has limited features compared to the paid versions. To sync Spendee with your bank account automatically, you must pay $2.99 monthly or $22.99 yearly for the Premium version.
7. Mobills
This visually-oriented app shows you your spending at a glance. Mobills has interactive budgeting charts that you can adjust to better analyse and adjust your financial life. Mobills lets you easily see how your spending is moving towards your budgeted amount by automatically organising your expenses in categories. You can then make adjustments as you need.
The interactive charts in the Mobills app are fully adjustable to help you reach your larger, ultimate financial goals. You can see your balance and spending limits within the app if you add your credit cards! Mobills also lets you track when your bills need to be paid with the option to add your bills and their due dates.
There is a free version of Mobills – albeit with limited functionality. So, for full access, it’s $49.99 a year.
8. Acorns
Acorns is an investing app designed to help you grow your money. With the help of a Robo advisor and Round-Ups, Acorns chooses the perfect exchange-traded funds for you. After asking about your risk tolerance and financial goals, the Robo advisor will automatically invest your funds in the right places before performing automatic portfolio re-balancing. Round-Ups looks at your transactions, automatically rounds your purchases up to the nearest dollar, and then invests that spare change.
With tools for education planning, retirement planning, banking and more, Acorns is brilliant for anyone new to investing who would rather automate the process. However, if you want more control over where you invest, other apps exist.
Acorns is $3 a month for the personal plan, with access to investing, banking and retirement features. Alternatively, get investment accounts for your kids with your account at $5 a month.
9. Digit
An automated saving and budgeting app, Digit aims to help you save effortlessly by showing you smarter ways to use your money. A deposit account with its own debit card, the idea behind Digit is to move small amounts of money from your account so that you won’t miss it. To do this, Digit first analyses your spending patterns before moving these minute amounts of money into your savings goals daily.
The Digit app will also tell you how much you have to spend after setting aside the money needed to pay your bills. You can then set up goals for various savings targets and even invest! Again, Digit isn’t the most hands-on investment app. But, free for the first 6 months before just $5 a month? It’s worth a try.
10. Stash
Finally, a more active, hands-on micro-investing app, Stash, is another app that moves small amounts of money regularly. If you want an investment app with a wide range of options, Stash is the one. While there’s still the option to use a Robo advisor and automate your investing, Stash also lets you choose your own options from ETFs, stocks, crypto and bonds.
If you want choice, Stash gives you plenty of it. Stash even includes educational resources for you to research investing strategies. You can either manually transfer money or send a recurring portion to Stash.
This is still mainly an app for those new to investing, but Stash offers a more active approach. Stash is $3 a month for Stash Growth or $9 a month for Stash+.
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