Proper budgeting is an essential skill that most people want to learn. Do you always find yourself with some good amount of money only to splash them no time?
This happens for many people, myself included. Don’t panic!
The advent of technology is here to help you. Right from your App Store, you can choose an application from a list of best budgeting apps to get you sorted.
In this write-up, we summarize the most important information on the budgeting apps to help you choose one that will suit your needs.
Personal Capital
Over the years, we have seen a continued rise in Personal Capital. The app is continuously becoming one of the notable finance and budget aggregator applications that you can look for.
With the app, you can conveniently manage your investments with free budgeting software that comes as part of the app.
The apps basic features
The app is free with its use stretching to over 2 million. The all-comprehensive status of the app helps you manage your finances from a high-altitude view as well as presents you with the most intuitive investment tools.
For instance, Fee Analyzer is an example of an investment tool that lets you know about fees you’re channeling into your retirement plan.
Inside it, you can also find some personalized retirement and asset allocation tools. These are a lot of features inside one app, right?
Let’s say you have some $50,000 you want to invest.
Personal Capital will give you a Wealth Management plan, a premium service with a 0.89% annual fee. With this plan, you can access a financial advisor as you deem right for any clarifications.
You Need a Budget (YNAB)
This is another amazing budgeting app that you can download from both Apple and Google Play Stores.
The app’s developers have tackled the most challenging things when it comes to budgeting for every individual, which is, using your finances to settle the past month’s bills. It is usually a challenge for most people.
This app is a notch higher when compared to other apps because it tries to settle this self-repeating cycle.
For you with budget problems, be sure that this app with be the ultimate solution you need. Check it out in the Google and Apple App Stores.
YNAB automated funds for emergencies
In addition to helping you keep track of your income and balancing it with the expenses, the YNAB app also comes with a feature that helps you accumulate some funds for use in emergencies.
You do this by gradually becoming financially liberated to a point that you can afford to do some savings. You do this by creating budget limits. When your expenditure is below your target, the additional finances are used to cover the next day’s expenses.
As time goes, the additional finances will grow to cover up to a month of expenses. The app’s feature is called Age of Money – which means that the more time your earned money stays, the better financially you will be.
Synching all your accounts
The app helps you sync all your bank accounts making sure that you significantly reduce all manual entries. It does this by seamlessly importing your bank transactions.
One small thing that you will do is just manually assigning each transaction a spending category. Moreover, you can set goals for the projected future expenses helping you have a plan for your anticipated finances.
CountAbout
This is another awesome budgeting app that you can check out. Available from the Apple and Google Play stores, the app is interesting because you can share it with up to six trusted members of your family.
The simplicity and user-friendliness of the app is another feature that makes the app worth checking out.
However, it is not free!
The basic plan charges an annual fee of $9.99 and this comes with all the necessary functions of any budget app except for advanced features such as downloading credit cards, banking, and other financial transactions.
The Premium plan goes for $39.99 per year and you enjoy all the services offered. If you want to have additional capabilities such as small business invoicing, you will add $60 more.
Ease of Use
What thrills me about the CountAbout app is the ease of use and the simplicity it has. In no time, you can sync the app with large chunks of financial information from many sources.
You can also sync your 401(k) plan easily!
When updating, everything is automated to save you the time you would have used to manually enter the information. You can also configure your personalized settings. This implies you can customize every field, report, and function inside your app.
To conclude, if you’re on the FIRE path, you can use the FIRE widget within the app to manage your retirement timeline early. Through this, you can manage both assets and budget categories of your liking and they’ll help you organize both your passive incomes and expenses in a single handy chart.
Tracking of your bills
The app allows you to approve transactions but not continuous recurring transactions. However, you can use the app to make a schedule of your future payments as well as manage your current outbound payments.
The app also allows you to plan for the coming months through a comprehensive budget making sure that you are ahead of everything regarding your finances.
Money Patrol
This app uses comprehensive reports to help you track your spending habits.
With the use of data, the app helps you manage your expenditure. The reports generated helps you have a glimpse of your spending habits, monitor your bills coming up, as well as recurring expenditures.
A platform for over 15,000 lenders
The app supports over 15,000 financial institutions which makes it simple for you to add any of your many accounts.
Once you have connected all your desired accounts, the app starts to monitor and alert you of any notable and relevant incidences.
The range of accounts the app supports extends past the traditional savings and checking. Additionally, you can manage your business accounts, student loans, mortgages, investments, and many other financial accounts.
Budgeting for the future
Note that spending tracking s just part of the app’s functionality. Additionally, the app enables you to apply the learned information to plan for the future by organizing your budget and finances well.
Digit
Digit helps by automating your finances as well as help you create many financial goals.
The budgeting app does a detailed analysis of your spending and the process helps you make savings. It doesn’t matter the goal of your savings plan. The app helps you settle many things including planning a major purchase or for a vacation, or helps you save for a foreseen rainy day.
The app’s features
To save you money effortlessly, the app makes use of complex algorithms. The app is superior when compared to other common budget apps in that unlike them, it does its working in the background. You are therefore stripped of the bother to keep checking up on some things.
The other amazing features include no account minimums, unlimited withdrawals, 0.1 percent bonuses on savings, and automated savings. You can use the app to set a goal and track it throughout.
Effortless savings
For you to use Digit, you must first connect your bank to it. It is after that the app analyses your past spending and later on, it will transfer your finances to your Digit account when you can afford it.
The savings accumulate over time and your savings plan becomes easy and painless.
The Digit budget app is free except for a small subscription fee of $5 monthly. This is clearly a small amount when compared to the many benefits you will reap using this app.
Empower
The Empower budgeting app is downloadable from both Apple and Google Play Store.
When thinking about managing your finances, this app is one of the budgeting apps that should come to your mind. As the name suggests, Empower empowers you by sticking with you all through. It helps you in budget setting, expense tracking, and monitoring the progress of your spending.
What is the result of this? The app helps you be the boss to control your finances.
Helps you in budgeting and spending
If you have ever tried a budget, you will agree that it is the most difficult thing to do. Sometimes, you can just give in to an urge to take some snack you have missed on your way home.
Empower encourages you to hit your set target by showing you your progress towards hitting it. You’ll definitely be determined to smash that target and be proud of yourself.
Helps you make your savings
The app doesn’t only monitor your spending. It also gives you the help you need to save some money for future use.
Over time, Empower can learn some intricate information about your finances and immediately lets you know when you can afford to save something extra.
What you need to do is giving the app the savings target you have and let it do the rest. The app knows how to evaluate both your expenses and incomes and helps you know when you have enough to make some savings.
In case you are out of cash at hand and some emergency pops up, you need not panic because Empower has your back as long as you qualify for Cash Advance.
The app can have you sorted with up to $250 to your checking account. It will later recover the amount on your next deposit without interest or penalties for late payment.
Eligibility to apply
Minimum deposits directly to your checking on Empower will make you eligible for the Cash Advance. This is just one of the conditions- there are other additional conditions put in place for you to qualify for a Cash Advance of over $50.
Charlie
It is a free budgeting app. The spending tracker features help you track your spending. A good number of people I have interacted with seem to be well conversant with this app.
Charlie monitors your whole financial picture
The app extends past the normal budgeting to include your whole financial picture. The app lets you have a one on one interaction with “Charlie” regularly. The app lets you sync your credit accounts and your bank and then it reviews them to draw a real picture of the areas you’re overspending in and the opportunities you have to save.
The app also notified you about your account balances especially when they are depleting or about your anticipated payments.
Spend Tracker
With the app, you can comfortably regulate how you spend. The spending tracker element tracks the kinds of things you are spending on and in the process helping you know the kinds of spending to stop.
Mint
It is a free app! It prepares a credit score for you for free.
The app can prepare a summary report of your credit rating in addition to credit monitoring and taking you through some sort of education on credit score.
The amazing budgeting app comes with an extraordinary collection of features and tools despite being free.
It analyzes your spending
The “trends” feature within the app is very interesting. Months after installing and using the app, it will use the data gained to analyze your monthly, quarterly, and yearly spending.
Even more interesting is the fact that you can use the trends feature to analyze spending based on specific merchants and categories. Through this, you will be in total control of the areas where your finances are going. You will then be able to stop the expenses where you note the excesses.
Investment tracking by Mint
You can also use the app to do your investment tracking. By syncing all your accounts to the app, you will get the allocation, performance, and value changes over time. You will then get the necessary recommendations for investments.
Summary
Budgeting is a nightmare for many people and therefore finance management becomes a real issue. However, with the many budgeting apps on both the Apple and Google Play Store, you can get the help you need.
You have seen that they are so many, so you will just choose one that tries as much as possible to take care of all your needs. It is you to decide.
The cost should not bother you because as you have seen there some apps you can get free. While others may cost you something, you have seen that it is actually a negligent amount in contrast to the many benefits you will reap.
Again, remember that the apps aren’t confined to budgeting only. The apps are your breakthrough to overall financial literacy as you have seen in the list above.
So, go ahead and chose one of them that will suit all your financial needs.
