Personal budgeting should be easy. You figure out how much money you make on a weekly or monthly basis. You determine how much you spend over the same period. The difference is either your extra income or your extra expenditures, and then you act accordingly. And accordingly there arises a need for apps that helps you manage money.
But in reality, it is not that simple.
A budget is more than just a spreadsheet of income and expenditures. It is a designed personal roadmap to achieve your financial dreams and requires consideration of dozens of options.
Creating a proper budget is much easier today than it was at the turn of the century because there are dozens of apps which not only provide the step-by-step guidance required to set up a proper budget but can also provide suggestions on how to make your bottom line more positive and financially reassuring. These apps are usually free unless you want to pay for premium services which differ among apps and go beyond the basic household income and expenditures lists.
Here are some of the most popular budget apps, with details on what makes one budget app different from the others, allowing users to determine just what they want their budgeting app to provide:
Table of Contents
1. EveryDollar
(4.2 out of 5 stars on Google Play)
EveryDollar tracks your income suggests expenses you might not otherwise think of (donations, monthly subscriptions, etc.), and tracks your spending with your daily expenditures. Then, under its premium version, EveryDollar offers the opportunity to create savings funds in numerous ways. It also offers suggestions for expenditure adjustments.
2. GoodBudget
(4.4 stars)
Employing the “envelope budgeting method,” GoodBudget offers notifications when envelopes need to be refilled. It also provides coaching on paying off debt.
3. Honeydue
(4.1 stars)
Honeydue is a budgeting app for couples. It displays multiple checking and savings accounts, individual and joint credit card accounts, and combined spending habits, in order to promote relationship harmony.
4. Mint
(4.5 stars)
One of the first budgeting apps, and the most downloaded such app in existence, Mint provides information on how your streaming services may be duplicating available services, as well as subscriptions you are paying for but not using.
5. Personal Capital
(4.3 stars)
Besides usual budgeting services, Personal Capital also allows users (with an additional fee) to include information on their current investment accounts (like IRAs) and suggest changes, additions, or deletions. Thus, it is considered as one the best apps that help you manage money
Personal Capital
Take control of your finances with Personal Capital’s personal finance tools
6. Pocketguard
(3.8 stars)
Pocketguard’s most popular feature is that it prominently displays the money “in my pocket’’, the funds you have leftover after considering all of your expenditures and expenses.
7. Simplifi
(3.5 stars)
Sponsored by Quicken, Simplifi offers the basic budgeting tools, including a “spending plan” which allows users to set limits to spending in individual categories and reports overspending in those categories.
8. Stash
(4.2 stars)
Advertised as “investing for beginners, Stash* offers (for a monthly fee) users the ability to begin fractional investing, purchasing percentages of shares in public companies.
Fractional shares start at $0.05 for investments that cost $1,000+ per share.
9. Wally
(2.9 stars)
The simplest of the budgeting apps, Wally provides all of the budgeting tools of other sites for free and without begging you to spend money on premium services you may not need.
10. YNAB (You Need a Budget)
YNAB does not consider any money to be “leftover”. Instead, it assigns a purpose to every dollar you report as income, whether it be for expenditures, investments or other purposes you suggest (travel, rainy day, pay off debt). YNAB has a cost after a free 30-day trial.
Every budgeting app is a bit different, and it is up to you to decide what you need a budget app to do. Then, you can have the fun of investigating all of your choices and find the one that best suits your needs. We hope that all these benefit you in wise money management!
Disclosure*:
Paid non-client endorsement. See Apple App Store and Google Play reviews. View important disclosures.
