To be on top of money matters, you need to be careful about how you spend your money. Budgeting can be tricky if you do not track your spending habits. Luckily, there's an app for almost anything nowadays. You can even get one that will help you manage your money wisely and boost savings further.
These money tracking apps are user-friendly, and you can use any one of these or maybe even two to manage your financial life. You will be able to keep track of your income and expenses, view the data, and make necessary changes. Many other features come with these apps, which makes them user-friendly. Let's find out the best apps and their top features.
Mint
Mint is perhaps the most popular out of the lot. It's a popular expense tracker app with many useful features and a long track record of helping customers as it's one of the oldest apps in this category. The Mint app is web-based, free to sign into, and linking your accounts to it is very straightforward, so it takes only a few seconds to set up.
Budgeting with Mint is super easy once you sync your financial data. Your finances will get placed into predefined categories, and you can add custom ones too. Mint has a tracking option; also that can help you achieve your saving goals and pay off debts by making progress on these aspects visible.
On the Mint app, you can now keep track of your credit score, which makes this platform great for having a clear view of your financial status in its entirety. The app can help with tracking bills and giving you a balance that is available for spending. Mint is a comprehensive personal finance app that will help you stay on top of all household finances.
Quickbooks
Quickbooks is an easy-to-use finance app geared toward businesses. It is especially true for small companies that don't need to apply GAAP standards for their accounting fully. The Quickbooks app allows small business owners to have five user accounts, but remote access to these can be a problem if you don't use the online version.
You can use this highly user-friendly platform to send an unlimited number of invoices, keep track of expenses, print checks, and pay your company's bills online. What makes this app great for managing all aspects of your business's finances is linking all your bank accounts to one Quickbooks account.
If there's a feature you need that Quickbooks doesn't have, you can add it to the platform because it can integrate with third-party apps. If you have employees, there is also an option to add a payroll management system, contributing to better expense tracking. Many other useful features can help make your small business finances a painless process.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital is an app that is good for people looking for a platform that will allow them to manage their budget and investments. The app's financial tracking capabilities don't just focus on expenditure but on every transaction that happens on the bank accounts you've linked. Capital is one of the most popular money tracking tools available today. It's a great way to keep tabs on your spending, see where your money is going, and find ways to save.
If you link up all your financial accounts, credit cards, loans, etc., the Personal Capital app can track your Net Worth. The app tracks your net worth by weighing your debts against your savings and investment accounts. This is an excellent feature to motivate you to meet your financial targets.
Personal Capital also has a retirement planning feature that will enable you to see how your investment portfolio would do during a recession. This is an important tool to have as part of your retirement strategy.
Saving for college? Personal Capital has that covered too with a college savings plan. This college savings plan calculates the amount you need to save in total by comparing the average tuition costs of colleges in your state. With this handy tool, you can easily see how much you need to save on a monthly or yearly basis to afford tuition at a particular school. You can even compare the cost of different schools to find the best deal.
This tool helps users be more conscious about their overall financial state by factoring in investment monitoring and net-worth calculations. However, one of their most practical and usable features is monitoring and tracking expenditure.
The app is available for both Android and iOS devices. Personal Capital can be used for free, but there are also some premium features that users can pay for if they want more detailed insights into their finances. Overall, Personal Capital is a comprehensive money management tool that is perfect for those who want to be more proactive about their finances.
YNAB (You Need a Budget)
Jesse Mecham, a CPA, created YNAB to help his family deal with financially trying times. The app's name is an acronym that means You Need A Budget. What makes YNAB stand out from other money management apps is that it offers support that will enable you to deal with the root cause of a financial problem.
A great way that YNAB helps people is to provide strategies to take users out of debt and show them what usually causes debt problems. They have a blog that's updated frequently with articles that can help users cultivate fiscally healthy behaviors and ways of thinking.
The app has a forum with many people from different financial backgrounds, and their support benefits you greatly. Their slogan sums up this company's mission statement since it highlights the importance of avoiding living hand to mouth. You can use YNAB on desktop and mobile devices, which makes this app flexible and versatile.
Simplifi by Quicken
Simplifi by Quicken is a financially-savvy application that allows you to track your cash flow and see the bigger picture when budgeting. That means this tool can help factor in all bank account balances, debts such as credit cards and loans.
At the same time, Simplifi helps track all investments on the same dashboard. Therefore, you can get a snapshot of your financial health status in one place instead of printing all statements and assessing investments individually.
With all the app capabilities, you can see the limits of your spending and know the money left after paying all bills. It's not a one-day thing, but Simplifi can set you on the right course.
Dollarbird
Dollarbird is unlike any other money tracking app listed here. The app works on a different principle to help you save expenses and avoid overspending. The developers of Dollarbird understand what leads to exceeding the spending limits you had set for yourself.
It tracks daily expenses that no one remembers when doing the budget. The app focuses on helping you allocate daily expenses. That ensures that you track every cent that goes out on each day for an accurate budget.
At the same time, it helps you stay within budget since you're already aware of how much you can spend each day. Essentially, it is a calendar-based personal finance management app. Therefore you do not miss a single expense that usually comes unexpectedly and derails your financial planning.
Fudget
Fudget is a simplistic app that completes the massive task of budgeting and tracking all expenses from your personal finances. Their website claims that over 500 million individuals are using this service.
The best part about this app is that it is cross-platform and can be used both on iOS and Android. You can also use it on a desktop regardless of the OS you're using since it is available on macOS and Windows.
You can add multiple sources of income and categorize expenses accurately. There is no need to update the budget monthly if the expenses are recurring. You can simply mark those costs, and they will recur.
A value-added benefit is using different currencies available across the world. Also, there is an option to create a weekly or monthly budget.
Goodbudget
Goodbudget uses the old-school system of envelope budgeting, but the only difference is that it is all digital instead of having real envelopes full of money. The app takes it a step further than others by allowing you to sync with family member budgets.
There are many benefits when you're using Goodbuget, and one of them includes working towards being debt-free. Alternatively, you can track money when you're saving up for something big.
It could be a holiday or a particular item that you have always wanted. However, the expense-tracking feature also makes this tool perfect for monthly budgeting for individuals and families. You can get the mobile app on iOS and Android making the power of budgeting be right at your fingertips.
ZETA
ZETA is the perfect solution for small families and couples that might have multiple cards or joint accounts. You can gain access to a wide variety of features that make banking for couples more fun and reduce any disputes due to bad financial decisions.
It is the best solution for combining two different finances in one platform and dashboard. Sharing a joint account does not have to be stressful because ZETA can help you manage and monitor all expenses with a hawk eye.
The results lead to financial freedom since you'll be able to save more money together. This tool is aimed mostly at engaged couples, married people as well as co-parents. It can reduce a lot of stress on the latter, and the child will always have the money it needs for a healthy and happy life.
PocketGuard
PocketGuard is one of the most interactive expense-tracking apps with a beautiful UI/UX. Getting around this app is very easy, and setting up does not have a steep learning curve. You can get a snapshot of where you're spending mostly by the segregated pie chart.
There is a total cash expenditure section on that pie chart indicating whether the expenses increased or decreased. In that way, you can easily pick up whether your attempts of saving money are effective.
Additionally, the cost categories are useful for identifying when and where you spend the most money. You can also consolidate all accounts on one dashboard to get an overall snapshot of personal finance health status.
Mvelopes
Mvelopes by Fincity can be used mostly for budgeting all expenses and monitoring the expenditure to see if it matched the budget. A lot more is done by this tool that packs a considerable punch under the hood.
For example, you can get comprehensive reports that are structured to make them easy to understand. All the expense reports are available on one platform instead of manually putting them together. This simplifies what is usually a challenging task.
You can budget the money beforehand using the envelope system, and the reports serve as a guide to help identify if the budgeting was efficient. There aren't any value-added features such as tracking investments or the ability to pay all bills online.
Wally
Wally lets you take pictures of your receipts and stores them securely. You then can categorize these expenses, add notes, and even export the data into an Excel sheet if needed. Wally is available on both Android and iOS devices.
Wrapping Up
We hope you enjoyed learning about the different features that come with money tracking apps and have seen one that'll work for you. However, you need to know that while some of these apps may be free to use, you may need to pay a subscription to access some features.
Most of the time, just the basic free features can also help you have a tight grip on your money and enable you to teach your family good finance habits.
Author's Bio:
Joshua Sharp is a professional essay writer and blogger from Oxford, working as a journalist. He is interested in traveling, different cultures, and social connections.
He started work as an author of the blog, which connected with cultural differences. He is professional in media, art, public relations, and different news. Also, he is fond of psychology.