We hope that you’ve been reading our previous blogs and have been using them to get started with organizing your finances for the new year, planning a budget and creating debt and savings goals. If you’re looking for a little extra help, here are six of the best apps for budgeting, controlling spending and meeting your savings goals.
All six are free to download on iOS or Android, though some may offer additional services for an additional charge. Each app has its own benefits and limitations, so take your time and find the app that best fits your lifestyle and your goals.
The thing to remember is the app is only as powerful as the person using it. These apps can help you track expenses and manage your budget, but you have to be willing to take the steps necessary to make them effective. Otherwise, they’ll just take up room on your mobile device.
Big Picture Tools
1. Mint
Mint is a free app sponsored by Intuit, the company that sells TurboTax and other software solutions. Because it’s been around the longest, it’s one of the best know budgeting apps on the market. Mint helps users create budgets with numerous spending categories, allows you to track and pay bills, and check your credit score.
mint.com
2. Prosper Daily / BillGuard
BillGuard allows you to check all your accounts in one place and lets you track your spending by type, month and location. It also offers other identity protection tools like data breach alerts.
billguard.com
Budget Balancers
3. Goodbudget
Goodbudget recreates envelope budgeting for the digital world by allowing you to set aside money to be budgeted for pre-determined categories. They when you spend you track how much you spend from each designated category. When the money runs out, it will tell you to stop spending. It also allows you to sync accounts across multiple devices which makes it great for family budgeting. It doesn’t link to your accounts, so it’s up to you to provide it with the information
goodbudget.com
4. Level Money
You know your bank balance, but do you know what portion of it you can responsibly spend? Level Money helps you plan ahead for essentials like rent and bills and then lets you set a target savings goal.
It does this by subtracting recurring expenses and savings from your income before dividing up what’s left. This allows it to tell you what you can spend each month, day and week.
levelmoney.com
Fun and Friendly
5. Penny
Wish that you had a personal assistant that could send you reminders about how much you’ve spent, when you get paid and when your bills are due?
Penny works as a personal finance coach, by allowing you to keep tabs on your finances via a text message like interface.
pennyapp.io
6. Wallaby
Not sure which credit card to use to get the maximum reward? Wallaby can help.
The app provides a sleek list of transactions with a focus on optimizing credit card rewards, telling you the best card to use at a given merchant and how much of your credit limit you’ve utilized.
walla.by
Look Long-Term
Want to put these apps to use, but don’t know where to start? Schedule a free counseling session today or call us at 800-920-2262.
