Monitoring your money is the key to keeping your personal finances in good shape, especially if you’re working with a limited budget. Many Americans still have the opportunity to improve their personal finances by keeping a simple monthly budget, according to Good Financial Cents. Fortunately, there are a number of personal finance apps that can help you manage and gain valuable insights into your financial situation.
By taking a good, honest look at your finances on a consistent basis, you can give yourself the opportunity to get out from under some of your debt, cut back on your monthly expenses, save money for a large purchase (like a home or car), improve your credit score, or achieve any other long-term financial goals you have in mind. The process of putting together a thorough budget may seem like just another task to pile on to your busy schedule, but in the end, the improvements you’ll see in your financial profile will be worth it.
We’ve dug up six of the best personal finances apps of 2019 to help you navigate your way to a better financial future.
1. Mint
Mint is a free budget planner designed to help you effortlessly stay on top of your bills. This clever personal finance app tops the 2019 list at The Balance, and our team agrees that it has some crucial features that will help you through the budgeting process.
Mint lets you see everything in one place. Seeing information like your credit card balances, checking account transfer information, student loan payment schedule, and your monthly bills on one screen can help give you insights into your financial universe in an instant.
Once you load your information—accounts, cards and bills—this money app can help you understand how you’re spending your money, where you're saving, and what you’re overspending on. With this data in hand, you can then easily create budgets, track online loan payments, track investments, and find new ways to save. Mint regularly and automatically updates and categorizes your credit cards, savings and checking accounts, and retirement plan balances.
One of the best features from Mint is its real-time reading and display of your credit score, so you always have insights into the health of your credit.
2. Prism
Available on multiple mobile platforms at no charge, Prism is a personal finance app that can help take the pain out of paying your bills. The team at Prism understands that people sometimes struggle with staying on top of their finances, and they want to help by simplifying the bill payment process.
Prism gives users the chance to see their account balances and bills together on a single platform. Users can opt to pay bills directly from the app, or you can schedule a payment for a later time. Once you make a payment, the service sends a notification with the bill’s due date and payment confirmation.
Once you load Prism onto your mobile device, the app will ask you to choose your billers. After you’ve connected them all, Prism will sync your account balances and bills, and you’ll see all this information directly in the app. You can then pay bills right from Prism, saving several steps and plenty of time. This efficiency gives you a clear picture of your finances after your payments are made so you can continue to tweak your budget accordingly.
3. Spendee
A great personal finance app for shared expenses, with Spendee you can create shared wallets with your significant other, friends, roommates, and family members to split expenses and keep the household running smoothly. For instance, if you want to pay the rent with a shared account rather than having one person pay from their account, Spendee will enable you to join your payments through their platform.
When you import your bank transactions, Spendee will categorize them to determine how you're spending money each month.
Here are a few features of this savings app that we love:
- Manually Added Expenses. Manually add cash household expenses to your app to monitor where your money goes and to keep from going over budget.
- Track Bills. Remember to pay your bills—and avoid incurring late fees—by using the bill tracking feature.
Sharing expenses as a roommate, family member, or partner can pose added budgetary challenges, and Spendee is a personal finance app that offers a wide array of features to make this easier for everyone in your household.
4. Mobills
With a free version and two pro-tiers, you can tailor your budgeting experience with Mobills to fit your needs. If you want to stick to your budget and simply track expenditures, the free version has numerous features and benefits designed to help.
This personal budget planner organizes your expenses into categories that allow you to track spending as you move toward your targeted budget amount. You can see the remaining amount in your account, so you can reduce spending as necessary to stay within your budget.
Here are the features that come with the free version:
- Unlimited transactions
- Ability to create categories for expenses and income
- Cloud sync across devices
- Accounts management
- Expense and income management
- Customization and dashboard cards
- Credit card management
Even with the free version, you’ll get a strong push in the right direction to keeping your expenses on track.
5. PocketGuard
Marketed as a bare-bones budgeting system, PocketGuard offers users a quick snapshot of the way they spend money at any moment. This free personal finance app - available on iOS and Android - crystallizes everything down to one basic question: How much money do you have available to spend? Having more insight into this aspect of your finances can help to reduce the financial stress that comes with living on a moderate or limited budget.
PocketGuard takes your information and crunches it to show how much money you can spend at any time, accounting for savings, bills and retirement contributions. While you can add in categories like dining out and clothing expenditures, PocketGuard has gone out of its way to keep things simple.
6. Wally Next
Another free budget tracking savings app you might try is Wally Next. The freemium model gives you all the budget and expense tracking tools you need.
Once you sign in using your email address, you will then be able to set a savings target and daily budget. You can also log income and expenses, set reminders for bill payments, track reminders and much more. Finally, you can select a timeline feed or calendar display of your information.
Leverage the power of personal finance apps to help manage your money
We know that organizing your finances can be an overwhelming process, and you may feel like you’re at the mercy of your paycheck when you’re simply trying to make ends meet. Fortunately, there are free tools to help you get out of this rut!
The personal finance apps we’ve listed can help you keep create and keep track of your budget, give you useful insights into your spending, and much more. The most important step to take is to start with a simple monthly budget that’s suited to your financial situation and continue to tweak it as you learn more about your spending.
Give these personal finance apps a try and find what works best for your financial situation. The sooner you get started managing your personal finances with a simple monthly budget, the sooner you can start feeling better about your finances!
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Posted in: Financial Tips
Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not constitute financial, legal or other professional advice. For full details, see MoneyKey's Terms of Use.
