Let’s be real. We could all use some help in managing our money and personal finances. What with everything happening in our busy lives, making sure all the bills get paid. Sometimes tracking our expenses and keeping up with our bank account balance can be a little overwhelming and time-consuming. Good thing we have the technology. There are many online tools available for anyone in need of organizing their personal finances. The following 12 personal finance apps are specifically designed for easy and trustworthy management of your money. Each one of them provides different features for different purposes. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at 2021’s top personal finance apps to make your life easier.
1. Mint Personal Finance
There’s a reason Mint gets ranked first by many financial experts. This acclaimed free app offers integrated management of the user’s finances. In addition to allowing the user to “manage all accounts in one place”, as stated in their slogan, Mint includes features such as bill payment tracking, budgeting, free credit score inquiries, due payments and low balance alerting, budget categorization, investment tracking, home affordability and loan repayment calculation, security scanning and multi-factor authentication. You may also apply for Mint’s additional services including discounts and consultation to acquire credit cards, personal loans, student loans, and life insurance. Essentially, Mint offers a complete set of tools and advice to ensure the user’s personal finance is being managed most smartly.
2. You Need a Budget (a.k.a. YNAB)
YNAB is your go-to app if what you are looking for is strictly budgeting. It’s based on the zero-based budgeting system. It also follows these 4 golden rules:
- Give every dollar a job.
- Embrace your true expenses.
- Roll with the punches.
- Age your money.
The main goal of YNAB’s rules is to save up money from certain expenses to be used later, for other expenses. In short, to make better use of your money. According to YNAB’s user reports, you should be able to save up a noteworthy amount of money each month when following their system!
3. Wally
Recommended by sites such as Forbes, The Economic Times, and BBC, Wally is a free personal finance app that allows the user to sync their bank accounts to it, create a budget, track their spending and later track their progress! It’s a simple, user-friendly app, available to be downloaded by both Android and Apple users. One of the main advantages of Wally is that the app has 15,000 banks from 70 countries available for easy sync and management of all foreign accounts and transactions. That makes this one of the most trusted and utilized personal finance management apps around the globe.
4. Clarity Money
Because it’s easy to lose track of how many subscriptions you may have signed up for, Clarity Money will help you to make sure that you are not wasting money on any unused subscriptions. Although that is the app’s main purpose, it’s not the only benefit that you can enjoy when using it. Clarity Money also helps you by analyzing your money habits, as well as by offering you advice to better manage your finance. On top of that, the app allows you to set clear budgeting goals and even create savings funds! It’s quite a complete app that will help you stay on track with your monthly financial decisions.
5. Personal Finance Capital
Personal Capital was created to be an investment aid tool. Basically what this means is that the app offers top-quality investment advice, from both robot advisors as well as from expert human financial advisors. Personal Capital’s additional benefits include investment checkup, budget and money-tracking features, savings and retirement planners, a fee analyzer, as well as a display of all recent transactions. This software/app is a must for all investors or people looking to get into the investment industry. It can be tricky and you might be losing some money in small, almost unnoticeable amounts, which is why it’s important to be careful and pay attention to the “minor” details.
6. Goodbudget
The envelope system but with virtual envelopes! Goodbudget allows for a single account to be managed by two devices, so partners or family members can create and share the same budget. Unlike other personal finance apps, Goodbudget cannot sync with your bank account, so you need to input every transaction yourself. However, the app’s many benefits surpass this one inconvenience. The system is simple: you make “envelopes” for all your expenses categories, then you set aside the money that is to be spent on each envelope. This way you end up planning your spending, and not just spending the money based on what’s left on your bank account.
7. Acorns
Acorns is mainly an investment app that encourages you to invest your spare change in exchange-traded funds. The app creates a portfolio where all the stocks or bonds that you may own due to your investments get combined and stored. Acorns allow you to make automatic daily, weekly, and monthly investments. With every purchase that you make, you could invest with round-ups of your total pay. Acorns also feature different useful tools such as Acorns Later and Acorns Spend. Acorns Later is a retirement savings tool and Acorns Spend is a checking account tool that allows you to save money to be invested. Also, see Mashvisor.
8. MoneyPatrol
With a free 15-day trial, MoneyPatrol monitors your financial accounts and sends alerts and notifications to help you keep an eye on your finances. Some of the apps’ key features include a display of the latest transactions with 1-year data history; information of your credit usage, rates, balances, and payments; your spend trends and patterns; and weekly, monthly, and yearly summaries. MoneyPatrol also allows the user to create a budget to manage their expenses. You may wanna trust these experts from the financial industry based in Silicon Valley when it comes to managing your personal finances!
9. EveryDollar
This budgeting app also uses the zero-based budget method used by YNAB. The zero-based budget method’s purpose is to give a smart use to every dollar (rings a bell?) instead of just spending it all with no plan. EveryDollar helps the user to create a monthly budget to achieve their money goals. You would first need to start by adding your monthly income, then plan your expenses and finally track your spending to ensure that you are sticking to your budget. This easy-to-use app offers a free trial of the premium version of the app for new users. EveryDollar is a simple, minimalist, you-get-what-you-see app. A great option for those who are looking to get started on zero-based budgeting.
10. Daily Budget
The Daily Budget team pride themselves on the simplicity of their design and their app’s features. One of the app’s main characteristics is that it doesn’t allow for bank connections nor data sharing with the app. It really is a delightfully simple app that lets you record your spendings, create budgets and see that everything follows through with little to no extra information, to not “bother you with endless details.” Daily Budget aims to encourage the user to spend money only on those things that really matter to them, as well as to plan and save up money before spending.
11. PocketGuard Personal Finance
This popular app featured in Cheddar, Forbes, Time, NBC News, etc., was designed to keep perfect track of the money on the user’s “pocket”. Thanks to a well-displayed list of expenses, PocketGuard can analyze and tell how much spendable money you have left after paying all your bills. The app also allows you to link your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investments to it to keep track of your account balances and net worth. PocketGuard provides useful information regarding your financial situation that will give you a better idea of the money you are spending and, eventually, lead you to make smarter decisions when it comes to your finances.
12. Digit
Digit is a smart app that needs only your income and spending information, and your goals, meaning, what you want to save money for. This app automatically creates a budget specifically designed for you and your needs. Digit’s algorithms learn how you spend your money and create a budget in which you don’t need to change your lifestyle, but instead, you end up actually achieving whatever you are trying to save up money for. This sophisticated app is available for download for both Android and Apple users. Get ready for automated saving, 0.5% savings bonus, overdraft prevention, and many more benefits when signing up for Digit!
Which Personal Finance App Should You Use?
As you can see, there are many great app options for multiple purposes. You could even try more than one if you are, for example, planning on investing some of your money and budgeting your expenses at the same time. Keep in mind that some of these have a minimum monthly or yearly cost, others are slightly more expensive, and some others are completely free. It’s always a good idea to try out the free trials that some of these apps offer. This way you can know for sure whether the app you chose is exactly the one for you. Finally, remember that although personal finance apps will help a great deal to keep your expenses under control, they will work best if you have set your mind to work on your money habits, towards smart money management.
