Budgeting apps are ranking high among users these days. Money-saving apps allow you to have maximum control over your money by integrating with your financial accounts and tracking your spending. They also allow you to categorize your expenses and figure out where you are spending. So, whether you are spending on utility bills, personal shopping, or your Cox internet package, your budgeting app has it all covered.
All these tasks are otherwise quite overwhelming, especially for those who tend to overspend and are bad at financial management. In addition to being feature-rich and user-friendly, the best budgeting apps match your saving habits and budgeting style.
We have picked some of the crowd-pleasing budget apps!
Why Use Budgeting Apps
Haven’t we all witnessed our parents and grandparents handwriting their monthly budget in a specific diary? They would swear by how effective this practice was! Budgeting apps are the modern counterparts of those diaries. And amid the economic disruptions because of the prolonged pandemic, we all are grappling with financial uncertainties. That’s exactly why we need to keep our spending in check. And budget apps allow us to do so.
Budgeting apps not only streamline our spending by grouping them in various categories, but they also highlight areas where we can manage to cut back. We have curated a list of some of the most effective budgeting apps you can download on both, Android and iOS.
Mint
Mint is an all-rounder. It is best to monitor your daily spending activities and for almost everything else. The app is free of cost and has garnered rave reviews and rankings on both iOS and Android. It stands out because of a bunch of useful features. It syncs with a variety of accounts such as savings, current, loans, credit cards, and so on. It also shows net worth, savings goals, investments, and other useful things.
You can categorize your expenses and personalize them as you prefer. By setting limits for all these categories, Mint will send you alerts that you are approaching those limits. It also comes with impressive security features like multi-factor authentication, Verisign scanning, touch ID access, and so on. Users can also take advantage of the detailed FAQ section.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital is best for investors who want to track their spending and wealth. The app is free, but since it is primarily more of an investment tool, users with accounts under $1 million have the option to enjoy investment management services for as low as 0.89% of their money.
Users can easily integrate checking, savings, loans, mortgages, and credit card accounts. They also get to monitor them. You can also create personalized categories for your expenses and monitor spending every month in each of these categories. Personal Capital also offers a breakdown portfolio and net worth tracker.
It is available to download on both, iOS and Android. Users can take advantage of effective security features like fraud protection, data encryption, and user authentication.
Honeydue
Does your spouse overspend on unnecessary stuff every month? Don’t worry! Best free budgeting app for couples and partners, Honeydue allows you and your partner to see and monitor your financial situation in a single app. The app allows couples to sync both partners’ financial accounts, savings, loans, credit cards, investments, and so on. This allows them to manage their account and finances together.
Categories can be customized and each partner can choose what to share with the other. Together, both of you can set limits for each of these categories on a monthly basis. Honeydue will notify you when you are about to reach those limits.
Available on both Android and iOS, this app also comes with solid security features like touch ID, encrypted data, multi-factor authentication, and so on.
PocketGuard
Financial management is most difficult for people who tend to overspend. Are you one of those people who do impulsive shopping and can’t stop splurging on things you already have? PocketGuard is here to the rescue!
It comes with an effective “In My Pocket” feature to take your estimated income, savings goals, and forthcoming expenses into account. It uses its algorithm to calculate how much is available to spend on a daily basis. The basic version is free and the premium costs $34.99 a year.
For those who are not techies and like to keep it simple, PockeGuard is a good choice. It doesn’t come with robust features, which may confuse non-technical users. The account integration is fairly simple and categories are customizable. The security features are impressive. They include biometrics like Face ID, Touch ID, PIN codes, and bank-level encryption.
You Need a Budget (YNAB)
Want to plan ahead of your financial decisions? Befriend YNAB! Your planning starts with the day you get paid. Tell YNAB how much you want to dedicate to expenses, savings, and other categories that are there in the app. This intentional splitting of your income makes you conscious about your expenditure, to begin with.
The rest of the work will be done by YNAB and its “zero-based budgeting system”. Contrary to conventional budgeting buckets, this system refers to no unaccounted dollar instead of allocating money for various categories. The app doesn’t even have any categories.
It offers smooth integration to all your financial accounts and has incredible reviews both on iOS and Android. However, it is not free. The free trial is for 34 days. After that, you will have to pay $84 a year, unless you are a student. In that case, you will only have to pay $11.99 a month!
Happy budgeting!
