Everyone wants to be able to cut their spending to save money for the future. Whether you are sharpening your money management to save for your retirement, a big purchase, or an emergency fund, knowing exactly where your money is going with budgeting is important. The 10 apps listed below will help strengthen your personal finance and money management skills through making easy-to-use and stick-with budgets to reach your savings goals.
1. Personal Capital
Personal Capital is an award-winning online service that provides its users with numerous tools to manage every aspect of their personal finances and investments. Personal Capital is able to link a user’s multiple financial accounts, as well as their investments and debts, into one convenient dashboard.
Beyond having a 360 view of your finances, Personal Capital also provides free analytical tools, including a customizable budget planner that can sort your spending and provide goals to keep your spending in check. Their cash flow tool works in tangent with the budget planner to show you the money you are earning, how much money you are bringing in, and the money you are spending within the last 30 days. They also offer tools to plan for your retirement and a dedicated education budget planner, to let you estimate how much money you need to save for later education.
2. Mint
Intuit’s Mint is an incredibly popular mobile budgeting app made by the makers of Turbo Tax, that provides a multitude of tools to help user’s keep their financial lives healthy. Mint has an easy-to-use dashboard that lays out your budget, spending, and bills in one convenient place. Their bill tracker is extremely useful, allowing you to set reminders for upcoming bills and alerts for bills that are due, and receive warnings about low funds so you always know what you can afford.
What is unique about Mint, however, is its ability to keep track of your credit score and check it as many times as you like without penalties. Mint also provides tips to improve your score and keep it on track.
3. Acorns
If you are worried about your investments, or starting a retirement fund, then Acorns is the right app for you. For as little as $1 a month, Acorns gives you access to their exclusive debit card that has no ATM or overdraft fees and no minimum account balance. What is special about Acorns, however, is their ability to round up your everyday purchases to the nearest dollar and takes the spare change from each transaction and invests it into a separate fund, effectively helping their users earn money. Through the Acorns app, you can start investing and making a profit off of the purchases you make daily to start saving for your retirement.
Related: 10 Things to Stop Buying, and Doing, to Save Money
4. Goodbudget
The app Goodbudget takes the tried and true envelope budgeting system to your mobile phone. Instead of carrying around multiple cash-filled envelopes for each category of your spending, Goodbudget allows you to virtually set up your envelopes and easily keep track of your spending habits. Goodbudget syncs with your mobile phone, tablet, and computer to keep your budget available on every platform. You can also sync multiple accounts to keep your family’s budget visible for all members of your family.
5. EveryDollar
EveryDollar takes your basic budget app and takes it to the next level. Making your budget through the free EveryDollar app is easy and takes about 10 minutes to get started. All you need is your expected monthly income and your expenses. From there you will be able to create a fully customizable and personalized budget to help you keep track of your spending. Every time you make a purchase, you simply have to create the transaction in the app, and it will do the rest of the work for you.
EveryDollar has a premium service, EveryDollar Plus, that allows you to link your budget to your bank account, making it easy to keep track of the funds in your account and your budget. EveryDollar Plus also gives you access to their financial literacy crash course, Financial Peace University, that will help you learn how to pay off debt and accumulate your wealth.
6. Clarity Money
Clarity Money is an A.I. powered financial assistant that will help you save money and track your expenses. Backed with Marcus by banking giant Goldman Sachs Banks USA, Clarity Money helps its users save money through extensive tracking of your spending habits in comparison with your traditional bank accounts to help you uncover your bad habits. Clarity Money also provides you with an opportunity to track your subscription services as well as cancel the ones you don’t use.
Related: How You Can Easily Save Money with These 5 Apps
7. Spending Tracker
For those who want a basic expense tracker without the gimmicks or frilly interface, then the Spending Tracker app is the perfect solution. Spending Tracker has been around since early 2013 and has kept a loyal fanbase for its easy-to-use interface and simple design. In the app, you can log all the money you earn and spend, as well as see visualizations of your budget.
8. Fudget
Another simple money tracker, the Fudget app is perfect for those who don’t want anything extra in their budget. Fudget does not use charts or other visuals or categories, making it the perfect app for beginners or those new to mobile budgeting. Despite an easy-to-use interface that allows for fast logging and money tracking, you still have the availability to star expenses that will be flagged for future budgets, like bills. Fudget also allows you to download and use it on every platform, including Apple, Android, Microsoft, and Mac. You can also switch up the currency symbols for your budget, so you can log your expenses when you are abroad.
9. Money Lover
Money Lover is a cross platform finance app that can help you save money and track your expenses on your phone, tablet, and PC. Money Lover helps you create a beautifully organized budget with various categories for food, entertainment, essentials, etc. along with being able to scan your receipts and log them into the app. The Money Lover app also allows you to change currency symbols and houses up-to-date currency exchange rates to help keep your spending on track when traveling.
Related: Money Management Mistakes You May Have Made
10. Show Me the Money
The final app on our list is the app Show Me the Money which is available exclusively on the Apple store. Show Me the Money lets you set a budget and create a digital wallet that can be shared between all members of the family. With the shared wallet, each member of the family will be able to track and log their daily expenses and income and put it all in an easy-to-use interface with charts and analytics on the family’s spending.
Saving money is a hard and arduous journey. You can make that journey easier through simple planning through careful money management and budgeting. The 10 apps found on this list are some of the top apps out there to help you get a hold of your, and your family’s, spending to help you save money for the future.
