Managing your finances can be quite the headache. Having to monitor multiple income sources and expenditure lines is not the easiest of tasks, especially since it is not the only task that requires attention and the possibility exists that you can forget some items you have spent money on in the recent past.
Remember those debts owed you which you happened to forget their specifics – the who, where and when, or you forget them completely. What about owing someone and forgetting to pay back when you have the money, only to be reminded when you have run low on cash. How about your spending patterns – erratic eh? Well it’s not just you – may people have the same problem with sticking to a budget as you – and it can be solved fairly easily, by letting your mobile phones help.
Smartphones are capable of almost anything today, from helping you find information to tracking a shipment and much more; one of the ways they make life better is in helping you keep track of your personal finances.
Mobile technology has come to stay and it as expressed itself as a sure means of making life easier in just about every aspect of our day to day activities – and today, there is an app for just about anything you’d like to do on your phone – including managing your finances.
There are several mobile applications available on just about every platform that puts the planning, monitoring, alteration or whatsoever you intend to do about your personal finances right in the palms of your hands.
Developers make these finance apps for the ultimate reason of improving the efficiency with which you carry out this all – important task of being more financially responsible. Some focus on your savings, others focus on how you manage your expenditure, some on your financial security, a few more choose to help with your investment culture. There are different approaches taken by different app makers, all to one ultimate end – staying in the black. There are also very many similarities between these finance apps, making it difficult for you to decide which of them to choose and which will be best for you as an individual. We have compiled a list of the top 10 finance apps available on the most popular mobile platforms to help inform and guide your decision in choosing amongst them.
#1 – Level Money
This app is designed to answer the question “what can I spend today?”. It is a relatively new entrant into the personal finance management ecosystem, but one with revolutionary ideas – award winning ones too. Once downloaded and connected to your accounts, Level Money monitors your income and expenditure to determine which of them are recurring – helping you set money aside for those – and uses your pre-set savings percentage to deduct the right amount you want to save and sets it aside too, it then goes on to determine and advice you on what should be your spending on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Dubbed “the money meter,” Level Money can suggest a certain amount for you to save based on its monitoring and information gathered, or you can choose to manually prescribe a value to be saved. Any amount left over from your intended expenditure is also moved to your savings. It is available on both Android and iOS platforms.
#2 – ACORNS
Acorns is more of an investment app than most. But it does that through monitoring of users’ expenditure. Developers claim the app helps users invest between $30 and $180 monthly from spare change alone – here’s how the award winning app achieves that.
You have to connect your expenditure accounts (credit card, checking account etc.) to the app, and whenever you make any payment or purchase, the app rounds up the amount you are spending to the nearest dollar and invests the change in low cost ETFs. For example, if you paid $2.50 for a cup of coffee, Acorns rounds up your bill to $3 and you automatically invest 50 cents, and this goes on with every expenditure you make.
Beyond all that, you can add an unlimited number of credit or debit cards to your Acorns app account at no extra cost. The makers are pretty serious about security too and as such they do not store your data on your phone, tablet or computer, but on their servers with 256-bit encryption.
They also boast that every dollar you invest is automatically diversified across about 7000 different bonds and stocks in order to reduce the risk you bear and maximize your returns.
Acorns is available on both Android and iOS and you can also decide to invest a lump sum up to $30,000 at any point in time but it’s main focus is investing loose change in little quantities – helping you to save and invest while you spend.
Get your hands on the app and turn every spending to a chance to save.
#3 – HOME BUDGET WITH SYNC
Available on Android and iOS platforms for a little over $4. This is the ultimate home budgeting app. It allows multiple users to monitor their income, expenditure, purchases and every other form of cash lay off. It not only does these, but it makes it possible to synchronize these account changes across multiple devices. This makes it possible to reconcile the spending of multiple family members all from the comfort of one app.
The app allows a budget to be set and helps to monitor how close you are to your income targets as well as expenditure thresholds. The main selling point of this particular app is the possibility of synchronizing your expenditure with those of other people like friends, relatives or a roommate. In this way, it helps to save the time spent on reconciling accounts and helps to achieve better accountability since you know you are not the only person involved.
#4 – WALLY
This app features many of the usual financial planning features on offer from many other developers while also allowing users to view all of the financial information they require on a quick and easy – to – use console. Wally users can set a target amount of savings they intend to achieve and monitor their progress right from the comfort of the app.
Expenditure monitoring is an area where this app excels. You can quickly create an expense and have it reconciled with your budget in no time. It includes location tagging and social tools for expense tracking – meaning users don’t just track expenses, but they can keep record of where and with whom such expenses were incurred, making it easier to keep track of money loaned out to friends. It also features deeply detailed infographics on spending (and earning) patterns – graphs and charts that show users’ spending trends and much more, and that’s it not even the best part.
Wally users save themselves the hassle of typing in each expense item individually as the app allows them to simply scan their receipts and the item is added to their expenditure – cool, right?
#5 – MINT
Developed by intuit, it is perhaps the most widely used among these top 10 finance apps. Mint provides an in-depth look at all of your financial information, from student loans to credit cards, savings account and your 401(k). It brings all of your finances into one place – income avenues and expenditure lines – for ease of monitoring so you know at every point in time what you own, what you owe and what you are owed.
Mint is free and easy to set up for your use, allowing you to connect accounts in almost all Internet – available banks in the United States. Information is accessible in real time – and they are updated and categorized as things happen. It lets you monitor how your money is performing and helps you see how you can improve upon it.
It alerts you when your spending is going beyond budget by automatically tracking your savings and expenditure trends and patterns and flagging any anomalies it observes. It displays all these in simple, easy to understand charts and graphs for an in – depth look at your finances so as to inform your decisions going forward.
The app also brings you custom offers and opportunities to save based on the numbers it has crunched from your account information. For example, if you spend a lot on fine dining, it can suggest savings offers that are available when u reach a particular threshold or when you pay using a particular gateway or platform at such high end restaurants.
Mint is available on Android and iOS.
#6 – CREDIT KARMA
This particular app has more than a few things special about it. It’s offers free credit score and other financial reports, allows users to monitor all of their finances and financial decisions in one place by linking their credit cards and bank accounts. It also monitors users spending and earning patterns and uses that information to recommend other loans and credit card facilities that can serve as an improvement on their current packages and ultimately, their financial situation.
It finds the best offers and deals for users matching a custom profile based on credit score, income, expenses and other information it gathers. For example, it can help find credit card deals with lower interest rates for a user who spends less (for example) but who happens to pay more currently because he or she holds a credit card that doesn’t consider their spending patterns in calculating their interest payments.
It now helps its over 32 million users find other services like mortgages and auto insurance deals that fit their financial profile. It generated about $75 million in revenue last year alone, and it is still seen as a company on the rise. The application is available on both Android and iOS platforms.
#7 – SPENDEE
Spendee is another finance app that’s worth a huge mention. It is available on both popular platforms and very user friendly too. It makes it easy to log expenses into categories – whether you are a free user or paid subscriber does not matter. It includes the option to take pictures of receipts and bills and store them for future use and for safe keeping. It sports a feeds tab that shows details of your expenses and you can scroll through to find intricate information you may have forgotten. It’s overview page shows your spending pattern and trends, it displays what you have been spending on and you can choose to make changes with the information provided.
You can also use it to create a budget and keep track of it. Some of the features are only available to premium users only, however. Feature like multiple budget, sharable savings wallets, multi – device synchronization, etc. The multiple budget feature allows you to create more than one budget for different purposes and helps you monitor how well you are keeping to them. It can hold the budgets of multiple family members and reconcile them at intervals to a singular income source where it applies.
#8 – GOOD BUDGET
Old fashioned envelope – style savers will find this app very useful in managing their finances. Good Budget allows you to set budgets individually like you would do with an envelope.
Just like you would keep money for each budget item in a special envelope labelled for the purpose and check how much of it you have spent and how much you have left, Good Budget can be used to set aside money for different purposes, it also lets you track how much you have spent on each budget item on the list.
Good Budget is very simplistic in its design and is easy to use for just about everyone. There are no complex controls or decisions to make, just good old envelope kind of savings monitored right from the comfort of your palms.
Good Budget lacks any form of sophistication in terms of functions, but it is a good way to create and maintain a disciplined spending culture for users. Available to all Android and iPhone users.
#9 – EXPENSIFY
Expensify is ideal for users who are always on the move. It is packed with a wide variety of features that helps you to track personal expenses fast and effectively. It’s stand out feature has to be SmartScan – which allows you to take pictures of receipts and it automatically log them as expense items without having you go through the hassle typing them in manually.
It also allows for importation of expense information from your credit cards and uses it to generate IRS certified eReceipts.
Other features of interest include automatic currency conversion from just about any currency to your pre-set default currency, while monitoring exchange rate fluctuations. It also helps you in monitoring of time and rate based expenses like taxi fares and the likes, mileage traveled and much more. It is available on Android and iOS.
#10 – PROSPER DAILY (formerly BILL GUARD)
This application is mostly concerned with protecting you and your money. It helps you to stay protected from fraud or errors that may cost you money on your credit or debit cards and expense accounts. Recurring charges and accounts balances are easily viewed on the app’s dashboard, the app takes note of these and if for any reason it happens to notice a fraudulent or suspicious charge on your account or card, the app sends you an alert and gives you the option to report such charges or dismiss them if they turn out to be legit. It also assists you in getting back your money should such charges happen to be erroneous.
If a data breach happens to occur at a location where you have made payment using your card(s) in the past or somewhere in which your account information has ever been used, you do no have to wait to hear it on the news the app will alert you. If for any reason your financial data happens to be at risk at any point in time, Prosper Daily alerts you and gives advice on possible steps to take to keep yourself and your money safe.
It is available to Android users and iOS faithfuls.
CONCLUSION
There are many more apps dedicated to helping your financial planning to happen more effectively, but our list of the top 10 finance apps not only shows you a list of the 10 that stand out among their peers but it is diversified to suit the needs of different users. What you need from a money management app may not be what the other person needs, but this list of ours has something for just about everyone.
From the person looking to spend more responsibly, to the one looking to save more or the family looking to do more as a unit to be financially responsible, another could be looking to invest in more portfolios and your need could be additional safety for your hard earned money while keeping things mobile. Find the one(s) that suit you and head to the AppStore (iOS) or Play Store (Android) to download and begin your journey to easier and more effective financial management – and most importantly, staying in the black.