Tracking Finances Just Got Easier – Check Out These Budgeting Apps
With the explosion of personal finance apps and services in recent years, there are fewer and fewer reasons for not having a budget and sticking to it.
Staying on top of your finances, living below your means by avoiding frivolous spending, in order to save and invest, are few of the many pearls of wisdom that personal finance experts have touted for centuries, but for the first time, they all remain within the realm of possibility for the masses.
In this article, we’ve rounded up a few of the leading personal finance apps that allow for seamless budgeting, tracking, and analysis to get your house in order, and strive towards your financial goals, while leading a stress-free lifestyle.
Honeydew
As the name suggests, this is a budgeting app for couples, aimed at transparency, communication, along with mutual tracking, and accountability. Both the partners add their financial particulars, including loans, investments, credit cards, and bank accounts, providing a comprehensive overview of the collective financial position.
A key feature of the app is JointCash, which offers a collaborative way to track and pay for collective expenses such as rent, utilities, eating out, and vacations, etc.
PocketGuard
A simple, minimalist, yet powerful budgeting app, PocketGuard provides users a comprehensive overview of expenses and balances across all accounts.
While helping you keep track of daily expenses, the app suggests ways of reducing expenses with the help of deals, and rewards. Beyond this, PocketGuard offers a simple goal-tracking solution, allowing users to set up multiple goals, while setting aside money for each of them on a regular basis.
SoFi Relay
A free budgeting app by fintech behemoth SoFi, the Relay app provides users control of all their money from a single interface.
Created to supplement SoFi’s array of financial products and services, the Relay app is essentially one of the most sophisticated, and all encompassing solutions on this list. The app provides everything from a bird’s eye-view of overall finances, to deeper insights, to credit score monitoring, spending breakdowns, and more.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for tracking your money, it is unlikely to get any better than this, especially since all of this is made available for free.
You Need A Budget (YNAB)
An award winning solution aimed at hardcore budgeters, YNAB has since developed a cult following across the world with its unique approach of nudging users, and intuitively changing spending habits.
It remains the most expensive app on this list, with prices starting at $99 per year, but for its millions of users, what the tool offers is well worth the price.
YNAB has pioneered “The Four Rules” approach to budgeting, which are,
- Give Every Dollar A Job – Mapping out expenses, goals, and investments from the very beginning.
- Embrace Your True Expenses – Look forward to larger, less frequent expenses, and plan for them ahead of time.
- Roll With The Punches – If life, or uncertainties lead to overspending in a certain category, move funds over from another category to cover the same.
- Age Your Money – Aim to create breathing room by spending last month’s income for this month’s expenses, creating a rainy day fund without even realizing it.
This approach has since worked incredibly well for millions of users, who regularly tout the app as the holy grail for personal finance, and budgeting.
Final Thoughts
WIth such feature-packed, intuitive solutions, there are very few reasons that people can give for not having one, or not sticking to their budgets. As such, the only thing that stands in between most people, and their desired financial future is their own lack of self-discipline, and intent. Hopefully there is an app for that as well.
