Budgeting is a challenge for many people. While many folks want to reel in spending, it can be tedious to manually track expenses with a spreadsheet, making giving up all too easy. Luckily, there are budgeting apps to automate the process. However, there are numerous free and subscription-based budgeting and tracking apps available for download and it may take a long time to test out each one.
Budgeting and money tracking apps offer an easy way to maintain a budget. With the right app, you’ll be able to track your spending habits, find ways to spend less and save more, or budget effectively as a couple.
What Are Budgeting / Money Tracking Apps?
A budgeting or money-tracking app is a software application that you may access from your computer, tablet, or mobile device to track your personal finances. This may include tracking your income, expenses, savings, debt payoff, investing, or a combination to improve your financial health. Budgeting apps are different from accounting software, which is typically for a business’s income and expenses.
When selecting a budgeting app, be sure to consider what your needs and goals are first. The right budgeting app can provide you helpful insights and data into your expenses and savings. But before that happens, identifying what your financial goals are first can help you curtail your search for the right budgeting app for you.
Sharing with you here a list of top apps you may want to consider trying out.
Mint
Best Free Budgeting App for Daily Monitoring
Experience a fresh way to manage money. Reach your goals with personalized insights, custom budgets, spend tracking, and subscription monitoring—all for free. Easily see your monthly bills, set goals, and build stronger financial habits.
Mint is the money management app that brings together all of your finances. From balances and budgets to credit health and financial goals, your money essentials are now in one place.
The app splits your expenses into categories such as shopping, bills, and transportation. You can easily change the settings yourself or create a new category — so Mint does all the hard work for you, but you still have some control.
Mint makes it easy to save for multiple goals. Create a goal, including your estimated costs and timeline, and Mint factors the plan into your budget.
This app is easy to use and helpful for understanding your finances on a large scale.
Download Mint App Here
Free to download and use basic features
Upgrade to remove ads: $0.99 | Upgrade to Premium: $4.99
Zeta
Best Budgeting App for Couples
Zeta is one of the few free budgeting apps designed specifically for couples, joint finances or not. The app caters to all types of couples, including those who are living together, engaged, married, or new parents. You can sync various accounts to track spending, see your net worth, and manage bills together.
Zeta displays all your individual and shared finances in one place, and it gives you the option to hide certain financial information from your partner. It’s a good option for couples who have combined their finances or for those who prefer to bank separately.
With Zeta, you can set personal and combined financial goals. The app sends you monthly reminders to set “money dates,” making it a good tool for learning to communicate about your finances.
Imagine being on the same page about your finances as a couple; seeing eye-to-eye on your budget, your spending, and your savings. This free app takes over the money chores in your relationship, helping you master your money together and improve communication. So while it’s not guaranteed you’ll never ever fight about money again – you’ll *probably* never fight about money again.
YNAB (You Need A Budget)
Best for achieving financial goals
YNAB, short for You Need A Budget, is an award-winning budgeting program that specializes in helping consumers to save money and get out of debt.
YNAB prides itself not on looking into past financial insights, but rather on focusing on the present situation and future possibilities. The app assists users with figuring out their financial priorities and goals, along with giving each dollar a job. This is part of their method that has resulted in positive sentiment from many of its customers.
Within the app, there are several features to put customers on the path to efficient budgeting. Features such as financial goal tracking, reporting on financial habits and support from YNAB staff—with dozens of online workshops available—makes budgeting an easier experience.
YNAB is accessible both from desktop and mobile platforms, and even from voice-activated devices.
There is no up-front commitment with YNAB. You can try it risk-free for the first 34 days.
Free to download | Free Trial for 30 Days | Premium Subscription: $14.99 monthly
PocketGuard
Best for Tracking Spending
PocketGuard is an effective budgeting app for its ability to show the simple numbers: how much you have, how much your bills are and how much is left over. The app also shows you in a helpful pie chart, that is customizable, which expenses are taking up most of your budget. To help remind yourself of possible overspending, you can establish spending limits directly in the app.
One excellent feature of the app is that by linking your recurring bills, it can help you negotiate better rates on your bills such as your cable bill or cell phone. The app does this by serving tailored offers to its users once they input information in their profile section about themselves.
Also, there is an automatic savings feature available to all users. Automating your savings is a great way to effortlessly bolster your savings account or emergency fund. However, users of the free version will be charged a $2 monthly maintenance fee for the PocketGuard Autosave feature. There is no such fee for users with PocketGuard Plus.
Keep in mind that the app restricts some features in the free version, such as tracking your cash flow and the ability to create your own spending categories.
Download PocketGuard App Here
Free to download and use basic features
Upgrade to Premium: $7.99 monthly; $79.99 annually
Goodbudget
Best for Budgeting Using Envelopes
Goodbudget is a personal finance app perfect for budget planning, debt tracking, and money management. Share a budget with sync across multiple phones (and the web!).
The envelope system is one of the original ways to save money. It involved physically dividing your funds up into envelopes labeled with their purposes, such as rent, groceries, bills and typically one envelope for fun. With the Goodbudget app, you can use this same budgeting method, but digitally.
By using the envelope system, you can achieve financial milestones, such as paying off debt or saving up for a large expense—like a down payment on purchases.
Goodbudget provides excellent reporting tools to show your income against your spending, and how it varies month to month. In the app, there are easy-to-read graphs that can help you understand your spending habits.
Download Goodbudget App Here
Free to download and use basic features
Upgrade to Premium: $6.99 monthly; $49.99 annually
Budgeting is a process that begins with identifying your financial goals and savings (and spending) priorities. When you know how much money is going out and coming in, you’re better prepared to handle both the expected and unexpected financial challenges life brings.
Budgeting apps are a great tool to help ensure you’re living within your budget, not just planning one. They can provide great insights into your spending habits, where your money goes and where you can make improvements.
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Personal Capital has a great free app perhaps best suited to people with savings who are trying to build wealth.
Before I could create a budget I had to know what I was spending $$ on. I tried a few apps and found I really liked one called “Spending”. It has a wallet picture for the app icon. Very easy to set up and use. It does have ads but is free. I assume if you pay you can lose the ads, but they don’t bother me.