Best apps to manage your finances
When you’re trying to lose weight, one of the things you can do and it’s advised by many, is to keep a log or journal or diary of the things you eat. The idea is that when you become more cognizant of the things you’re eating, you’ll realize how unhealthy you’ve been eating and might be more persuaded to stop.
For example, you eat a few slices of pizza a week, but then when you look back on your diary, you realized that you’ve had pizza for dinner maybe 15 days out of the entire month, so trying to reduce that down to 7 days a month or maybe once a week could play a big role in helping you cut those calories.
The same concept applies to spending, where if you keep a log of the things you spend on a daily basis, you start to realize that it all adds up, and that the $10 you spend every morning on your coffee and bagel on the way to work means every month you end up spending $200 or more, money that could have been saved.
If you’d like a better way to keep track of your finances, thankfully there are many choices of financial apps on our phones that can help us manage our money better, and here are some of them you might want to check out.
Mint
Mint is one of the most popular personal finances apps out there. The app comes with a host of features designed to help you plan your budget and keep track of your spending on things like food and drink, bills, entertainment, and it can even keep track of your subscriptions and when it goes up in price.
It features graphs and charts that provide a more visual way of seeing your money and you can also create goals to help you achieve financial freedom.
You Need a Budget (YNAB)
Just like Mint, YNAB is another popular choice when it comes to managing your personal finances. One of the advantages of YNAB is that it is available on multiple platforms, not just your smartphone, so if you’re at home doing a little online shopping, you can also update your budget and finances directly from your computer and it will sync up with the mobile app.
You can also share finances with your partner so if you’re both trying to save for that dream vacation or that home renovation that’s long overdue, having a shared budget will help you keep each other in check.
PocketGuard
Sometimes it can be tricky to keep track of your spending if you don’t write it down immediately, or if you think that you can somehow keep track of everything in your head, only to find you are way, way, way off your budget than you previously thought. PocketGuard can help by linking up to your bank accounts and credit cards.
This means that the moment you spend, the app will log it and you will never forget to write down another transaction again. The app has helpful graphs and charts that show where your money tends to go so you know where you will need to cut down. It can also pickup on unwanted subscriptions which you might have forgotten about.
Personal Capital
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdtZeVnZOaA
Managing your finances isn’t just about managing how you spend your money daily, but also how to make the money you have grow. This is usually done through investments, whether it be in stocks, futures, property, and so on, and this is where Personal Capital can help. The app is designed to help users better manage their assets and investments.
It can also manage your day-to-day spending and you can link it up to over 14,000 financial institutions, so if you need help managing your portfolio that you’re building up towards retirement, Personal Capital could be an app worth checking out.
Spendee
A lot of the apps mentioned so far are mostly for individuals, but if you’re trying to create a budget and manage the finances of an entire family, then Spendee could be the app for you. You can create family wallets that helps keep track of the family’s finances and spending, and it can also link up to bank accounts to help you log transactions automatically.
You can also create budgets for each type of spending category, so you can create a budget for eating out, or a budget for your hobby, and so on. It can also track your bills and reminds you to pay them on time to avoid late fees. The app can also summarize what you’ve spent in the entire year, along with the usual charts and graphs for better visualization of your expenses.