Top 10 Budgeting Apps Of 2023
A budgeting app allows you to access and track your personal finances from a computer, tablet, or mobile device. The services offered by these categories of apps include tracking your income, expenses, savings, debt payoff, investing, or a combination to improve your financial health. It’s important to note that these are different from accounting softwares, which is typically for a business’s income and expenses. To even make budgeting easier and fun, several of the aps you see in this list offer you the ability to sync with your financial accounts to offer an overview of your situation as changes to expenses happen. The most common use of budgeting apps is to track spending through a synced checking account. Many people aren’t aware of how much money they spend every month, making changes more difficult. So you may be able to organize spending history into categories to identify trends, making you aware of your habits over time.
1. Personal Capital
The Personal Capital app is available for free on IOS and Android and helps users take their budgeting game to a next level. With a good user interface and dashboard, it offers a wide array of tools for everything from managing your budget to monitoring your portfolio’s balances and offers you a financial snapshot of your net worth, retirement savings, emergency fund and more. When it comes to budgeting, it allows you to sync your accounts to track your spending, with regular alerts and notifications anytime your bills are due, even if you’re paying too much. It is best for managing your investments, planning your retirement and tracking your net worth.
Sign up via https://www.personalcapital.com/get-started/
2. Mint
This is one of the most popular budgeting apps available, with 25 million users. That sounds a lot, right? Well this is because the app is free, easy to use for budgeters of all levels and syncs many kinds of accounts: checking and savings, credit cards, loans, investments and bills. Additionally, the app also shows users their credit score and net worth and provides tons of support for using the app (IOS and Android), including a detailed FAQ.
Get the app via https://mint.intuit.com/
3. YNAB (You Need A Budget)
You Need a Budget (YNAB) ranks as one of the best budgeting services due to the company’s renowned budgeting philosophy and reputation. It offers new budgeters the opportunity of saving $600 in your first two months alone and more than $6,000 in your first year. Although it’s very costly ($98.99 per year, or an upfront of $14.99 per month) it offers a 34-day free trial. Once you sign up, you get to create your first budget and assign every dollar a purpose. The aim of this process is to eventually get at least one month ahead, so you’re spending money you earned 30 days ago. Also it offers quality educational resources and customer support to cater for all your needs.
Subscribe via https://www.youneedabudget.com/
4. Goodbudget
Ever heard of the envelope system? This budgeting system where users designate different amounts of cash to different budget categories, such as rent, groceries, bills and typically one envelope for fun. This system makes you stash the cash in the different categorized envelopes and use those when you’re out shopping for groceries or clothes. It acts as a physical curb on your spending, unlike a credit or debit card, since you can only spend what’s in the envelope. It is available both on IOS and Android, and it serves as a digital alternative, allowing you up to 20 digital envelopes to keep you under budget. The plus version contains all of the same features of the free and paid versions, but with extended capabilities. For example, the free version gives each account 20 envelopes for organizing your finances, while the paid version gives you unlimited envelopes. Keep in mind that this app doesn’t link to your accounts, so you’ll need to manually enter your amounts.
Sign up via https://goodbudget.com/signup
5. PocketGuard
The PocketGuard app helps users curb overspending. It takes into account your estimated income, upcoming expenses and savings goals, “In My Pocket” feature uses an algorithm to show how much you have available for everyday spending (available for all users). These spending limits make it easier to quit overspending and take control of your financial goals. It is also offered in both the App Store (for iOS) and on Google Play (for Android). Additional features include creating personal categories, modifying dates transactions were made, export and own your data, tracking cash, managing ATM deposits and withdrawals, and splitting up transactions. In addition to this is an educational blog that serves as a learning platform for users anywhere.
Get the app via https://pocketguard.com/
6. Stash
The Stash app gives subscribers access to several budgeting tools, a taxable brokerage account, a debit card that earns stocks when you use it for expenses and a digital checking account. It has investment features that makes it possible for everyone—even with just a few dollars—to start through what are called fractional shares, or portions of a single share of stock. You can begin investing in your favorite companies, without having to buy an entire share.
Sign up via https://www.stash.com/
7. Honeydue
This app aims to help couples have better communication and transparency about their expenses and general household finances. It allows in-app text messaging where couples can chat back and forth about expenses. Pairing that with automated bill reminders, you and your partner can communicate more clearly about bills. You can also decide within the app if one person will be responsible for an expense, or if it will be split evenly. The app hosts over 20,000 different financial institutions making it ideal to integrate your bank accounts into the app.
Get started via https://www.honeydue.com/
8. Zeta
This is one of the few free budgeting apps designed specifically for couples, joint finances or not. It 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. It allows you to sync accounts or manually add data for a shared view of your finances. Additional features include sharing controls, shared and personal budgets, bill reminders, and more. It also helps you stay focused on your goals and connect your financial actions to reaching them.
Get started via https://www.askzeta.com/joint-bank-account/
9. Digit
Digit uses machine learning to guide you each day closer and closer to achieving your goals. Whether that goal is growing your emergency fund, saving for a vacation, building a down payment for a home or paying off debt—Digit can help. The app calculates an appropriate amount to deposit in either your savings account or a retirement account each day, taking the task away from you. All you need to do is input within Digit how much you want to save and when you want to hit that mark. You can create custom goals within the app for any goal toward which you are saving. The app is free for the first six months, then you pay $5 per month.
Subscribe via https://digit.co/
10. Simplifi by Quicken
This app offers a personalized spending plan with real-time updates of how much you have left to spend throughout the month. The app syncs your bank accounts to show you where you stand and your progress on financial goals. Simplifi by Quicken also tracks your monthly bills and subscriptions, including those you don’t use. It has custom watchlists, which allow you to limit spending by category or payee. Additionally, the custom spending plan monitors cash flow to make sure you never spend more than you make. It also offers tips while you’re using the app, but there’s also a blog full of educational content at your fingertips.
Start your free trial via https://www.quicken.com/simplifi/ppc/nonbrand
In Conclusion:
pp’s budgeting functionality, pricing, free trials, and user reviews. We compared the product features, educational tools, security, and how each app accesses your financial data. There are paid versions on some of the selected, but they all offer free trials which you can use to utilize your finances before landing on your final choice.
SOURCES:
- https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/best-budget-apps
- https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/best-budget-apps-for-couples
- https://www.investopedia.com/best-budgeting-apps-5085405
- https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/best-budgeting-apps/
- https://www.cnbc.com/select/best-budgeting-apps/