How to know if a budgeting app is right for you.
Creating a budget for your household can be challenging, especially if finances are tight. Deciding which expenses to keep and what to cut can feel overwhelming. In addition, not everyone feels comfortable using Excel or a worksheet. However, creating a budget is vital to financial health and freedom. Without a budget, it can be difficult to reach financial goals and easy to overspend. Luckily, there are a variety of budgeting tools to choose from and apps that make it easy to build a budget that is right for you.
Why use a budgeting app?
There are several benefits to using a budgeting app instead of creating a manual budget. These apps:
- Save time
- Provide a visual way to track spending
- Have a variety of tools to help you understand your money and how to reach your goals
- Give you access to financial information on your mobile device
- Help you keep track of your goals
Here are some of the best budgeting apps of 2021.
-
Mint
Mint is a free budgeting app. There’s no paid upgrade, so you don’t need to worry that you aren’t receiving the best service or tools by using the free version. Mint is also incredibly user-friendly. It’s a great app for people who are new to budgeting and experienced savers too. Mint helps you balance your budget by connecting with your banking and credit accounts and tracking your expenses. You can create categories based on your expenses and Mint will send you an alert when you exceed your spending limit for that category. Mint also provides support through chat.
-
YNAB
You Need a Budget, or YNAB, also tracks your spending, but this app also lets you know how you can pay off debt and start saving. YNAB uses a lot of color-coding and graphs, so if you like visual learning, this is the budgeting app for you. It also comes with a large online community and learning library. You can customize categories to meet your unique needs and create goals that fit your lifestyle. Unlike Mint, you can transfer money from one budget category to another. YNAB provides a free trial for 34 days, but costs $11.99 a month or $84 a year after the trial ends. App support is provided via email or online community.
-
Personal Capital
Do you have a high net worth? You might benefit from Personal Capital, an app that shows you your net worth and helps you manage your investments. It can also help you plan for retirement. The personal strategy tool can help you manage your stock portfolio. You can create up to 30 custom categories with the app. You can transfer funds and link your accounts for tracking.
-
Goodbudget
Goodbudget helps couples meet joint financial goals. With Goodbudget, you can create goals for big purchases, create a budget and share budgets with family and friends. However, the app does not link with your accounts, which makes the process more manual. The app does charge a $7 monthly or $60 annual fee.
Summary
Budgeting helps consumers keep track of their cash, manage debt and reach financial goals. A budgeting app could make the process of creating and keeping a budget easier. Will you start using a budget app to keep track of your spending?
Overspending can lead to credit issues. If you have made some budget mistakes, Uprova.com can help. You can get started for funding without impacting your FICO credit score. Get started today.