Whatever your goals are, budgeting is an essential tool in the personal finance world. Having the right app can help you stick with your budget and meet your financial goals.
There is a lot of budgeting apps out there, each having a different kind of focus. One app for example, is fit for people who use zero-based budgeting while another is for people who budgets using the cash envelope system. Whatever your needs are, we have narrowed the best budgeting apps to use in 2020.
1. Mint
Mint is one of the most popular budgeting apps and it’s absolutely free to use. It allows you to sync your bank accounts, cards and investments and see it all in just one place. It provides a dashboard where you can see how much your bank and credit card balances are, how your investment accounts are doing and even lets you check the value of your home.
It provides free credit score information that you can check anytime. This is super helpful if you are trying to build or repair your credit score.
The best of all, it makes budgeting super easy. It automatically helps you create categories based on your linked account’s spending and suggests how much you should spend based on previous spending patterns. Lastly, it gives alerts whenever you go way over budget.
2. You Need A Budget
You Need A Budget (YNAB) is best for people who practice zero-based budgeting. According to their website, YNAB’s number one rule is to give every dollar a job. This method helps you budget and use only the money you already have.
The app lets you plan every dollar that you earn leaving no room for overspending. It also allows you to set financial goals like saving for your dream house or that new gadget.
The downside is that it’s only free for the first 34 days, then you get billed $84 annually. However, many have claimed that YNAB really helped them reach their financial goals and double their savings.
This paid service also holds financial workshops about money and provides lots of educational resources so you are really getting your money’s worth.
3. Personal Capital
Personal Capital is for the aggressive and investment driven budgeters. People focused on retiring early love this app because it helps you track your net worth, monitor your retirement accounts and advise how to allocate your portfolio properly.
Upon sign in, the app will immediately ask your current age and retirement age and how much money you currently have in your retirement accounts.
Personal Capital was built primarily as an investment management tool, but it is a good tool for budgeting and monitoring cash flow as well. Just like other apps, it automatically tracks your spending based on the linked accounts.
The basic budgeting app is free to use but there are management fees if you want to get the whole investment management package.
4. Good Budget
Good Budget is for people who prefer the envelope system of budgeting. Remember the good old days where we withdraw all our cash and stacked it into envelopes with different categories assigned? Good Budget works the same way except it takes us to a virtual level. It lets you enter your income and asks you to divide and allocate an amount per envelope. Envelopes are like categories on other apps.
Unlike other apps, Good Budget doesn’t let you sync your bank accounts. You have to input everything manually. It’s free to use and allows multiple users to access only one account.
This app is perfect for couples and families with shared finances. The free version lets you create up to 10 envelopes while the paid version lets you create unlimited envelopes.
5. Pocketguard
Pocketguard works like Mint where you can link all your accounts, create categories based on previous spending and well, track your spending.
What’s unique about this app though is, as the name suggests, it guards your pocket from overspending by creating spending limits. It also has a “Lower Your Bill” feature where it analyzes your recurring bills and suggests areas where you can save.
Not everyone would want to invest in a paid app when there is a lot of free apps out there. Not everyone wants their bank accounts automatically linked either.
Some prefer just a simple expense tracker where they can see what comes in and what comes out without all the auto-categorizing features and graphs.
When choosing an app, it is important to know what your needs are. But to be honest, you can’t really determine what app is the best for you unless you give it a trial run