Best Budget Apps for Managing Your Money

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In today’s world of side gigs and digital investments, keeping track of your money isn’t always the simplest task. When you’re getting an extra direct deposit payment or settling a debt with the click of a button, it becomes easier to think of your balances as just numbers on a screen. That can be a dangerous mindset when it comes to financial decisions.

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Thankfully, technology is also helping people keep track of their finances with apps that let you manage your money. That said, some are more effective than others. Take it from Brendan Brummer, a chartered accountant living in San Francisco who evaluates budgeting apps based on whether they meet his “five key things with respect to tracking personal finances”:

Allow you to set saving goals;

Monitor your spend in real-time (or as close as possible);

Provide transparency on spending habits/subscriptions;

Monitor your credit score (for U.S. residents only); and

Be fun (i.e., have some element of gamification to keep you interested and engaged long-term).

We’ve compiled six apps that check most if not all of Brendan’s criteria, and broke them down based on what your needs may be.

App: Acorns Fees: $1-$3 a month

Investing your money may seem intimidating if you’ve never done it before, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. Acorns is the premier app for micro-investing, a system in which the “change” from credit card purchases is put toward investments. (For instance, if you spend $2.75 on something, the remaining quarter goes into the system.)

What are you investing in? Lots of different opportunities. The program is designed by a Nobel laureate and features a diverse portfolio of stocks and bonds based on your own financial goals. While nothing is guaranteed when it comes to investing, Acorns makes the whole process as easy (and hopefully, as lucrative) as possible.

The app has a tiered pricing structure of $1, $2, or $3 a month depending on the options you select. Prices remain constant up to a total investment of $1 million.

App: HomeBudget Fees: Free for HomeBudget Lite; $4.99 one-time payment for HomeBudget With Sync

Keeping track of all your money is hard as a single adult, but it can seem downright impossible when you’re doing it for a whole family. More people means more moving parts, and that can be an obstacle to effective budgeting.

HomeBudget, from Anishu, allows you to track your expenses, income, bills, and everything else that makes up your financial flow. Making it even more handy is the fact that the app has a “family sync” feature, which allows multiple devices with HomeBudget to exchange information, creating a comprehensive budget for the entire family and, essentially, doing the hard part for you.

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App: Qapital Fees: $3-$12 a month after 30-day free trial

Many of us have big-money goals that hang over our heads in the long term. Maybe they involve taking a dream vacation, buying a car, or sending kids to college. The problem is that the daily grind — and all the expenses it entails — can push those goals farther away.

You can keep them top of mind with Qapital, an app that makes saving money easier in a number of ways. For instance, users can link certain purchases to put money aside. For example, if you buy something at a particular store, the app moves a set amount of money to a savings account. It also helps freelancers put money aside for their taxes, which is a major help when it comes to avoiding an unpleasant surprise come April.

App: Personal Capital Fees: 0.49 percent to 0.89 percent monthly fee

Call it a cliche, but it’s true: It’s never too early to start thinking about retirement. The more you save now, the more you’ll have later, and that can mean retiring earlier than expected.

Personal Capital is a two-pronged app. Not only does it help you track your income and transactions, but it helps you plan for years down the line. “For the investment portion of the app, it aggregates your data and projects forward, under certain assumptions, what your assets in retirement will look like,” Riley Adams, a Louisiana-based Fortune 500 senior financial analyst and certified CPA, tells us. “As you pay off debt or add money to your investments, your projections change and provide a refreshed retirement picture.”

Fees for Personal Capital are taken as a percentage of money invested, and range from 0.89 percent to 0.49 percent, depending on the amount.

App: YNAB Fees: $6.99 a month after free 34-day trial

Money is tricky. We’d all like to have more of it, and minimizing your expenses is a great way to do just that. Unfortunately, if you’ve never tried to make such a plan before, it can be really intimidating.

The ultra-popular app YNAB (You Need a Budget) is a comprehensive introduction to budgeting that allows you to take complete control of your finances. Not only does YNAB keep track of your money, but it helps you create a personalized plan for it, emphasizing the expenses that are most crucial to you. It also stresses purposeful spending without shaming users for accidentally going over in a given category.

Essentially, YNAB does the hard work for you, making it much easier to spend and save money the way you want to.

App: Clarity Money Fees: None

What if you want the best of all worlds, something that checks all of Brendan’s boxes? Something that makes it easier to organize expenses and cancel subscriptions? Something that helps you save money? This is the one, according to the accountant.

“Clarity aggregates the features of many apps that only address one or two pieces of the puzzle,” Brendan tells us. “With this added transparency, you can adjust your spending decisions in real time and still end up achieving your savings goals at the end of the month.”

With so many apps to choose from, there are sure to be effective ways for you to manage your money better than ever before. As long as you think about your goals, you’ll be able to plan for the future.