A Budgeting App becomes an essential fact to control our finances. Learn Why?
People are working hard to earn money, but they spend easily, hence, the best budgeting apps are very essential for these people.
Nowadays, although everybody believes that life is impossible without smartphones. But that was not the case 20 years back.
Back in the ’90s, the only mode of communication was mostly through landlines.
In today’s world, we get up by seeing our phones and spend most of our time scrolling over the screen till we go off to bed again.
There is no doubt that how smartphones have impacted us in our day-to-day life.
It also has helped in transformation in various fields like culture, social life, and other diverse aspects of modern society.
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According to 2023 statistics, desktop usage had become less and Consumers download more than 178 billion apps from the Internet.
It is expected that the number of users may project to 258 billion in 2023.
When you do everything from A to Z via a smartphone then think of using your obtuse scrolling into cold, hard cash.
One way to earn is by using these apps, you can resell things, get paid for online surveys, and save money for the next shopping.
In this article, I am will walk you through a few Budgeting apps available for free so that you can avail hardcore benefits from them.
#1. What is the Free Budgeting App that Helps You?
For anyone keeping track of your finances can be a tricky thing to do, when you have more than one account or credit card.
You will have no idea how money comes in, money goes out it will be like “The more you earn the more you spend”.
So, a budget plan helps you to know exactly what you’re spending and it is a must-have for everyone to keep up the peace of mind.
How to keep track of your budget? Does your laptop have a messy folder of cash receipts or cash stashed all over the place?
If so, then this is the right time to think of a new way to manage your budget.
Making use of the best budgeting apps available for free out there in the market is the one-stop solution for all your financial problems.
A budgeting app is a powerful financial tool that helps in many ways but a few are listed below:
- Creating and keeping track of a budget plan
- Tracking all your payout
- growing your savings
- Monitoring your account balances
- Finding coupons for your next shopping
- Giving us a heads up when you try to over-spend
There are apps available for everything for making our lives easier.
Therefore, there are many budgeting apps to choose from, each one has been designed with unique features and has its rewarding benefits.
#2. Is Budgeting Apps are Safe?
We hear a lot of stories about innocent people’s data being hacked which is been never a new one.
That’s why it’s our responsibility to guard our personal especially, financial information.
But what if you’re one of the millions of people out there who are using the help of the budgeting app?
Even though they provide the convenience of having all your financial data in one place.
But in this world of increasing data insecurity, is it safe to hand over all of your financial data to an app.
Let’s see below the risks associated with it and how we can overcome that and make the app safer and easier to use.
2.1. Risks in Using a Budgeting App
First, let’s see what are all information you have to give while creating a budget plan and where exactly it goes?
In a nutshell, you will be sharing your credit card and bank account details with these best budgeting apps.
So, these apps will then sync with your online banking and other accounts periodically, to keep your budget up-to-date.
The concern is that when you input this sensitive information it can make you vulnerable to fraud because of the risk of a data breach.
There’s always the option to choose apps like Dollarbird and Goodbudget, which let you manually enter your expenses.
Instead, if you decide to use an automatic app for the sake of convenience, then put your effort into getting the app founders’ history.
However, the apps just have “read-only” access, meaning they can view your financial activity.
But they can’t modify (like transferring money without your consent) any information within the app.
Once they have your information, apps typically store that input data on their own company servers.
If someone steals your phone and tries to hack your information through the budgeting app, they can’t access your full information.
The app can only show your budget (things like purchases, bills, etc.) but not any of your bank sign-in data.
2.2. Tips for Avoiding the Associated Risk
Still, you want to be smart when dealing with any financial matters, so here are some best practices for using these handy apps:
- Check for its Privacy Statement:
Have a look at its privacy statement to make sure the app will not barter your personal data to third parties for targeted ads.
- Check the App’s Security level:
Since these apps deal with your financial information look for the app’s encryption standards for user data.
The optimum user data length should be 128-bit is good whereas 256-bit is better also seen for two-factor authentication.
- Find Out the App Owner:
Many budgeting apps are owned by experienced, reputed financial institutions that will be better at handling user data safely.
- Protect Your Phone with a Password:
To make sure that nobody can take a peek at your finances, set up a strong password or PIN, or fingerprint to unlock your device.
- Use an Antivirus on your Phone:
Malware targeting financial accounts is on the rise, so even if you aren’t using a budgeting app you should still install a robust antivirus.
- Be Careful Accessing Public Wi-Fi:
You should never check your financial information over unsecured public Wi-Fi if at all use a VPN to encrypt your connection to access it.
Do not agree to auto-sign in when you access a site also choose “Never” when a window pops up when you access any site for the first time.
#3. 15 Best and Free Budgeting Apps of 2023
It’s always difficult to follow the rule of budgeting: spend less and save more even though it seems easy to read. — Quotes by OnlineHomeIncome
But technological inventions prove it to be made easy just by making use of handy budgeting apps.
Before going deep into a variety of Best budgeting apps available in the market let’s see two important rules before choosing such an app.
- An app should be simple in such a way that you should be able to immediately begin creating a monthly budget as soon as you open the app.
- Stick to something cheap that will track your spending and earnings as the whole goal of a budgeting app is to help you hook up your money.
Here are my top picks for the best apps to help you get better at handling your daily, monthly, and annual spending.
3.1. Personal Capital – Suitable for Personal Budget
[Download Personal Capital App]
Personal Capital is a hybrid of Robo-advisor and human advisor services that helps advanced users to track their investments, net worth, and cash flow.
Its best feature is its budgeting tool because it automatically tracks all of your income and expenses.
It separates expenses into different categories and provides graphical tools to visualize your spending curves.
It is also an investment management tool that helps you to see your asset allocation and analyze the expense ratios of your mutual funds.
Once you link your retirement and other investment accounts to the app you can also analyze the expense ratio of EFTs as well.
With this tool, you can track all your net worth, and upcoming bills, get a snapshot of your budget and review your asset allocation.
3.2. Mint – Overall Best App for Monthly Budgets
This app suits well for personal finance newbies as this is one of the best budget management tools which helps the user to track their spending.
Mint automatically categorizes transactions from linked credit and debit cards and creates a budget plan and tracks them as well.
The best part is, you can see graphically where the money is spent lavishly and it will suggest you cut back in the upcoming months.
Yet another feature is you can add the bills, track the due date and amount to be paid, and mark bills as paid if its paid.
It has an alert system to alert you when you are exceeding the maximum spending threshold limit.
3.3. YNAB – App for Business Class People
If you’re looking for hands-on experience to get in control of your finances, this is the best one to choose from.
It has a unique approach in that you build your budget based on your income, giving every dollar a job.
The goal of this app is to help you prioritize and plan your finances and also help in tackling your debts.
It does leave no dollar unaccounted which eventually forces you to think about every dollar you acquire and spend.
If you use YNAB as a paid app, the resources are plentiful making it especially helpful for first-time budgeters.
3.4. Clarity Money – An App with Special Features
Clarity Money helps in making comprehensive budgeting and also can be used as a money-saving app.
Users can link financial accounts from more than thousands of institutions, and organize the expenses made.
You can have an account of the spending that you make by categorizing them under different headings.
There are other built-in features too like subscription cancelling and credit score monitoring.
These features provide us with more clarity on an inclusive financial picture beyond just the transactions you make.
3.5. Good Budget – Suitable for Family Budgeting
Goodbudget follows the old-school envelope method of budgeting that suits most common people.
Overall the idea is that you have to label envelope categories like example- gas, groceries, dining out, etc.
And you have to fill each envelope with cash separately and only spend money from specific envelopes.
If the funds are utilized in that particular envelope then you cannot access that one unless you refill or transfer the funds from others.
Basically, you can have tracked the expenses and savings for each category by viewing the progress bar.
The reports tab gives you a pie chart of how much money is spent, and a bar graph shows net income and spending.
3.6. Every Dollar – Spend Every Dollar Carefully
It is based on a zero-dollar budget system that has got many built-in categories to that you can assign every dollar to a category.
It’s similar to other traditional envelop budgeting apps in that you can customize budgeting categories and then allocate your income to each.
This app helps in planning your entire month’s spending ahead of time by just having the current month’s income as the input.
One other best feature is that it has got a spreadsheet as an inbuilt feature in which you can have a track of a year’s expenditure.
You can use the app to track your daily spending also a paid version EveryDollar has more advanced features to look at it.
3.7. PocketGuard – Stay away from OverSpending
PocketGuard allows you to sync all your financial accounts in one place where you can access them all by visiting one place.
It syncs right from your bank accounts, and credit cards to your loans, savings, and investments.
It will help you to build your budget automatically based on your spending and earning patterns.
The PocketGuard app also tracks your income, bills, and recurring subscriptions and also creates a spending threshold limit for you.
The “Lower your Bills” option gives you a list of the bills you will have to lessen pay.
3.8. Wally – Best for Planning a Good Budget
Wally isn’t the easiest app to navigate compared to others in this list, but it works well for budgeting.
This app helps you track your income and expenses by offering you a snapshot of your remaining preplanned budgets.
This app by giving us a snapshot of the remaining helps you avoid overspending in the forthcoming months.
You can create shortcuts to your most-used features, the business you purchase from frequently, and groups that join frequently.
One major benefit of Wally is its built-in support for virtually all foreign currencies, which benefits those who live outside the U.S.
3.9. Mvelopes – App to Pay off Your Debts Quickly
The app comes free with a 1-month trial period which is similar to the envelope budgeting system.
It connects to all your bank, credit card, or other financial accounts thus tracking your finances all in one place.
If you are a Plus or Complete plan member, you also get access to a personal finance coach (PFC).
PFCs are unlike other advisors, they can guide you by giving an idea on money-saving and spending for the long term.
If you have some debt on your plate, the Mvelopes expert can help you to come up with a debt roll-out plan as well.
3.10. Simple – Best Personal Banker within Budget
Simple is more than a normal budgeting app, which has the entire bank account replacing your old checking account.
When your budget and your bank co-exist in one, it is much easier to manage and keep everything under control.
Simply tracks your income and spending automatically, and comes up with a goal feature to motivate your savings.
Its Safe-to-Spend feature will show you if you are on your budgeting track or any extra spending that you make.
This is one of the free-of-cost all-in-one banking and budgeting apps which comes up with built-in features.
3.11. Acorns – Saves Money From Your Budget
It is available with monthly plans if you’re looking to expand your savings by investing, it will suit you well.
It uses a “round-up” system, which rounds up the transactions to the next higher dollar and invests the difference.
Acorn then takes your spare change and then it forms your savings accounts.
It offers an additional feature called Found Money, which partners with popular brands like Nike, Walmart, and Lyft.
If you shop with any of the partners via a credit or debit card, the partner will invest in your account.
The app works by investing your money based on your net worth, annual salary, and risk tolerance.
3.12. HomeBudget – Clean Way to Spend Money
HomeBudget is a free lite version app perfect for those who want to track their money where it is going.
You can track it by dividing it into categories like expenses, bills, and income displayed on the home screen.
HomeBudget also has three other sections called payees, reports, and search which come along with the app as a built-in.
The payee’s section is ideal for freelancers; where they can enter client info and organize transactions and incomes.
The reports section gives you a financial virtual curve and you can search for invoices through the search tab.
3.13. Expensify – Suitable for Travellers
It’s a free version app suitable for freelancers and individuals who need to keep track of expenses and mileage.
Its interface has been divided into four easy-to-use sections: SmartScan, Add Expense, Track Time and Track Distance.
You can also group your expenses under different Reports or Trips if you travel for business purposes.
Each input you give also has a “Billable” and “Reimbursable” toggle buttons, which is especially useful for tracking work expenses.
The presence of the SmartScan option lets you take a snapshot of a receipt, categorize and save it.
No more messy piles of receipts! To track your miles, Expensify makes it super easy to do by just turning on the app’s location services.
3.14. FamZoo – Teach Kids to Spend Money
The app is a virtual family bank to help parents teach their kids about the value of money.
With FamZoo, parents can load money onto a prepaid debit card for kids to use or manage IOUs.
It can also accommodate add-ons for encouraging childer like rewards for tasks completed, and expense sharing.
Parents can also assign penalties to their children for missed chores and more through the help of this app.
The kids can sign into their accounts, parents can monitor all account transactions from a shared dashboard.
3.15. Honeyfi – Automate Your Budgeting
This is a 30-day free trial app for a couple to work toward a common goal of managing finances together.
It helps in planning and maintaining personal finances together as a couple thus helping to run the family healthily.
You can categorize your payout based on three major categories (Bills, Essentials, and Fun) and several subcategories.
You can set up rules that your transactions are automatically categorized, which you can override even.
The app sends out instant alerts to the other when either of you does any personal transactions.
Honeyfi is the first money management and savings app designed to help couples with everyday and long-term finances.
Conclusion
Budgeting has become very important in today’s day to manage the income, expenses, and investment we make.
For the people who find difficulty in sticking to the budget plan, this article about the best budgeting apps will be of great help.
Do you always have a question at the end of every month Where does all the money go?
Then get this article’s help for choosing the right budgeting tracker app and you’ll no longer need to wonder.
This is the right time to start tracking your expenses or saving up for something big with your smartphone’s help.
In short, Budget apps can do a lot to help users gain financial wisdom; the rewards of using them outweigh the risk.
By being smart and careful you can do much more to reduce that risk and enjoy the benefits.
FAQ: Money Making Android App
Mint is one of the oldest and most highly trustable budgeting apps owned by Intuit. This Application is available on Android and IOS with features like adding a credit card, brokerages, lending expenses, bill payments, etc.
We are living in a world of technology where threats and theft are common things. Handling security breaches is a hectic task. So, use budgeting apps after a thorough review, ratings, and feedback from previous users.
In this list, we have recommended a few apps to prepare your monthly budget and control your expenses. We have arranged the budget apps in order based on their user-friendliness and ease of operation.
