Managing Personal Finances is Easier than it's Ever Been

• Author: William Asher
• Posted: 2024-06-28

Management of personal finances can be overwhelming even to the most optimistic planners. It involves keeping tabs on your bank balances, daily spending, income, and investment movements. Fortunately, there are tons of personal apps that can help you pinpoint areas of overspending, track upcoming bill payments, monitor your investment portfolio, and provide features like email reminders to help you manage your overall finances.
And the best part? You can monitor your finances while on the go. Most apps are viewable from mobile devices as long as you have internet access, making it easy for you to monitor your finances regardless of your location. Whether you are old-fashioned or a new budgeter, you may find the following apps worthwhile in making your wallet smile.

Personal Capital
Would you like to track your cash flows, net worth, and investments? If yes, Personal Capital developers had you in mind when developing this insights-driven wealth management app. The app's free financial dashboard helps you with budgeting. It can link to your bank accounts to track your income and expenses, enabling you to establish your cash flow standing.

Investments wise, the app's Personal Capital feature allows you to link your investment accounts to establish asset classes, growth and track associated expenses. You can also use the Retirement Planner feature to decipher your retirement growth plan, given your current financial standing. Furthermore, you can run hypothetical scenarios and turn one into your new retirement plan.

And finally, this app has registered financial advisors that provide you with customized advice aligning with your goals. And to make data visually appealing, the app utilizes graphs to help you digest data with ease.

Mint
Perhaps one of the most popular apps, especially with newbies. This app shines most with its budgeting feature. The app allows you to link to your bank account, loan, and credit accounts. It then taps information from these accounts and advises you on how to make a personalized budget.

Is that all? No. The app allows you to establish how much you will save when you cut down on certain expenses. Again, the app alerts you when overspending in specific categories, when large transactions are spotted, and when you incur ATM charges-all for free.

YNAB (You Need a Budget)
Based on the zero budgeting concept, YNAB helps you justify every dollar you want to include in your budget. The app allows bank syncing, enabling you to import bank transactions and apply them to your budget categories. It also allows you to adjust your budget line items when you overspend. According to YNAB, average new users save about $600 in the first two months and approximately $6,000 in their first year of use.

The only downside of this app is that after 34 days of the free trial, you will have to part with an $11.99 monthly charge, billed annually at $83.99, translating to $5.99 savings. But for your peace of mind, this app is backed by a 100% money-back guarantee.

Clarity Money
This app comes in handy when managing subscriptions. And aptly so because more and more companies are moving into subscription-based models. Think of Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Microsoft subscriptions, and gym memberships. In light of this, you need an app that monitors these subscriptions and helps you weed out unused subscriptions draining your wallet. Clarity Money monitors your subscriptions spending habits and advises you on how to improve your financial health.

Moreover, the app enables you to make savings and attach a milestone to it. You can do this by creating numerous saving plans with varying goals. And to safeguard your savings against risks, your cash is secured in an FDIC insured account.

Spendee
Unlike other personal apps that are individual-centered, Spendee allows you to create shared wallets with your loved ones, enabling division of household budgets. The app can link to your bank to categorize your monthly expenses. Again, you can add cash expenses to get a holistic picture of your spending. Other functionalities of the app include bill reminders and tracking overspending.

Good Budget
Based on the envelope concept, the Good Budget app gives you ten envelopes for free, but you can upgrade to get unlimited envelopes at a monthly cost of $6. The concept of the envelope concept is simple. Each envelope contains your monthly spending budget. You stop spending once the float in that envelope is empty. And if you want a few more savings, you don't have to deplete the envelope entirely.

Final Word
The financial impact of 2020 will stay with us for years to come. Most of us were caught flat-footed because nobody had prepared us for it. While you might be feeling battered and dispirited, 2021 can be your comeback story. But, how so?

New Year, new things. Start the year on a high by taking control of your finances. That said, technology offers you the opportunity to understand the ins and outs of your finances. To that end, choose the right finance management tool that suits your style and watch your financial situation improve in this year and beyond.