Millions of Americans turn to budgeting when they want to stop bad financial habits and overcome their spending challenges. It’s a great way to reduce spending and stay on top of bills.
However, it’s not easy to budget without the right tools! You can arm yourself with the best budgeting books and words from successful financial advisors, but you can’t beat a great budget app that helps you stay on track.
1. YNAB
You Need a Budget (YNAB) is one of the most comprehensive budgeting apps on the market. It’s a cloud-based service with an easy-to-use template that lets you keep track of your income, spending, debt, investment accounts, and more from any device. It can link to your bank account and updates in real-time using Dropbox, so it will always be accurate.
YNAB goes one step further and provides a useful knowledge base that teaches you how to budget. It uses a unique method of giving every dollar a job to keep a better handle on your spending.
2. EveryDollar
EveryDollar is the budgeting app associated with Dave Ramsey’s methodology for paying off debt, saving, and investing. This easy application balances your regular income with your monthly expenses, helping you gain confidence in your financial future.
3. Mint
Mint is one of the highest-ranked overall budgeting apps on the market. It links with each bank account so you can keep tabs on your spending. It also has useful charts that show you how much you’re spending in each category.
This is a great way to keep track of both your positive and negative balances and create a plan for saving, investing, or paying off debt as you go. The best part? It’s free!
4. Pocket Guard
If you prefer a very simple, free budgeting app that has everything you need, but not a lot of extras, Pocket Guard is a great tool. You’ll input information about spending, including bills and savings goals, and it will show you what’s left over. From there, you can decide how to spend your extra money.
5. Wally
The interface of Wally isn’t the most simplistic, but it’s a great budgeting app. You can use it to track your income, mark spending, and see exactly what’s left over to avoid overspending.
Because it’s a little more difficult to navigate and includes a few new extras (like the ability to support foreign currencies), it’s a very popular app among Millennials rather than Gen X or Baby Boomers.
6. Mvelopes
The envelope budgeting system is a popular method to make sure you’re only spending extra money in specific categories. It’s an effective method, but many people don’t like using it because they’re required to keep a lot of cash on hand at all times.
Mvelopes blends the best of both worlds. It budgets spending into different envelope categories so you can keep track of how much you’re spending in each category. But it’s all digital, so you can still use your debit card and not worry about having cash on hand.
7. GoodBudget
If you’re looking for a simple budgeting app that allows syncing between multiple devices, GoodBudget is an excellent tool. It syncs through the cloud in real-time so that both you and your family members can keep an eye on spending.
It’s also a great tool for budgeting into categories. You can add a new transaction and easily break it up into different categories. This means if you spend $50 at Walmart including groceries, clothing, and household goods, you can easily allocate the appropriate amounts to each category.
8. Stash
Stash doesn’t have the budgeting capabilities of some of the other apps on this list, but it does help you secure a better financial future. It rounds each transaction up to the nearest dollar and uses the remaining balance to invest $5 at a time.
It’s the perfect tool for those who want to invest but don’t know how to get started because it’s completely mindless. Once you set it up, it automatically invests for you, and you could have a couple hundred thousand saved in your lifetime, simply by investing a thousand dollars per week.
9. Mobills
If you’re more of a visual learner, Mobills is perfect for you. It’s loaded with great charts that show how your expenses will be utilized, so you can make plans for the future. It’s a simple interface with a beautiful display.
10. Prism
If you’re always struggling to keep up with the constant flood of bills, Prism is the perfect app for you. It puts your positive balances and your incoming bills on the same page so that you never miss another bill. You can pay them immediately through the app or schedule them for payment later on.
