It's one of the ultimate New Year's resolutions: You want to save more, spend less and finally get your budget in a happy place. But a financial study found that two-thirds of Americans don't have $1,000 set aside to cover an emergency or an unexpected cost.
Perhaps you're coordinating a new move, taking on extra roommates (and can finally save extra money on rent!) or simply want to increase the amount you're putting away in investments. Or, maybe you just want to have $1,000 socked away. For whatever reason, there are smart budgeting apps that can help you achieve your goals.
A Debt.com poll revealed that fewer Americans are budgeting, even though more than 90 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed believed that everyone should have one. If you're ready to join the budgeting club, you can go old school with a spreadsheet or save time and use a handy budgeting app.
Budgeting comes down to setting the proper expectations with yourself. The heavy lifting comes from the commitment to come up with a plan and actually stick to it. Before diving into some of the best tools you can use, here are three tips:
Whether it's once a week or two times a month, be sure to check in with your money to see how much you're spending. Budgeting apps are more helpful if you do this.
Just like dieting, it helps when you have a workout buddy or friends to support you or want to join you. Tell your roommate, friends or family about your budgeting venture. Maybe it would motivate them to save, too. Who doesn't want to save more and spend less?
Also, when you let others know about your goal to budget, they will be more understanding and mindful about asking you to eat at the pricey new restaurant, for example.
If you're feeling overwhelmed and don't know where to begin, just start with one thing at a time. For example, downloading a budgeting app or linking all of your accounts in one place is a task in and of itself. Make that step one and don't stress out if you can't get them done all at once. Then, move on to the next mini-goal, maybe assess your net worth or find out how much debt you have.
Money management is hard so always remember you can build upon your budgeting. Rome wasn't built in one day, so no one is expecting you to immediately ace your budget.
Knowing which budgeting tool to use is a challenge. There are so many budgeting apps out there from free budgeting apps to zero-based budgeting app. The question becomes, which budget app do you pick? Well, that depends on what your needs are. Are you looking for an app that reminds you about upcoming bills? Or, maybe one that gives you budgeting advice? There are a dozen apps and more to pick from and it can get confusing. So, which apps are best for renters who need one?
When considering which app to pick, you should first sit down and make a list of what you're looking for out of a budgeting app. You could search through nearly a dozen apps but if you don't know what you're looking for, you could still feel lost.
You might be thinking, "So, what's the easiest budgeting app?" Unfortunately, there isn't one simple answer for that. But, here are some things to consider when looking for a budgeting app.
These are just a few things to consider before starting to budget. Check out the following list of best budgeting apps and see which one best suits your needs.
Want to end your awkward money issues with your roommates but wondering how to do it? Try Splitwise.
Splitwise is one of the most popular budget apps for roommates. If you've ever lived or currently live with roommates, you may have owed money to them or vice versa at some point. You want them to pay up, but don't want to constantly remind them that they still owe you for the grocery tab you picked up two weeks ago. Not only that, when you live with one or more roommates, sometimes it's hard to keep track of who paid for what and what each person owes.
Splitwise can make your household a little more organized by helping you keep tabs on shared expenses and balances. It tallies up who paid for what and sends reminders at the end of the month to settle those debts. It has a balance sheet that includes all of the participants that need to pay up. You can create groups with various people, so a roommate group would come in handy.
In addition, you can easily calculate and pay each other back for informal debts like utilities, rent, shared meals, travel and everything in between. You can make payments through PayPal or Venmo right from the app. If someone happens to pay you in cash, you can also record a cash payment and clear up the outstanding balance.
Mint is a great, free budgeting app that connects your bank accounts and the app automatically categorizes your transactions. It helps you track spending and manage your money from your many different accounts, so you can track all your accounts in one place. These include financial accounts, such as:
Mint also provides you with a free credit score and flags suspicious or large transactions.
While it's great to see your accounts all in one place, Mint doesn't allow you to edit top-level categories yourself. Depending on who you ask, this could be negative, since it doesn't always do the best job of putting the right transactions in the proper spending categories.
However, you can always manually change them yourself. Mint remembers which transactions fall into these subcategories and automatically moves them into the proper buckets for you.
The best part about Mint is that it gives you a holistic picture of your money and lets you see what your general net worth is. You can also access your account on multiple devices, such as your desktop and mobile phone.
Need a budget? YNAB is here to help. YNAB stands for You Need a Budget and uses a zero-based budgeting system so that you can make a plan for every dollar earned. It is one of the top budgeting apps and has a cult-like following in the personal finance world. The app lets you see transactions made from your bank accounts and lets you create your own spending category.
According to YNAB's site, new budgeters save an average of $600 per month and more than $6,000 in their first year.
The company has four main pillars around its budgeting strategy to help you live within your means, pay off debt, save and stop living paycheck to paycheck.
YNAB also offers an envelope-based system, which is a budgeting strategy that helps you really reign in your spending and saving by putting your buckets of spending as cash into specific envelopes. For example, you could allocate $30 a month for entertainment, as opposed to the usual $100 you spend on your credit cards.
Like Mint, YNAB also syncs with your desktop and has an app for your mobile device.
Can you recall the last time you paid for something and wondered if you had enough to cover it? If it happens more than you'd like to admit, you may like PocketGuard.
The app helps you track your spending habits, save money and create a budget. PocketGuard connects all your financial accounts and tracks reoccurring bills and income.
PocketGuard can monitor things like unauthorized charges, hidden fees, billing mistakes and even that magazine subscription you forgot you signed up for. It links all of your financial accounts in one place and is useful if you want more clarity when it comes to income vs. spending.
As mentioned above, a nice perk about PocketGuard is its bill monitoring feature, which looks at your recurring bills within the month, such as your cell phone, TV and internet. It lets you know if there's a better deal you can take advantage of so you can save a little extra.
You can easily sync transactions to your budget, create a savings goal and see how much you have left to spend. It's a great way to take the guesswork out of your budget each month so you never have to wonder, “Wait a second … do I have enough to buy this?" If you're not sold yet, try the free version and test it out, if you like it sign up for the monthly or annual fee to get bonus features.
Personal Capital is a budgeting app that gives you the option to add investment management services for a fee. The app analyzes your various broker accounts to see what's helping and hurting you. You can keep track of your budgets, savings account, credit card accounts and 401(k)s to see how much you're spending and where.
The app has many saving tools to help build up retirement savings, pay down debt or create emergency funds. Like the other budgeting tools, you can use Personal Capital to customize and track your budget for free.
Unlike Mint, Personal Capital guides you through your investment strategy with things like the fee analyzer, which shows if you're paying too much in fees. It also provides you with asset allocation, which refers to the different kinds of investments you have.
A solid asset allocation strategy means it diversifies your portfolio and tailors it to:
Personal Capital is a great investment tool and a good way to see all of your financial accounts in one dashboard while giving you a deeper dive into your investment accounts. It offers more than the average budgeting apps offer. It's perfect for people who want to budget but also want to keep on top of how their investments are performing. It also offers extensive educational resources for people just starting to use the app.
Whether you're a new couple or you've been together for a while, personal finances sometimes are a point of contention between couples. It's a difficult task to know how much money to share and when or if to sync bank accounts. Honeydue is one of the best basic budgeting apps to get you and your partner started.
You can pick your financial institution of choice to connect to the app. It sends automated bill reminders and allows you to customize if one person pays the whole bill or if you'd like to split it evenly. Maybe you don't want to link bank accounts just yet or you want to keep one bank account private. Honeydue offers an option for personal budgeting and personal finance. Within Honeydue, you can also message your partner within the app, unlike other mobile apps.
Goodbudget is a great option for those who want to keep their priorities categorized, as well as save money. The app uses the envelope system to keep track of the user's budget and monthly income. Goodbudget is a great app that will help you reinforce good saving habits.
Unlike the original use of the envelope system where people would put physical cash into different envelopes, Goodbudget uses a digital envelope system to set aside money for each expense and how much you save each month by doing so. This is one of the best systems for those looking to pay off large debts or save up towards a specific goal.
Digit is one of the easiest budgeting apps that helps you achieve your short-term and long-term financial goals. This app uses machine learning to review your bank and credit cards spending patterns each day. From there, it withdrawals money you can deposit and save into the Digit account you specify. At any time you can also move the money back into your linked account.
Unlike other apps, Digit matches you with specific diverse portfolios of ETFs and your risk tolerance and financial goals. Digit partners with several financial institutions, such as Chase and Wells Fargo.
Digit is a great app for those who are looking for a more laid-back approach to budgeting while still saving money. If this sounds like you, then you should consider downloading Digit and start saving today!
Budgeting and wanting to save money is something everyone can relate to. The hard part is knowing where to start. There are so many free apps out there and it's your job to know which one to pick. However, being financially savvy has never been easier thanks to popular budgeting apps. Regardless of what your needs are, the best budgeting apps can help you take charge of your finances so you can make better decisions in the future.