Personal Finance
Personal finance software are a great tool for anyone, these tools help you know where you stand in terms of personal finance and where you may be headed. We have now gathered for you a list of some of the top rated software for personal finance which has tools to keep you updated on what you’re spending and how you are spending it, the amount of debt you currently have and how to get out of that personal debt. Some of these are available only on desktop whilst some are available cross platform. *Please keep in mind that these are in no particular order*
Monarch Money
Monarch money is an all in one type tool that has great benefits. It includes tools useful for financial budgeting, planning and other tools too such as net-worth tracking tools. This app is updated often and may have many more features when you are reading this.
Money monarch provides insights into your current net worth, your spending habits and also all collaboration where you can add your expenses alongside a partner be that a roommate, spouse or some other family member.
Plans
Money monarch is a paid tool and its standard price is 9.99$/Mo when billed monthly and 89.99$ when billed annually.
YNAB (You Need A Budget)
If you like a more hands-on approach to your budgeting and finances, consider using YNAB. This platform has a learning curve which is not that steep as it has some features that aren’t normally seen in the other budgeting apps on our list or in all apps in general.
This app works in a unique way, it helps you in budgeting your current finances and helps you spend intelligently, this app only counts the amount of money you have and doesn’t count any future income. If you want to purchase something you need to setup a goal and fund that goal as your income is received.
Plans
YNAB has a 34 day free trial for you to check the app, it also allows college students to use in free for a year. YNAB has no other free option and is a totally paid app, costing 14.99$ per month and if you opt for a yearly plan you pay 99$ per year.
Goodbudget
Another great personal finance app is known as goodbudget and is primarily a planning focused app rather than expense tracking. It uses a unique system known as envelope budgeting system, by the name you will most probably be able to understand the premise of this app. Basically you can take out a portion of your budget or your income and put it into another spending category or in this case in its own envelope.
This app is made for both your phones and for desktop providing easy access for you anywhere and everywhere. If you primarily want to budget and plan ahead instead of just tracking your everyday expenditure this app is made for you
Before downloading this app another thing to keep in mind is that you can not link your bank accounts and have your transactions updated that way, instead you have to do the work manually and keep track of all of your expenses. This may not be a great thing for many people since they would have to be spending so much time on the app updating all transactions.
Plans
Goodbudget provides a great free plan and provides a paid version too. If paying monthly it costs you 8$ and for an annual payment cycle it is 70$. However the free plan would be good enough for most people.
Douugh
Douugh is an automatic money management app that helps you keep your finances in order without much trouble. This app is compatible with most payment apps such as Cash App, Venmo, Paypal and Apple pay.
Salary sweeper is an engine used by Douugh that is the mind behind this app’s automated financial organization tool. This engine can predict your cash flow and split your income automatically.
Jar/Envelope System is also seen in this app, when the salary sweeper engine works it splits your income into different jars. Basically it is the app’s very own category system which has been given a unique name, it however does maintain all functionality that a normal category system does. These jars can also be seen as a sort of sub-account.
Plans
Douugh provides a single plan which is its free plan. It also offers some other services for which they have a very informational section on their website that you can read.
Pocket Guard
Pocket guard is a very easy-to-use option that includes a simple dashboard that describes how much you spend monthly and the amount you have left over after every month. This app also allows you to connect your bank accounts, Pocket guard can also detect recurring bills and incomes to help you get a running start to creating your budget.
Keeping this app’s features in mind, this can be seen as a great contender for the best budgeting app and is an app that should be kept in mind for anyone looking for a good, free app with a great UI and easy to use style for budgeting.
This app however, is not all sunshine and rainbows, the premium subscription gates most of the more appealing features and basically pushes you to paying for the app. Furthermore, this app also doesn’t have any type of budgeting in envelopes style of feature which makes its ranking a bit doubt-able.
Plans
Pocket guard provides a free, paid and a lifetime subscription. This billing is as follows, 0$ For the free “basic” plan, 12.99$ for the paid plan if paid on a monthly cycle, 74.99$ if paid annually and a 99.99$ lifetime subscription
Financial Budgeting With Family
Many people might not have a partner or spouse but most of the people here have some family and for them to choose a budgeting option they would need some sort of partnership features that can help them with budgeting with someone else, instead of just one person. For this reason we are now going to include two of the most highly ranked “family” or “partnership” type apps
These following apps are a sort of duo (or more) type apps so that multiple people can sync their finances and keep each other in check in terms of finance and spending. Some alternatives do exist but we feel the mentioned apps to be the best of the bunch.
Honeydue
Honeydue is a very unique app that allows you and your partner or whoever other person to view both of your financial standings in one app. Both people can sync all their bank accounts and credit cards.
Honeydue also allows a privacy curtain that allows you to decide how much you want to show the other person and how much you want to keep private. This app automatically categorizes expenses while also allowing you to create custom categories. Both you and your partner can then set limits to these categories and honeydue will alert you both when either one is reaching the limit set for the category.
This app, like many others acts as less of a financial advisor and instead focuses its time on past transactions. Another one of the cons of this app are that there exists no desktop version of the app and it’s support is limited to only the online forums.
Plans
The honeydue app is free for all time and all features are included in this free plan.
Quicken Simplifi
Quicken simplifi is a great tool for families and provides a straighforward all in one budgeting apps that builds personalized budgets and tracks all spending. This app also provides insights into all expenses.
This app has another great feature, that being the goals and alerts. This app has great reporting features that allows you to view all financial reports, set & track goals for savings and also receive alerts when spending reaches certain limits.
One of the core features of this app is that it allows multiple people to share their finances, this makes this app the perfect alternative for couples and families, fit for multiple types of budgeting styles ranging from zero-based to envelope and even the 50-30-20 budget.
Plans
The pricing for quicken simplifi is very simple, when billed annually it is 3.99$/Month and it is currently as of the date of writing a 2$/Month.
Conclusion
Our list includes some great options for everyone, ranging from personal finance options to family options for family budgeting planning. This covers all bases for everyone and anyone who might be looking for a financial tracking and planning app.
There still do exist some alternatives to these mentioned apps which are free for you to explore but we feel that these apps cover almost all bases and are a great fit for anyone looking to manage their personal finances. When working with personal finances we feel it is a wise choice to plan ahead and keep in mind the future as well and to be smart with your money for this reason we have chose to recommend these apps.
