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Managing your money isn’t the easiest thing to do. Now that many of us no longer balance a checkbook, tracking expenses and keeping up with the bank balance can be difficult. Personal finance apps connect with your bank account and help you keep up with your spending. These apps can show you which categories you spend the most in, track, and, sometimes allow you to make upcoming bill payments, as well as keep up with your credit score and investment portfolio.
The best personal finance apps provide several features for managing your overall finances. This includes email reminders, bill due dates, track subscriptions, shared wallets, and more. All the apps on our list are available on both iOS and Android, so you can utilize them no matter which smartphone you have.
Best Personal Finance Apps of 2023
- Best Overall: Mint
- Best for Debt Payoff: You Need a Budget
- Best for Wealth Management: Personal Capital
- Best for Bill Payment: Prism
- Best for Shared Expenses: Spendee
- Best for Budgeting: EveryDollar
- Best Visuals: Mobiles
Best Overall: Mint
Mint earns our choice as the best overall app because its array of features lets you keep track of your spending and monitor your credit health for free.
Mint, Intuit’s personal finance app, is a popular app that provides your complete financial picture in one place. Once you link your credit and debit cards to your account, Mint pulls your transactions, categorizes them, and shows how you spend your money. You can keep track of your bills and spending and create a budget you can stick to.
The site provides access to your credit score for free, and you can get a breakdown of the factors contributing to your score to stay on top of your credit health. Plus, you can track your investments and manage utility payments.
Best for Debt Payoff: You Need a Budget
You Need a Budget, also known as YNAB, is designed specifically for budgeting; its tools for tracking income and expenses earned it a spot on our list as the best for debt payoff.
YNAB is a personal finance app built around its Four Rules. The rules not only help you build a better budget but also help you gain control of your spending:
- Give every dollar a job.
- Embrace your true expenses.
- Roll with the punches.
- Age your money.
Import transactions from your checking account and apply them to each budget category to get an accurate picture of your spending. You can keep a balanced budget by adjusting budget categories if you accidentally overspend (or under-budgeted for a certain category). Detailed reports show you how your spending is progressing throughout the month and help you spot where you can improve your spending.
According to YNAB, the average new user saves $600 in the first two months and more than $6,000 in the first year. You can try the app for free for the first 34 days. After that, you’ll pay $99 if you choose a yearly plan or $14.99 per month.
BEST FOR WEALTH MANAGEMENT: Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a personal finance and wealth management app that allows you to manage your assets and investments along with your everyday spending accounts. While you can connect to your bank account to track spending and create a monthly budget, the app really shines in helping you track and optimize your investments. You can track your portfolio by account, asset class, or individual security.
With built-in intelligence available on the tablet and mobile versions of the app, you can discover opportunities for diversification, and risk management, and discover any hidden fees you may be paying. Comparing your own portfolio to major market benchmarks allows you to determine whether you’re on track to meet your investment goals.
Personal Capital also provides registered financial advisors who can provide you with customized advice tailored to your goals.
Best for Bill Payment: Prism
Prism shows all your bills and financial accounts in a single app, giving you a complete picture of your finances. The app has more than 11,000 billers, including larger banks and even smaller utility companies. Add your bills to the app, and Prism automatically tracks your bills and sends due-date reminders to help you prevent late payments.
You can use the app to make payments by scheduling them on the same day or several days in advance. This eliminates the need to log into multiple accounts to pay bills.
Best for Shared Expenses: Spendee
Spendee is designed to be shared by multiple members of a household, and that’s why we chose it as the best for shared expenses. This can be useful for couples who need to keep track of joint accounts.
Many other personal finance apps are for individual use. But Spendee allows you to create wallets with friends and family that you can use to manage shared expenses for a household budget.
You can import your bank transactions and let the app categorize them to tally how you’re spending money each month. You can also manually add cash expenses for a more accurate picture of where your money goes. And if you’re concerned about going over budget, you can set amounts for each spending category and track your progress toward the budgeted amount.
Additionally, Spendee’s bill tracker functionality ensures you remember to pay each of your bills and avoid late payment penalties. If you’re going on a trip or another special event, you can create a category specifically for that event to track your spending and keep yourself on budget.
While Spendee offers a free version, it has limited features compared with its paid versions. Those who want to sync the app with their bank account will need to pay for the Premium version, which costs $22.99/year.
Best for Budgeting: EveryDollar
Spendee is designed to be shared by multiple members of a household, and that’s why we chose it as the best for shared expenses. This can be useful for couples who need to keep track of joint accounts.
The EveryDollar app uses the zero-based budget method recommended by personal finance expert Dave Ramsey. The zero-based budget gives every dollar a purpose in the budget, hence the app’s name EveryDollar.
A built-in monthly expense tracker allows you to connect to your bank to import transactions to keep up with your spending. The tracker shows you the amount you’ve spent so far for the month and the amount you have left to spend.
Best Visuals: Mobiles
Mobills is our choice as the best for visuals because it allows users to see their financial situations in the form of charts.
Mobills organizes your expenses in categories so you can track how your spending is progressing toward your budgeted amount. The app displays the amount you have remaining to spend in each budget category so you can rein in your spending as needed.
Mobiles budget planning app includes interactive charts that allow you to analyze your financial life; you can use them to make adjustments as you need to reach your larger financial goals. Add your credit cards to the app so you can see your current balance and spending limits all in one place. You can also add all your bills and due dates to keep track of when your bills need to be paid.