Best Personal Finance Apps
JW
Last updated 04/08/2024 by
Jessica WalrackIn a recent study, 45% of Americans reported that their savings couldn’t cover three months’ living expenses. Further, 47% of Americans spend their entire paycheck or more every month. Are you struggling to grow your savings and stop living paycheck to paycheck? The right personal finance app can help you get organized and take control of your financial life. Read on to find eight of the very best personal finance apps for 2020.
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The top 8 personal finance apps
Looking for a budgeting app, but not sure where to start? Look no further than our round-up of the top 8 personal finance apps for the coming year!
1. Mint
Mint is a money tracking and planning app that helps you to manage all your finances in one place.
Features:
- Link multiple bank and credit card accounts, bills, and more for a unified view.
- Create budgets.
- Track budget goals.
- Categorize bank transactions.
- Track investments.
- Receive budget tips and alerts.
- Access your credit score as often as you want without any negative impact.
- Secure encryption and multi-factor authentication.
Available for iOS and Android, Mint is completely free to use.
2. You Need a Budget (YNAB)
You Need a Budget (YNAB)’s budgeting software saves its users an average of $600 per month and over $6,000 in the first year.
Features:
- Learn the YNAB proven method of budgeting.
- Sync all your financial accounts.
- Budget across multiple devices in real-time.
- Goal tracking.
- Progress reports.
- Personal support.
- An active community of YNABers.
- Monthly funding goals.
- Free workshops.
YNAB costs $7 per month, $84 per year, and offers a free trial period. To take it for a spin, just download it on iOS or Android, or find it on the web.
3. Personal Capital
Personal Capital offers wealth management and investing tools to help you optimize your investments. At the time of this writing, the company has $10 billion assets under management and 21,000 investment clients across the country. Also, they’ve helped over 2 million people plan their financial lives.
Features:
- Connect external financial accounts (IRAs, mortgages, 401ks, bank accounts, loans, etc.)
- Undergo a free consultation with an investment advisor.
- Access a free retirement planning tool with goal setting and tracking.
- Build an investment plan with an advisor’s help.
- Track net worth in real-time.
- Receive updates and advice on investment and bank holdings, portfolios performance, spending, investment allocations, your home’s value, and more.
- Use the fee analyzer to find out if you are overpaying for fees.
The Personal Capital app is available for iOS or Android devices. However, this app does charge a monthly fee: 0.89% of the assets managed.
4. Wallet
This top personal finance app ticks all of the usual boxes: budgeting, expense tracking, and so on. But it also lets you manage multiple currencies.
Features:
- Bring all your bank and credit accounts into one place.
- View your spending in real-time.
- Learn your spending habits.
- Gain tips on how to budget effectively.
- Create budgets to achieve goals.
- View detailed charts and reports.
- Manage multiple currencies.
- Cloud sync across devices and web interface.
- Assign emotions to your expenses to spend on the things that make you happy.
Available for Android, iOS, and as a web app, Wallet offers a free version and a paid premium version. The upgraded version includes automatic bank updates with up to 4,000 participating banks and insightful reports.
5. Coinbase
Coinbase is a cryptocurrency trading platform whose mobile app lets you buy, sell, and manage your cryptocurrency portfolio from anywhere. You can use it to trade most types of digital coins, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum. In total, its 32 million users have exchanged over 150 billion dollars in cryptocurrency on the platform. Plus, it’s supported in over 102 countries.
Features:
- Buy and sell popular digital currencies.
- Keep track of your cryptocurrency trading in one easy place.
- Schedule recurring buys to invest in cryptocurrencies gradually.
- Protect your funds in a vault with delayed withdrawals.
- Cryptocurrency protected by insurance.
Curious about cryptocurrency? Download this top personal finance app on Android and iOS devices. The app is free, as Coinbase makes its money from fees on currency trades.
6. EveryDollar
Next, EveryDollar is a budgeting app that helps you build a monthly budget so you can achieve your financial goals. How does it do so? By using money expert Dave Ramsey’s zero-based approach of “saving money with a purpose.”
Features:
- Add your monthly income.
- Budget expenses using a customizable template.
- Track spending manually.
- The upgraded EveryDollar Plus plan lets you connect your bank account for easier tracking.
- Syncs across devices from a desktop computer to a phone.
Download this app from the AppStore or Google Play Store and choose from a free or upgraded premium plan.
7. Clarity Money: Your Budget Advocate
Clarity Money is a budgeting and saving app which uses machine learning to analyze your financial situation and help you make smart decisions. Also, the company will negotiate on your behalf to lower your bills, taking only a small commission and leaving you with serious savings.
Features:
- Link financial accounts.
- Multi-level safeguards.
- View your transactions organized into graphs.
- Break down spending by category.
- Track transactions at a glance.
- Gain insights into your spending.
- Cancel bills and unwanted subscriptions through the app.
- Automate transfers to savings.
Download this app for iOS or Android. It’s free and supports over 3 million users.
8. Acorns: Save More
Last is Acorns, a money management and investment mobile app. Acorn offers a checking account with a debit card. Every time you spend money using that debit card, Acorn automatically invests the change.
Features:
- Visa debit card.
- Checking account that saves and invest for you when you spend.
- Free transfers.
- Spend strategies.
- FDIC-insured checking.
- Earn bonus investments from over 350 Found Money partners.
Acorn’s plans range from $1 to $3 per month, and are available on iOS and Android. Over 5 million people use Acorn to invest their spare change in their future.
Personal finance applications FAQ
What are personal finance applications?
Personal finance applications are tools that can help you set and stick to a budget, track your investments, and reduce your expenses. They can also give you investment advice on help you reach your financial goals.
What is a 50/30/20 budget?
The 50/30/20 budget is a rule of thumb that helps you break down your expenses. A classic version of the 50/30/20 rule is 50% should go towards groceries, housing, and car payments, 30% on eating out, shopping, or events, and 20% toward savings. Personal finance apps can help you stick to goals like these.
How much should you save every month?
Try to save around 20% of your monthly income toward savings. This includes all your savings accounts, such as 401(k), Roth IRAs, and emergency funds.
Make money management easy
Money management doesn’t have to be hard. Modern technology can help us save anytime and anywhere. Each of these mobile apps has unique features that can help to ease the stress of budgeting, saving, and/or investing. Try one (or more!) of the best personal finance apps of 2020 to take control of your finances in the new year.
Want to check out more money management tools? Review and compare them side-by-side below.
JW
Jessica Walrack is a personal finance writer at SuperMoney, The Simple Dollar, Interest.com, Commonbond, Bankrate, NextAdvisor, Guardian, Personalloans.org and many others. She specializes in taking personal finance topics like loans, credit cards, and budgeting, and making them accessible and fun.
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