10 Best FREE Personal Finance Apps
When I decided I wanted to start getting better with money I had absolutely no idea where to start.
Like most, I wasn’t taught financial literacy in schools and most of the concepts were completely foreign to me. Through some internet searching, I found online communities (one of my favorites talk about money Facebook groups ) where I heard about the app Mint.
I was hesitant at first but through my introduction with Mint I fell down the rabbit hole of financial apps and with the help of free finance apps I was able to get a clearer picture of my finances and start actually working on my savings goals.
While continued financial literacy should go hand in hand with these apps, you don’t have to do everything by yourself! There are powerful financial tools that are sitting on your phone that you can start utilizing TODAY to starting taking control and get better with money.
Here are 10 FREE personal finance apps.
Mint: Mint is a budgeting and tracking app that categorizes all your spending and gives you an overview of how you spend.
It allows you to create categories and suggest different budgeting limits based on your previous spending. Mint is a great place to start if you want to start understanding your money and the ways you spend. However, you shouldn’t take everything it says as a financial fact and you should play around with the numbers to see how you want to create your ideal budget, but it’s still a great place to start.
Clarity Money: Clarity money is like a more focused version of mint. It has fewer features but it helps you to get a really clear understanding of your money.
It allows you to open savings accounts, get your credit score, track subscriptions (my favorite feature), and also monitor your savings goals. I really like the mobile app because it’s beautiful (very easy to look at ) and it makes navigating a breeze.
Truebill: Truebill is an app that I started with and absolutely adored. Not only does it gives you a calendar view of when all your bills are due but it gives you a total sum of all your expenses and income.
It’s great if you have a hard time tracking the money that’s coming in and out of your account. The only downside that I had with this app is that sometimes it would be slow to navigate but lucky it’s not an app you would need to use every day, just when you need a snapshot of what bills you have come.
Digit: Digit is a saving app that slowly takes a small amount of change from your account so that you can save “painlessly”.
It’s a great app if you struggle to get into the habit of saving or if you’re one of those people who never has enough to save. I tried digit for a while and it was great because I truly didn’t notice the money coming out of my account.
Acorn: Acorn is another cult favorite when it comes to personal finance apps and there’s a reason why. Investing can be such a hard thing to break into for the everyday person and something like a Robo advisor can make it much more approachable.
The acorn app does something similar to digit where it takes the “change” from your account and invests based on your investment needs and risk tolerance. I personally haven’t tried acorn but I’ve seen it both work and not perform so well for some people.
It can be a great and low-cost way to get into investing but you shouldn’t be expecting any massive returns on your money. Acorn is free for students so if you’ve been interested in investing it’s worth looking into it and doing further research, but if you’re not a student and looking into it just make sure that the amount you are investing is enough to get a return that includes your fees which are $1-$3 per month.
Pocket guard: Pocketguard is a budgeting app that customizes a budget for you based on your spending and sets money aside for you to save.
This app is great if you’ve tried Mint and didn’t love it or if you want to compare the types of budget you could be using. Pocketguard is great because it allows you to set spending limits per category and get alerts when you’re almost at your limit.
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Personal Capital: Personal capital is an app that allows you to monitor your spending and get a big picture view your income vs expenses but what the app is really known for is tracking your investments whether that be your retirement fund, index funds, etc.
The app is great for someone who wants to get more serious about investing and might have a few investments that you want to keep an eye on. Even if your not seriously investing yet it can still be a great app for tracking your budget. I love the design and its very visually appealing.
Fudget: Fudget is another budgeting app but it’s much more simplified than Mint or Pocketguard. If you just want to track your expenses and make sure that you’re not overspending each month then you might want to look into this app. It allows you to manually input your income and your expenses and see how much money you have leftover to spend for the month.
Credit Karma: Credit Karma is one of the only free credit tracking systems of its kind. It allows you to see your Equifax and TransUnion score and provides updates without giving you a ding on your credit report.
I love credit karma because it gives you a detailed report and tells you what you could do to improve your score!
The only thing to note about using credit karma is that it doesn’t give you your FICO score which is the score most lenders use. You can get your FICO score once a year for free with a most traditional bank and Wellsfargo even shows you your FICO score monthly.
If you’re confused about why there are different types of credit scores. Check out my FREE ebook “No more broke college student”
Albert: This apps allows you to create and organize different savings goals otherwise known as “sinking funds”
Sinking funds are just a personal finance term for short term saving goals like vacations, car repairs, school, etc. The app gives you a visual representation of when you’ve almost reached your savings goal and even allows automatic withdrawals for your different savings funds so you don’t have to think about it.
Honorable Mention: Your banking app
The list wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention your personal banking app. You don’t actually need a million fancy budgeting app because your banking app can be just as powerful and useful. I use my wells Fargo app to go through each month and make sure I wasn’t charged for anything I didn’t use and also check my credit score and see just how much money I have leftover to spend. If you’re new to personal finance you can’t go wrong with just downloading the mobile version of your banking app.
I hope you enjoyed this list and of course, I’m NOT a finance professional but this is just a list of apps that I’ve personally tried and enjoyed or have known people who have utilized those apps. Don’t forget to do your own research and to make sure these platforms are right for you and your needs.