From time immemorial, saving money has been a struggle for most people- old and young. This is especially the case of folks with a steady flow of monthly income. it is easy to spend with reckless abandon (especially in the first week of your salary payment) believing that you either deserve to splurge or there’s no proper plan in place to spend. By the second week when you are no longer in that salary bubble, you chastise yourself for not saving and then start a trail of debt that may be dangerous. Then, you remember that the major difference between those who retire wealthy and those who retire poor is how well they were able to manage their finances during their earning years.
“The art is not in making money, but in keeping it.” – Proverb
In a bid to help you better manage your money through savings and proper budgeting of your monthly expenses, we researched some of the apps that could help you do just that.
Good Budget
Good Budget is an app which helps you to plan out your monthly expenses. With this app, you “will never be caught off-guard by a bill or sudden expense.” This is because as you receive your salary, you can set aside how much you need to run your expenses for the month. It also helps you spend money only on what is important to you instead of frivolities.
The app is particularly good for married couples who both work and contribute to the monthly upkeep of their homes. This is because you and your spouse can sync your accounts so that you can both follow the monthly budget you have set for your home. In other words, it helps both of you know who is spending money when, how and on what.
Get the app on iOS store and Google Play.
Unsplurge
Sometimes, it happens that you really need to purchase a product but your budget cannot accommodate the extra expense. The Unsplurge App provides a solution to that by making it possible for you to save and look forward to buying the item you want. As its name may suggest, the app helps you save so that your delayed gratification can be met later. You can get the app on the iOS store.
Money Dashboard
Money Dashboard helps you to keep tabs on your monthly budget. As its name implies, it is a dashboard for your money which categorises all of your expenses and lets you see them all at a glance. By so doing, you can see what you are spending on most, and where you need to cut back on expenses. To use the app, you will have to download it for free from the iOS store.
Pennies
Pennies could be the easiest-to-use budgeting/saving app out there. The app tracks your payday and updates your budget as soon as your salary is paid. It can also avail you the opportunity to transfer money when you need it between budgets.
Pennies is blunt, in that it can tell you exactly how your spending habits today can affect your financial standing tomorrow. So it is probably what you need to keep you in check just in case you are one of those who struggle to stick to your financial goals.
You can get the app on iOS store and Google Play Store.
Mint
The Mint app will help you budget your monthly expenses based on your financial data, and also periodically avail you of the opportunity to see your financial score in order to keep abreast with your financial status at all times. The app will also use its investment tracking feature to compare your portfolio with market benchmarks and track your asset allocations across various platforms.
It is indeed a money manager which you can trust and use with ease. To read more about the app or get it for free, visit the Mint store or get it on the iOS store.
Level Money
You can all agree with the fact that while it is one thing to have a monthly financial budget, it is another thing to actually follow through and be faithful to it. One reason why most people fail to stick to their budgets is that they forget. This is probably your story too. But dont worry, because Level Money is here to the rescue.
The Level Money app will remind you when you are spending more than you budgeted. Look at it like an alarm that reminds you that you are oversleeping. Not only does the app help you plan your budget, it also helps you to stick to it. It works in such a way that you link the app to your bank account and let it detect your financial capacity, analyse how much you can afford to spend in a month and then stick to it. Get the app for free on both the iOS store and Google Play Store.
Qapital
While Pennies is blunt, Qapital can be said to be a strict budgeting app which “charges” your guilty pleasures and returns the money you do not need in your budget back to your savings. The app can also help you identify the triggers as per expenses, and help you avoid them.
You can get the app today on the iOS and Google Play Stores.
Truebill
Just in case you are one of those who have too much money and don’t know what else to do with it other than subscribe to different services you barely use, Truebill will help you unsubscribe from such services. The app is like the budget police, tracking and cancelling all paid subscriptions that are wasting away. If you need it, get it now on the iOS and Google Play Stores.
Reach
Like most of the apps above, the Reach app helps give you a breakdown of where your money is going by-
- Automatically tracking your income and expenses
- Managing your cash transactions by recategorising your ATM withdrawals
- Sending you daily reminders about your budget so that you can keep following it through, and
- Sorting out how much you can spend without jeopardising your financial future.
You can download the app for free from Google Play Store.
In conclusion, managing money is on its own, not an easy task. When you combine that with the many “commercial temptations” that come in the form of digital ads sliding through your screen daily, it becomes really difficult not to overspend. This is why you need to get one of the above-mentioned apps and let it be your financial guide.