The 6 Best Personal Finance Apps
The 6 Best Personal Finance Apps
There are so many different personal finance apps to choose from. Here's a list of the best ways to keep track of your household finances and their pros and cons.
Written by Liz Bayardelle, PhD | See Comments | Updated 10/15/2018
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The 6 Best Personal Finance Apps
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The Wonderful World of Apps
In the olden days everyone had to do their budgeting by hand. This involved scrupulously hoarding receipts in mammoth accordion folders, going over credit card bill line items with a ruler and a highlighter, and other tedious practices to which I was only too glad to wave goodbye (with only one finger).
However, in light of the amazing webbernet, there are now these amazing websites/apps that do all the heavy lifting for us.
What are Personal Finance Apps?
In the broadest of terms, personal finance apps are websites and/or mobile apps that get data from your bank (using very, very secure connections...don't fret) about your checking, savings, investments, and credit card transactions so that you can see all of your financial data in one place.
These vary widely in functionality, structure, compatibility (iPhone versus Android), and platform (app versus website versus desktop program), but all of them perform roughly the same service.
For me, I would never be able to go back to a purely "pen and paper" system. Our family has two checking accounts (business and personal), eight savings accounts (don't even ask), seven credit cards (only three we actually use), and a myriad of investment accounts. If I had to track down receipts for every one of those and add them all up each month it would literally be the only thing I had time to do.
How do I Pick One?
Let me quickly ruin your life by telling you there's no "right answer" to this question.
However, I have tried almost a dozen different apps and can give you the basic lowdown on their pros and cons. After trying literally every app on this list, I finally decided to do our family finance using PocketSmith (I'll explain why when we get to it on the list), but the basic structure is usually pretty similar from app to app.
So, without further ado, I'll give you quick summaries of each of the main players in the personal finance app biz:
Mint
Pros: This is probably the one you've heard of most. It has an excellent range in functionality, you can create custom categories, and it can connect with almost all the major banks (it worked for all but two of our credit cards). Also, it's free.
Cons: In my book there are only three real strikes against Mint. First, you can't delete Mint's automatic categories. You can easily not use them, but they'll still show up in your budget (which bugged me more than it should have). Second, there were two credit cards it couldn't auto-sync. Finally, when we used this app, I woke up one morning to find all of my carefully-categorized transactions had been resorted back to Mint's automatic assumption. I was immensely preturbed and called tech support, only to receive a very "meh...it happens" response and no guarantee it wouldn't happen again. It probably won't, but my faith was a little shaken.
App: Website, iPhone, Android
Cost: Free (hence it's popularity)
EveryDollar
Pros: This app is awesome. It was created as part of Dave Ramsey's financial planning empire and, as such, is inherently on my good list. It follows the exact same structure as our budget spreadsheet and is really easy on the eyes, both from a UI standpoint and an aesthetic perspective.
Cons: The only downside I can find to this app is that there's no automatic categorization of transactions. This means that you do have to sift through all your expenses one by one to get them in the right "bucket". Hardly a dealbreaker, but it was worth mentioning.
App: Website, iPhone, Android
Cost: Free for manual transactions, $8.25 a month to automatically pull transactions from your bank
Quicken
This is the only desktop app that made my list. Honestly, this is the program that I "grew up on", so I was really motivated to like it at first.
Pros: If you are a little more finance-savvy this might be a good choice for you, as it has by far the greatest functionality and flexibility of the bunch. It has custom categories, detailed and customizable reports, and more in-depth financial analyses than you can shake a stick at.
Cons: The main downside for this one was the fact that it's a desktop program with "visibility" from an app, but you can't make actually data changes on the app. You also can't share data from one computer to another, so if you and your spouse have separate laptops, you're out of luck.
App: Desktop (mac and PC), with Android and iPhone limited-performance apps
Cost: The starter version is $34.99 a year, with a deluxe version at $44.99 per year, and a premier version at $67.49 a year.
QuickBooks
Pros: We tried this after we abandoned Quicken because it does have a fully-online platform (rather than Quicken's desktop program). It does have a dizzying array of functionality, some of which is even over my head. (My mom uses this exclusively and swears by it, but she's literally trained to be an accountant, so I take that with a grain of financially-savvy salt...)
Cons: This is really more intended for businesses than for individuals or families. This made it a little too confusing for my purposes.
App: Online, iPhone, Android
Cost: The cheapest plan is $10 a month, with two more complex plans (geared more for businesses than individuals at $17 and $30 monthly.
You Need a Budget
Pros: This one is literally based on the idea that (you guessed it) you need a budget. It has great options and functionality when it comes to categorization and budgeting. The user interface is also quite pretty.
Cons: Unfortunately, this guy didn't sync with some of our major banks, which would have meant a lot of manual categorization for me. No bueno. I was sad to see it get crossed off the possibility list, but not sad enough to commit to that much manual work per month.
App: Online, iPhone, Android
Cost: Only one plan, priced at $6.99 per month, but billed as $83.99 annually.
PocketSmith
And now we get to my favorite. This is the one we currently use and (in case I've been too subtle about it so far) I am totally in love.
Pros: This one is the only app we've found that does the three things I really need: bank syncing for all of our accounts, fully customizable categories (you can even create automatic rules so it correctly sorts transactions from the same places), and reliability (the thing I found lacking with Mint). It also has a great number of reports you can run, bringing it almost up to Quicken's level of awesomeness.
Cons: I found this a tiny bit idiosyncratic, making it a little more difficult to get used to the user interface than some of the others. However, once you get how it works it's just as easy to use.
App: Online, iPhone, Android
Cost: The basic functionality is free, but if you want the really useful features (automatic transaction importing and categorization, automatic bank feeds, unlimited budget categories) it's $9.95 a month. (There's also a $19.95 per month superplan, but I can't see any real reason for it.)
Summary (and TL;DR Nutshell)
There is a truly frightening number of personal finance apps, but the core functionality is basically the same for all of them. Find which features are really important to you (e.g. Android compatibility, price, the ability to do X, Y, or Z, etc.) and find the app that wins that specific battle.
Also, most apps offer a free trial, so you can usually try out a potential app for a while before committing. Shop around and see what works best for your specific needs. A little extra time spent in picking the right one could save you hours of heartache later on.
Also, most apps offer a free trial, so you can usually try out a potential app for a while before committing. Shop around and see what works best for your specific needs. A little extra time spent in picking the right one could save you hours of heartache later on.
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About the Author
Liz Bayardelle, PhD
Founder | Contributor
Liz (or Dr. Mommy, as her toddler started calling her after learning what a PhD was) is the happily sleep-deprived mom of a toddler (and professional raccoon noise impersonator), a sparkle-clad kidnado, a teenage stepdaughter, 200 cumulative pounds of dog, and herd of dustbunnies (if daily vacuuming doesn't occur). During nights and naptimes, she uses her PhD in business psychology as an author, speaker, and consultant. She also serves as an executive and principal for three companies, two of which she co-founded with her very patient (and equally exhausted) husband.