Financial freedom starts with a conscious approach to money. Modern technologies make this process easier by offering convenient budget planning applications.
RBK-Ukraine (Styler project) tells about the six best tools that will help you take control of your finances with a link to the Engadget technology blog.
Quicken Simplifi
Quicken Simplifi stands out for its simplicity and convenience. The app has a clean interface with a home page that shows key data: balance, net worth, expenses, upcoming payments, spending plan, spending categories, and achievements. The visualizations are neat and clear, and it takes only a day to adapt to the interface.
Among the advantages are the ability to invite a significant other or financial advisor to jointly manage the account and unique features such as marking expected returns and setting up partial recurring purchases from the same seller.
Budgeting in the app is intuitive: you need to confirm regular income, set up recurring payments (bills and subscriptions), and add spending goals. The app shows your income after deducting bills, allowing you to better plan your spending. Budgets are offered based on a six-month average.
Among the disadvantages: the need to manually add property data, no ability to register via Apple or Google, and no free trial period. However, a 30-day money-back guarantee is offered.
Monarch Money
Monarch Money is a budgeting app that is highly detailed and has useful features, despite its more complex interface compared to its competitors. It can take more time to set up, especially to adjust expense categories and add rules, but the result is impressive.
The budget displays detailed data by category, forecasts by month or year, and recurring expenses can be set based on various parameters.
Recent updates have improved the app, adding the ability to automatically update your car's value and create detailed charts based on categories or tags. The mobile version includes a dashboard with information about your net worth, transactions, income and expenses, investments, and goals.
Monarch also supports integration with Apple Card, Apple Cash, and savings via iOS 17.4, allowing you to automatically pull data from these accounts. Among the unique features are joint management with your significant other, as well as a beta function for accounting for investment transactions.
NerdWallet
NerdWallet is a free budgeting app that offers access to features without the need to pay for a subscription, although the interface heavily uses advertising.
The app is simple and easy to use, displaying key metrics: cash flow, net worth, and credit score. Weekly analytical reports help you track your expenses and compare them with the previous month.
The basic approach to planning is based on the popular 50/30/20 rule, which divides the budget into needs, wants, and savings/debt repayment. However, the application is limited in setting up expense categories, although the developers promise to add this feature in the future.
The application setup process takes longer than its counterparts. This is due to two-factor authentication when adding accounts and the need to provide personal data for credit rating monitoring.
Also, the application is less accurate in determining regular income and may mistakenly consider one-time receipts as income, which requires manual adjustment.
Copilot Money
Copilot Money is a stylish and well-designed budgeting app, exclusive to iOS and Mac, with Android and web versions promised in the future. The app features a vibrant interface with colors, emojis, and graphs that make it easy to analyze your budget, investments, and debts. It is especially good at visualizing regular monthly expenses.
Key features include:
- Automatic expense categorization using AI, which becomes more accurate over time
- Integration with Amazon to view transactions
- Manual verification of new transactions for fraud detection and habit analysis
The application continues to develop and add new features, including forecasting, cash flow analysis, and comparing expenses and investments with other users. Copilot offers two free months for new users and a relatively affordable plan: $7.92 per month or $95 per year.
YNAB
YNAB (You Need a Budget) is a budgeting app based on the zero-balance principle. It requires users to allocate each earned amount, assigning it a specific goal. This is similar to the “envelope budgeting” method, where money is divided into categories like rent, utilities, gifts, or unexpected expenses like car repairs.
YNAB Key Features:
- Works only with the money that is already in the accounts, not taking into account future income
- Does not forecast finances, focusing on the current budget
- Forces users to create a new budget every month and carefully track all transactions
The application requires more effort and time to learn than most analogues. For this, video tutorials and manuals are provided.
The YNAB approach is especially useful for people who don't have a large savings account or those who want to improve their financial habits. However, for users with less strict goals, it may seem overly complicated.
PocketGuard
PocketGuard – one of the few budgeting apps, but its free version has significant limitations. For example, you can only connect two bank accounts for free.
To expand the functionality, a paid version of PocketGuard Plus is offered with three payment options: $7.99 per month, $34.99 per year, or $79.99 for a lifetime license, which may be convenient for users who prefer a one-time payment.
The application displays net worth, assets and debts, net income, total expenses for the month, upcoming bills, the date of the next receipt of funds, goals and plans for paying off debts.
One of PocketGuard's key features is its “after the bills” approach: the user enters all regular expenses, after which the app shows how much money is left, suggesting that this amount be used as a budget. It also effectively visualizes paid and pending bills.
However, PocketGuard has its drawbacks. The interface isn't very polished: the “accounts” tab looks cluttered and lacks totals for categories like cash or investments.
In addition, the app sometimes works incorrectly, for example, suggesting to update it when there is actually no update. The web version simply repeats the mobile interface without optimizing it for a large screen, which makes it less convenient to use.