I love my smart phone (I happen to have an iPhone). However, regardless of the smart phone you have, it can save you money!
What I mean by that is more about the apps than the phone—particularly the budgeting tools that you can download and use for absolutely free! The following six apps are not only helpful to have on the go, they’re great for building and keeping me on budget.
Here are my top 6 free, must-have budgeting apps…
1. SmartBudget (Free – for iPhone & iPad)
This free app provides users with a great way to see how they’re spending their money. It really provides a big picture complete with spending categories. Smart Budget will help you keep your finances in order with features like multi-currency calculators, and account views, planned transactions, and financial cloud synchronization for multiple devices.
2. Mint (Free – for iPhone & Android)
This finance app is seriously one that I can’t live without if I expect to stay on budget. Featured as one of the top apps in both Wired and TIME magazines, Mint allows you to track, budget and manage your money all in one central financial hub place, so there’s no toggling between accounts and writing down balances on little pieces of paper so you don’t forget. Mint let’s you see what you’re spending and where you can save across all bank, credit, loan, and other accounts, plus Mint automatically categorizes all of your spending from various checking, savings, credit cards, investments, and retirement funds so you don’t need to enter your own transactions manually.
3. Key Ring Rewards Cards (Free – for Android)
Do you have trouble keeping all of your store club cards or club cards in one spot—or finding them when you’re actually shopping in the store like I do? That’s a shame, especially when those rewards cards can save you a lot of money if you frequently shop with that retailer or if they offer coupons and discount savings opportunities. But don’t fear; Key Ring will keep all of your rewards cards in one digital place so you can always take advantage of savings.
4. Spending Tracker (Free – for iPhone)
The Spending Tracker app removes the haze around personal finances and where all of your money is going. This free budgeting app with its extremely intuitive user interface helps you track your spending quickly and easily by weekly, monthly, or yearly spending outlooks. But the thing I like most about this app is that it lets me set a fixed budget amount to help me meet your spending targets for any designated time period.
5. Grocery iQ (Free – for Android)
If you tend to get caught in the grocery store aisles and overwhelmed by shopping in general, the Grocery IQ app will streamline your grocery store errands so you’re not tempted by all of those sugary, expensive cereals. The app lets users create and customize a personal grocery list that you can manage online and even share across devices and users (i.e., spouses and roommates).
6. Expense Tracker (Free – for iPhone)
This straight forward budgeting app does two things really, really well—helps you create a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual budget—and helps you stick to it. Expense Tracker provides a simple-to-use expense log to track all spending, and an outlook to show you how much money you spent during every time duration. Plus, you don’t even need a WiFi connection to use this app so you never have an excuse to spend more than you can afford.
Speak Your Mind