4 Handy Apps for Maintaining a Budget

In the age of smartphones, users have come to learn there is nothing you can't do with the right app. For those looking to budget and track expenses, mobile apps are a good idea because phones are ubiquitous and makes logging easy and quick. If the apps are already connected to your bank accounts, even better.

Expense-tracking apps are aplenty, so here are four highly-recommended ones that will help you sift through your financial life electronically:

Saver. Saver is an attractive and effective app that helps you log your expenses easily. The app aggregates your expenses and creates pie charts to show you how your monthly expenses divide up amongst various major categories.

It costs $5, but the app is straightforward and easy to use. You enter your expenses and assign a category there are 15 available purchase categories, which you can further tag with subcategories. You can view your purchase totals by day, week, month or year, and the pie charts can be viewed by week, month or year as well.

Toshl Finance. This app is a little bit more basic. You enter your expenses similar to the way you would for Saver, but there are no preset categories and you have full control over how to categorize your purchases and expenses. Toshl organizes your expenses so you can view the total amount you spend by day or by category. You can also customize the time frame for which you want to view your expenses.

Toshl places a bigger emphasis on budgeting. Through the app, you can budget for all expenses, or pick a category that you want to budget for. You can set the budget to last varying time intervals (monthly, weekly or one-time). You also have the option to let any remaining money in the budget roll over to another.

Expensify. Expensify caters predominantly to the business crowd for those who need to track their work expenses, but it can also be useful for managing personal expenses.

In this free app, there are options to log expenses, hours, and vehicle mileage, which make this app attractive for those who often take business trips, making purchases for require reimbursement, and those who bill for services by the hour. Users can generate expense reports and file either hours, purchases, or miles to various reports, which streamlines the expense-report process.

However, the app doesn't have an option to view your purchases by category; just by chronology.

Mint. One of the original personal finance management tools, Mint is for those who want a tried-and-true budget management experience. Mint's biggest advantage is that it can link to a variety of bank accounts as well as mortgage and loan accounts, so it's easy to see your entire financial life congregated in one portal.

All transactions, incomes, and debts are listed in one place and it's easy to budget based on all the information. Mint's budgets are easy to set up, though there aren't as many options as offered by Toshl Finance. The app's budget charts are fancier and more interactive for easy viewing.

Mint is a good all-in-one app if you're not interested in tracking expenses manually, since all your bank transactions are tracked for you if they're linked to your Mint account.

Amy He is a staff writer and columnist for MyBankTracker.com, where she covers personal finance, banking, and credit cards.



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