If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know that we’re very big on making, and keeping, a budget. These days it’s a lot easier to do that because of the smart phone and the apps that come with it. Below are 3 of the best budgeting apps for both Apple’s iPhone and Android smartphones. We focus on these 3 Apps because all three of them work on both types of smart phone and all three are free. All 3 will also help you to get a much better understanding of your spending habits, from daily all the way up to annual, and should help you to stay on budget and save more money. Enjoy.
Expensify
What’s nice about this app is that it can be used on both smartphones and computers. It’s got an interface that’s very clean and quite easy to navigate with only four buttons to choose from including;
- SmartScan, which allows you to photograph your receipts and then categorize them with tags. Things like the name of the merchant, total amount spent and date can also be entered. It’s great for someone who likes to save receipts but hates all that extra paper.
- Add Expense is for people who like to manually input their receipt information.
- Track Time gives users a way to track their hourly earnings on an hourly set rate.
- Track Distance is excellent for salespeople or anyone else who put a lot of miles on their car for work. It lets you use the GPS in your smart phone to track your miles, which is brilliant.
Check
If you put all of your expenses on either a credit or debit card, Check is going to be an app you really like. Using this app you can add credit card, gas, electric and even car payment bills and, when they’re due, the app will let you know. Not only that but it tells you what your minimum payment is and, if you want to, you can pay it right through the app.
Tracking your credit score is also possible with Check, but it’s $6.99 a month, and the My Offers tab will tell you about credit card offers available to you. Check can also send you an alert email in the event that you’re nearing the 30% mark of your credit limit’s total credit, which could save you from putting a dent in your credit score.
Check will also tell you, when you enter your bank account info, exactly how much you have in your account, what bills you will have to pay that week, how much you have on your credit card and even give you a pie chart to show you exactly where your money’s going. If you pay everything on credit or debit, Check will really be a godsend.
Dollarbird
Although it doesn’t offer a lot of “bells and whistles” Dollarbird is still quite useful and, as a money tracking app, quite intuitive as well. It will show you exactly how much money you spent every day of any particular month using a monthly calendar format. By entering your daily expenses, you’ll know exactly how much you spent and what you purchased.
Dollarbird also gives you the option to use color coding to track your expenses, and also lets you add extra categories that might not be already in the app. At the end of each month you’ll be able to see the exact totals that you spent in every category that you have, giving you an excellent idea of where you tend to spend the most money. If you want to, you can even add your overall budget, and your income, and Dollarbird will give you a comprehensive graph of that month’s spending.
Using any of these three excellent Apps will help you to track your expenses, one of the most important tasks for staying on your budget. If you haven’t downloaded one of them yet, but you want to start saving more and spending less, now’s the time.