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The 8 Best Budgeting Apps

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If you need help reining in your spending and getting your personal finances under control, a budgeting app may be just what you need. There are many budgeting apps to choose from, each fighting to distinguish itself from the others.

Many applications are designed for general personal budgeting, but each has something unique to offer. One app specializes in personal budgeting tools, while another offers bill tracking. One is unique in offering the ability to assign each dollar you have a job, creating a complete money management system. Another offers warnings when you are close to overspending.

The number of money management, personal finance, and budgeting apps is large, so it helps to know which ones are designed with the most users in mind while offering exclusive tools for those with unique needs. We’ve done the hard work for you, creating a list of the best budgeting apps out there.

The 8 Best Budgeting Apps OF 2020

Best Overall: Mint

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Mint is one of the oldest and best-known budgeting apps. Owned by Intuit, the same company that makes Quickbooks and TurboTax, Mint offers an array of features to help you track and manage your money from a giant list of banks, credit card issuers, brokerages, lenders, and other financial institutions.

It comes with a wide range of features, the most useful being its budgeting tools, which lie front and center when you log in. Mint automatically categorizes transactions from linked credit and debit cards and tracks them against a budget you can tweak and customize to your needs.

Get alerts when you go over budget, track spending by category, or look at your overall cash flow to get a well-rounded picture of where your money goes each month.1

Best to Keep From Overspending: PocketGuard

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As the name implies, PocketGuard can help guard you against spending too much. This budgeting app links to all of your financial accounts and helps you track your spending compared to your budget throughout the month.

This app is one of the easiest to set up and connect to your bank accounts. It tracks how much you're earning, follows what you're spending on recurring bills and everyday expenses, and tracks deposits into your savings account throughout a period.

This budgeting app even has a feature to help you track each individual bill and find opportunities to save. PocketGuard looks out for recurring bills from phone, TV, and Internet companies, for example, and helps you find a better deal on your monthly service costs. Not only does it help you track your budget, it helps you lower your spending.2

Best for Type-A Personalities: You Need a Budget

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You Need a Budget has a cult-like following of die-hard fans who lovingly refer to the app as YNAB. You Need a Budget has a unique approach compared to other budgeting apps. Rather than relying on traditional budgeting buckets, you build your budget based on your income, giving every dollar a job in your budget.

These jobs include everything from living expenses to debt payments, savings, or investments. Leaving no dollar unaccounted for forces you to think about every dollar you acquire and spend.

The app is great for individuals or couples working together on their budget. It offers both desktop and mobile interfaces, options to sync your bank accounts automatically or enter expenses manually, and includes debt payoff and goal tracking features to help motivate you to reach your money goals.3

Best for Just Budgeting: Wally

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Wally isn’t the easiest app to navigate compared to some others on this list, but it works well for one thing: budgeting. This app helps you track your income and expenses while offering you a snapshot of your remaining budget to help you avoid overspending.

More popular with Millennials, this app is free to use and has both iPhone and Android versions (the Android version is called Wally+). One major benefit of Wally is its built-in support for virtually all foreign currencies, which makes it a better option for those who live outside of the United States.

Best for Cash Style Budgeting: Mvelopes

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Cash budgeting lends itself well to envelope budgeting, a style of budgeting where you put cash in envelopes for different spending categories, and, when each envelope is empty, your budget for that category is all spent for the month. This is a bit more challenging with credit and debit cards, but Mvelopes makes it easy to follow cash style budgets in a digital budgeting world.

While it isn’t free, Mvelopes offers the ability to connect to unlimited financial accounts and put classic envelope budgeting to use to track your regular spending. With real-time budget matching, you will know whether you can buy that cappuccino or need to wait for your budget to reset next month.5

Best for Couples: Goodbudget

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Formerly known as Easy Envelope Budget Aid or EEBA, Goodbudget is a perfect option for couples that want to share their budgeting process together. It uses the familiar envelope budgeting philosophy to power your proactive budget for all of your bills and spending.

Because you can share and sync budgets with budgeting partners across the iPhone and Android spectrum, it is great for couples with shared finances, while working great for solo budgeters also.

When you add new transactions, you have the option to add a number of details, breaking up your expenses into multiple envelopes. Budget by category (called envelopes in the app) with up to 10 envelopes for free. Add to your envelopes from your income every payday and you’ll know just how much you have leftover for non-essential purchases.6

Best App Tied to a Bank Account: Simple

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Simple is more than a budgeting app, it is an online bank account that replaces your old checking account and has tons of useful budgeting features built-in. When your budget and your bank live in the same app, it is much easier to manage and keep everything under control because you only have one place to visit to view and manage your money.

Simple tracks your income and spending automatically, and has a goal feature to motivate your savings. It’s trademarked Safe-to-Spend® feature tells you if you are on your budgeting track, or if extra spending might derail your plans. With no fees, this is a very cool all-in-one banking and budgeting app.7

Best for Investors: Personal Capital

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Personal Capital offers a complete investment advising solution, a hybrid robo-advisor, and human advisor service in one. Without paying a cent, you can access Personal Capital’s free money tracking dashboard, which includes some handy budgeting features.

Personal Capital put the majority of emphasis on investments, with free and automated analysis of your investment fees, asset classes and other important investment details.

The cash flow and budgeting tools are not quite as extensive as other apps on this list, but they work just similarly using the same automated tracking of purchases from linked accounts.

Tools

Five best practices for implementing remote working

In the past few weeks remote working has, virtually overnight, become the default modus operandi for organizations that are in a position to allow their employees to work from home. How likely is it those employees will be productive?

The short answer is, it depends. In our experience, organizations that do remote working well, don’t do so by chance. Rather, they have well entrenched practices and processes in place to ensure their employees operate efficiently and pull together as a team, regardless of where they’re located.

1. Applications that make the process easier

A worker is only as good as their tools. Giving your team access to the applications they need to keep doing their jobs, irrespective of where they’re sitting, is Remote Working 101. That means mobilizing your email, commerce, communication and collaboration solutions so they’re available from laptops, tablets and smartphones, and putting security measures in place to reduce the risk of those systems, and the data they contain, being compromised.

2. Beam me in – reliable video conferencing technology

The digital era may have provided us with a plethora of options for staying in touch but face to face contact still trumps all of them. If that’s not possible, a decent video conferencing system is the next best thing. Working with the IT team to identify a platform that works for all users, including those not blessed with an abundance of bandwidth, and fulfils the organization’s security and privacy needs is a must. 

3. Note it down – making documentation mandatory

Joint projects are all about information sharing and, when a team is clustered together, mostly that just happens. Not so though when its members are scattered across cities and states, as is now the case. Documenting activity and tracking progress, rigorously and consistently, can have a big impact on productivity, and an investment in systems which support this is money well spent. 

4. Collaboration – it’s about actions, not software

The term collaboration – the act of working with others to achieve something – is bandied about with abandon in the modern workplace but talking about it and making it happen are two different things. Numerous platforms exist to encourage the process but unless they’re employed effectively, their effectiveness can be limited. Experienced remote working organisations recognise this and develop protocols and processes to ensure these collaboration solutions become effective tools that help employees solve real business issues. 

Some go a step further, with the appointment of collaboration SWAT officers or teams – individuals with a remit to identify bottlenecks and other business problems which could be addressed via improved processes or more effective use of collaboration software. 

5. All together now – build a team environment

The switch from office to home based working can be a culture shock – particularly for individuals who enjoy the bustle and camaraderie of the office environment. Feeling unmoored from the mother ship can send their morale and productivity south. That’s why putting a real effort into building a team identity is critical. 

Encouraging the use of social and collaboration tools – think Microsoft Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, Instagram and WeChat groups – can help create a ‘virtual water cooler’ where jokes and stories are shared and social bonds maintained.

Team building sessions shouldn’t be off the agenda either. Getting employees together at lunchtime for a virtual staff meeting, perhaps even springing for pizza or Uber Eats occasionally, delivered to their respective home offices, can help keep spirits and output high.

A status quo?

The rapid onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced scores of organizations to make a sudden shift to remote working and many have been caught on the hop. Taking steps to make the practice more efficient will be of benefit in the challenging months of the lockdown which lies before us – but that’s only part of the story. 

Arguably, the most cataclysmic global event since the Second World War, the Covid-19 pandemic may effect an enduring change to the way organizations do business. Practices such as enterprise-wide remote working, which have been born out of necessity, could well remain the status quo for many businesses, long after the state of emergency has abated. Against that backdrop, getting it right may prove to be a critical commercial imperative in the post-Covid -19 world.

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Personal Development Goals – Creativity and Growing Through Doing

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Growing into Yourself

It is in the doing that you are expressing being. In expressing being, you’re getting to know yourself. Personal growth comes quickest when learning is coupled with doing. Discoveries in the doing fuel growth and anchor experiences that percolate into wisdom.

Planning personal development goals is about so much more than goal setting. The creative process is as much about creating yourself. In creating, discover, heal, and grow.

The human brain developed over eons through movement and action. Learning through movement is still the physiological process of how the brain learns best. Learning through movement is also learning through doing.  Read more...

“Personality development occurs over time through the experience of living your life. Add intention with a focus on purpose and passion, and your life will soar.” ~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com

This Growth Hacking Video Training Can Help Improve Take Off

The internet is ripe with opportunities for businesses of all sizes, but with all that opportunity comes considerable competition. To stand out from the pack, businesses turn to growth hackers, specialized marketers who know how to optimize traffic on your webpages and enhance your brand's recognition.

Great growth hackers are proficient in SEO, Facebook Ads, YouTube, and many more marketing platforms and skills, which keeps them in high-demand. If you're looking to learn a revolutionary new marketing strategy that teaches you how to create video content that generates leads for life, you should highly consider proven marketing experts like Marley Jaxx!

Her 21 day bundle has the winning formula, newest tools, techniques, and tips to help you scale in growth and make an impactful impression. Her solution offerings consist of:

  • Complete Growth Hacking  - Learn 100+ impact-driven and profit focused techniques and strategies to increase conversions and growth.

  • Transformation Marketing - Discover how to make your business or webpages stand out and generate increased viral interests.

  • Creative and Actionable Branding Strategies That Will Triple Your Profit - Understand out-of-the-box ways to increase brand recognition and build brand loyalty.

  • Complete Digital Marketing Impact Challenge - Experience 21 days in-depth tactical content creation and coaching.

The Best Way to Invest in Index Funds

Investors’ passion for indexing these days reminds us of a classic Cole Porter lyric: “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.” Yep, everybody, it seems, is falling in love—with index funds. Since 2010, investors have withdrawn a net sum of $500 billion from actively managed U.S. stock funds and invested that amount and more in index-tracking mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. But one of the cardinal rules of investing is that whenever everyone agrees on something, chances are high that just the opposite will occur. So could indexing be the wrong way to go? (Click Here For More...)

Quick Links for more information relating to this topic:

Best Personal Finance Service Programs 

Tax Deductions and Breaks

Budgeting and Saving Tools

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Emotional Intelligence

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The hot new buzz word in the business, management, and executive world is “emotional intelligence,” but the question is, what exactly is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence, as Ashley Zahabian describes, is applied best when you are feeling a certain way, but act differently to obtain a better outcome. In essence, she claims we become more logical as become more emotionally intelligent.

Ashley shared a few words with us below on the topic:

“It’s one of those “it” factors, you know? When you meet someone, you’ve got a few seconds to connect or disconnect, and that connections happens subconsciously. It’s brain to brain, and unless you’ve got that “it” factor, there’s not much you can do to connect otherwise. This is why so many more companies are moving towards behavioral interviews; they want to see how you behave because your behavior tells much quicker whether you’re credible and fitting for whatever position or connection you’re trying to obtain. Now, to be fair, there is a connective ability for everybody in this world. However, majority of those who are seeking to do well in business need not only high business acumen, but high emotional intelligence too. Most leaders, both in the startup world and in large corporations focus much of their time backing future strategies up with data and logical reasoning, and the rest of their time figuring out how they can convince others to see this problem and solution through reasoning, and through emotional persuasion.”

Leaders think logically, but understand that most people don’t. They find logical reasons to pursue a decision, and then carry on persuading others emotionally to buy-in, while backing their emotional reasons up with logical ones.

This combination of thinking logically, and understanding emotion is what emotional intelligence is. It’s understanding the emotional mind enough to combat it when needed, but use it when needed, too. It’s solving problems from a bird’s eye view rather than being in the picture and being blind to the frame.

Logical thinkers even use emotions as data, and make sure they use all of the data when making a decision. This is what makes it easier, specifically in business, to run successfully. When you use every data point possible, you have a more accurate picture of where to head next. When you make emotional decisions, however, you miss out on important data and make decisions based on anxiety; this usually fails quickly.

When we think anxiously rather than logically, we also struggle to innovate. This is because we are constantly looking at our competition, anxious to fail against them. In these cases, we simply follow the steps of competitors and fail to think outside of the box to beat the competition. These are common traits of businesses that are not first to market new ideas and contributions.

If you are trying to start a business, or manage an existing one, becoming more logical and improving your emotional intelligence can really help you make better strategic decisions.

 

How a Spa Getaway Changed the Way I Deal With Stress

I’m happiest when I’m moving. I don’t mean riding the train to work, or signing a new apartment lease. I mean physically pushing my body. Getting sweaty. Going for a mind-clearing run. Boxing. Barre. Bootcamp. Strolling. Whatever.

My exercise-induced endorphin high is the antidote to my stress spirals, which go like this: I write a lengthy to-do list. I stare at it until I feel paralyzed. Then I crumble from the stress of feeling paralyzed. So I work out ferociously—an intermission in the panic show. Rinse, repeat. (Click Here For More...)

Quick links to search for spa getaways:

Fodor's Travel 

TripAdviser 

Groupon - Relaxing Retreats

Looking For A Job? Don't Tell LinkedIn

While having a resume means you're looking for a job, having a LinkedIn profile does not send the same signal. As a result, many job seekers think they need to say on their profile that they are actively searching. Otherwise, how else would a hiring manager or recruiter know to contact them? So they'll add phrases like "open to new opportunities" or "seeking the next exciting challenge" or "seeking a position in…"

I always tell all my clients, however, not to add these phrases to their profile, or anything else that indicates they are looking. (Click Here For More...)

9 Foods Perfect for Meal-Prepping Because They Actually Last All Week

We’ve been there: skipping off to the grocery store, armed with five-day menus and visions of becoming meal-prep pros—only to see that most of the fresh food we’ve bought can’t last the week without becoming susceptible to wilt, mold, and sketchy odors. (Click Here For More...)

Psychological Fitness

Social media has been one of the biggest influences for fitness today. With every click, post, and pop-up, image has been determined to be everything. We see images that exude a particular emotion, images of hard work, images of ignorance, images of pain, images of love, images of laughter, and the most desired of them all, body image.  Many people find themselves pondering over questions like, How do I lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time? What diet would accomplish this goal? Should I have surgery? Which leads to more ideas and questions like, How long would it take for me to lose weight? How long would it take to gain muscle and lose fat? We have to remember there are no quick fixes to lasting results for success.  Things that hold weight and value take time and effort and that includes the mind. Your thought processes should be nurtured and developed over time forming habits that later become embedded in everyday living. 

Think about life without fitness.  How do you carry yourself on a regular basis?  What standards do you set for yourself at work, for your children, and those around you? Are you passive or determined in your daily life?  Your answers could determine your overall psychological fitness capabilities.  Many people try to separate themselves from themselves. What this means is people may be warriors in their career, but start making excuses when it comes to dealing with "self."  When you read an inspirational quote or motivational message how long does it really affect your psychological thinking? People tend to forget or lose interest after three weeks. The mind has moved on in an attempt to seek another entry way to be motivated. 

Through research, one thing I have found useful is that if you want to make lasting improvements you need to master the following formula:

PROGRESS = E + E  >  I + I

Education + Esteem must be greater than Impulses + Illusions

Educating yourself allows you to fundamentally put things into perspective and apply the knowledge you have learned into your daily life. Don't be ignorant.. all while ignoring the truth because ignorance will manifest into a quick way to self destruct. 

Esteem is believing in yourself in order to attempt change and leap towards greatness. Material items or other people's opinions should not be the driving force to determine how you feel about yourself.  You have to have an innate passion to find your purpose. 

Impulses are uncontrollable acts that are not planned or well thought out. Impulses are usually led by emotions that have been affected by some outside factor that results in an irrational response. 

Having the idea that something would make you happy, but when you receive it, after a while the joy is lost and regret subsides. This is what occurs when people have illusions. The thoughts and ideas we imagined would make everything all better. 

When you reach that moment when you begin to think you can't do something or your progress is too slow, ask yourself are the "E's" lacking or fading?  Are the "I's" increasing?  Determine the problem and work on balancing your progress equation.  When someone says, get your mind right, typically this is what they mean. 

Robyn Swift is a certified trainer and owner of Swift Lifestyle & Fitness.