.png)
Whether you are looking to tighten your purse strings or have a financial make over mobile applications can be helpful in the process of household budgeting and saving money. Ultimately the benefit you receive from mobile applications will only be as much as much as you use them consistently. Below are my top 3 personal finance applications to set and maintain a household budget and save on your household expenditures:
Mint
Mint is a free money management application made by Intuit which automatically pulls your financial information from accounts that you add to your dashboard. This includes bank accounts, investments accounts, and credit card information. Furthermore, the app helps to categorize your expenses, set budgets, and provides alerts when you go over that budget. It also allows you to set alerts when bills are due as well as the ability to check and monitor your credit score. Note that because this application requires you to share banking information and passwords it may violate cardholder security guarantees.
Wally
Wally is an easy to use budgeting application that allows you to input and categorize expenses. It has a scan feature that allows you to capture information from your receipts which helps to minimizes data entry. The GPS feature allows you to see where you spend your money. Unlike Mint you won’t be sharing banking IDs and passwords with the software, so there is no risk of violating cardholder security guarantees.
Flipp
Flipp is an application that aggregates flyers and coupons in your area and allows you to search for the best deals based on your shopping list. Essentially this application makes weekly paper circulars irrelevant. Once you find the flyer or coupon the application allows you to “clip it” and print out any required paperwork. Flipp has flyers and coupons from many major retailers such as Sobeys, Walmart, Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Toys R’Us, and Best Buy.
Lastly, there are new personal finance applications coming out all the time. Be aware that some applications could be fraudulent and as stated above could invalidate security protections with your bank. Do your due diligence and research before using any personal finance applications especially if they require you to provide personal financial data.