Top 5 Budget Apps

At A Glance

Daily Budget’s website boasts “It’s so simple, you’ll actually use it.” My thoughts exactly. This app calculates income and expenses in a simple intuitive way, and one unique feature makes it the best budgeting app out there. Daily Budget crunches your yearly budget into a small bite-sized “per diem” (that’s a daily allowance). It does this by taking your yearly income and subtracting your recurring expenses and savings. The leftover amount is broken down into a daily total to cover every other expense.

Features

Your “daily budget” is placed loudly at the top of your screen. As you enter each purchase, the total ticks down. That helps to demonstrate how much each transaction affects your overall budget, and you might be surprised to see how quickly it adds up when your budget is put under a microscope. The Big Spendings tab allows you to plan for larger one-time purchases, like a TV or new cellphone, then calculates that into your per diem.

That’s it.

No registering or creating a profile. No estimating what you think you’ll spend on gas, groceries etc. Download the app and budget as you go.

At A Glance

It’s a simple name and a simple app. Spending is a DIY budget app that tracks income and expenses on a month-month basis. Add income as it comes in and expenses as you pay them out. The app subtracts the two and gives you a balance at the bottom.

Features

Transactions can be categorized as you add them and are listed in a tab to the right. Rotating the phone displays a pie chart, giving you an idea of how much money is being spent on each category. Toggle to the cash flow feature to show a graph tracking total income and expenses month-to-month.

At A Glance

Unlike Daily Budget, I don’t think you would actually use Mint. That’s where this very popular app falls short on being the best budget app. Mint links financial institutions like your bank and credit card company using the same login information. Then it aggregates your checking, savings, investment and credit card accounts into one place, giving you a big picture of your finances. As you purchase things with a credit card, the expense automatically shows up in your budget. It’s a very clever software, but because it did everything for me, I had no reason to open the app. I went about my day oblivious to how much I was really spending.

Features

Transactions are compiled into one list, making it a great tool to track cash flow. It also comes with a budgeting feature that lets you estimate how much money should be allocated to each category (rent, utilities, groceries, entertainment, restaurants, etc.). Mint partners with TransUnion to provide credit score monitoring.

At A Glance

YNAB (You Need A Budget) is an app very similar to Mint, but YNAB puts budgeting front and center. As soon as you open the app, you’re budgeting.

Features

Like Mint, YNAB links directly to your accounts and tracks transactions all in one place. You can also manually add accounts without linking them. Enter the balance when you create the budget, and each time you manually enter in transactions, it will calculate that into the balance. The homepage is an estimated budget you design, and as transactions come in, they are filed into each category helping you track your budget goals in real time. They have a quick budget tool, which shows averages of how much you spend versus how much you budgeted for and whether or not you have enough funds to balance that out. The one thing that separates YNAB from Mint is the ability to create multiple budgets.

At A Glance

Goodbudget is the old-school envelope technique of budgeting updated for the 21st century. The idea is that you label envelopes gas, groceries, dining out, etc., fill them with cash and only spend money from the envelopes. Once the funds from one envelope are gone, that’s it—no more spending on that category until next month unless you transfer funds from another envelope.

Features

The envelopes tab displays a progress bar that indicates how much money is left in each envelope. As transactions are manually entered, money is taken out of the virtual envelope and progress bar reflects the change. Accounts can be manually tracked by entering in a balance at the beginning, although the free version allows for only one account. The reports tab gives you a pie chart that illustrates how much money is spent on each envelope, and a bar graph shows net income and spending.