Managing personal finances can be one of the most difficult skills to improve on. But once money management is mastered it will remain a life-long skill that will help you to stress less about your finances, feel more financially secure, and hopefully stretch your money farther than you could ever imagine.
If there’s one money saving tip to remember it would be: budget, budget, budget. Think of it as a mantra. When it comes to budgeting there should be there components to always consider – monthly expenses, debts, and savings. Each paycheck should be budgeted to account for all three of these things. Monthly expenses are the basics: rent, bills, etc. Debts would be any type of money owed, whether it’s student loans, credit card balances, or a line of credit. And lastly, there’s savings. This one is often neglected when it’s difficult to see past looming bills and debt, but there should always be a portion of your income that goes towards a future investment. Maybe you’re thinking about the big picture and imaging yourself sunning on the beaches of a Carribean island in your retirement, or it’s something more tangible like replacing your old beater Honda Civic with something newer, like a Mazda 3. Nonetheless, saving money for the future should be a part of any budgeting plan.
For those who are tech savvy, a budget solution might be adding yet another app to your mobile device. The cliché “there’s an app for that” phrase comes to mind. Here are five seriously useful mobile apps designed to help budgeting your expenses.
Toshl Finance
Toshl Finance is a free Android and iOS app that has most of the features included in the top pay-for budgeting apps. One of our favorite Toshl features is the sophisticated logging tool, which makes analyzing budget execution a breeze.
MoneyWise
MoneyWise is another free budgeting app for Android. One thing it does particularly well is allow you to create and manage multiple budgets simultaneously. MoneyWise also exports to HTML and CSV, and you can even set it up to automatically send that output to an email address or cloud server.
Mint.com
Intuit’s Personal Finance service on Mint.com is one of the most powerful available, and the app for iOS and Android is only one aspect of the many resources it provides. If you need a budgeting tool that lets you manage every aspect of your finances, then this is a strong option.
Concur
Concur is part of the expense management services offered by Concur Technologies, and it allows you to record, track and analyze business expenses. Concur won’t be your primary budgeting tool, but it’s an excellent secondary tool for those who have to keep track of business expenses.
Expensify
Finally yet importantly, we present Expensify, which is an app like Concur that also has business travellers in mind. The neatest aspect of Expensify, and a reason that we like it better than Concur, is its Smart Scan photo-logging tool, which allows you to quickly and easily record and track receipts and other documents.
So no longer will you forget a payment on your credit card, your electricity will never go out, and rent will be paid on time with one of these apps to help manage your budget. Well, hopefully the will help!
