With the evolution of fintech, it appears that every day a new personal finance app is released. While it is great to have many choices, this makes finding the perfect personal finance app to fit your needs quite difficult. Many of us merely require a budgeting tool to gain visibility into our spending and saving habits. This article will explain what a budgeting app is, what the benefits of using one are, and what you should look for when choosing one. We’ll also present our top five budgeting apps for 2022 in this post.

Simply put, a budgeting application is a smartphone or tablet application that allows you to keep manage and track your personal expenses. To enhance your financial health, you may choose to track your income, expenses, savings, debt repayment, investing, or a mix of these activities.

Apps for budgeting come in a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on the demands of the user. From a simple digital spreadsheet to apps that connect with your online financial and investment accounts to determine your net worth, manage your budget in real time, and make investment purchases, the range encompasses everything. For the purposes of this blog post, we’ll focus on two types of budget apps:

• Expense-Tracking Budgeting Apps: These track your expenses connected to your financial accounts, such as your bank account and credit card accounts. They keep track of your transactions and categorize them so you can see where you spend the most money. This is the most common form of budgeting app.

• Couples Budgeting Apps: A couple’s budgeting application is designed for two people to utilize at the same time. These budgeting solutions typically allow couples to create both individual and joint accounts. This type of tool is perfect for couples who are trying to get on the same financial page or track a save toward a common goal.

There are a number of different reasons to use a personal finance app, but let’s focus on the benefits of a personal budgeting app:

Most of Your Financial Information In One Place

Depending on the budgeting tool you use, you may be able to connect a number (if not all) of your financial accounts, giving you total financial awareness – all from one app.

Built-in Guardrails

Many apps have safeguards features to prevent you from spending money you don’t have. However, most apps simply provide a rudimentary notice when specific criteria are reached, such as a payment being denied or a low balance in your account.

Track and Monitor Your Progress

Not only can you manage your personal budget, but some apps also allow you to create savings goals that are funded via direct deposit from your a bank account. This is especially effective allowing you to track both your present spending habits, an emergency fund and your readiness for retirement.

Identify Bad Spending Habits

The importance of visibility cannot be overstated. If you’re keeping track of your finances, you should be able to spot positive and negative patterns in your behavior. For example, you might discover that you go out for lunch more frequently than you think or perhaps you have unwanted subscriptions that you have forgotten you pay for. Either way, having an easy way to find these transactions is like having an extra set of eyes on your finances and it can help you eliminate unwanted spending.

Now that you’ve learned about the advantages of a financial budgeting app, let’s talk about what to look for when selecting the best tool for your needs.

Can you Take it for a Test Drive?

Ideally, you should be able to “test drive” or have use a free trial of any software before making a financial commitment. Nothing is more frustrating than experiencing buyer’s regret after purchasing a product or service that you were unable to use first.

Understand the Features Included

If you’ve decided to utilize a budgeting application, chances are you already have a plan in mind for how you’ll use it. It’s possible that you’ll require an app that can connect all of your financial and credit card accounts. Or you may need customized “categories” to reflect your spending demands, depending on the type of budget you want (50/30/20, Zero-based, etc.). All of them are critical to your specific financial demands, so be sure you grasp everything your app can do.

Security

How open is the app’s company about how it uses your data? Is there a privacy policy in place? What exactly is it, and are you comfortable with it? Also, don’t be afraid to look into the app’s brand reputation. It all boils down to how at ease you are when you discover the answers.

Consider Cost and Commitment

How much does it cost to use the budgeting app in total and what amount of time do you have to dedicate to it? If its going to be more of a chore than a resource, then why bother. Make sure you are fully aware of the time necessary to keep track of your finances within the app. The easier and more comfortable you are at using the app the more likely you will continue to use it.

By now you should have a good idea of what a budgeting app is, why a tool like this is important, and what to look for when you shop for one. Given this, below are our Top 5 budgeting apps for 2022.

We utilized the following criteria to construct this list:

• The app may be downloaded on both iOS and Android devices.
• There is a free and paid version available, as well as a free trial period.
• In both stores, each app has a minimum of 1,000 reviews.
• A 4 out of 5 average review score is required, with 5 being the highest.
• We put 20 of the most popular budgeting applications available in both stores to the test.

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand how to evaluate and choose the best budgeting tool for your specific financial needs. We encourage that you use this article as a starting point for exploring other apps. Remember that technology, as well as the tools available, and your own needs, are continually changing.

Let us know in the comments if we overlooked your favorite app and why you think it should have been included in our list.