Build A Budget With Ease
Simplifi (from Quicken) enables you to connect your bank accounts and credit cards, and then import your transactions while sorting them into budget categories. In addition to an appealing user interface, the app offers features to help you manage your money.
For example, you can set up a spending plan in minutes and then track actual spending against that plan. If there’s a category—say, restaurants—where you regularly spend more than you planned, you can add it to a watchlist and get notifications when you’ve spent 90% (or some other percentage you choose) of your monthly budget on that item or category. You can also link to your billing accounts (say, your mortgage or utilities), and the due dates will appear on a calendar.
Other Simplifi features help you save and track your investments. Create a savings goal, and Simplifi will tell you how much you need to contribute and how often. Connect your investment accounts, including your 401(k), and track changes in the value of your portfolio.
Following a 30-day trial, Simplifi costs $3.99 a month (or $2.99 a month if paid annually).
Pay Down
Debt Faster
Qoins is designed to help you get out of debt faster by saving small amounts daily and then making extra monthly payments—say, to that high interest rate credit card balance. Users connect their existing checking account to the app and then select a savings method.
One option is round-ups. Qoins monitors cleared transactions from your connected accounts and tallies round-ups. So, for example, a $2.80 debit card purchase would round up to $3.00, and the extra 20 cents would be directed to paying down debt. Other savings methods include daily savings (called Smart Savings), weekly recurring transfers and deductions of a set amount from each paycheck.
Once a month, Qoins transfers your accumulated savings to your connected debt account. Note that you must continue to pay separately the monthly minimum on your debt—after all, the app’s purpose is to help you accumulate small amounts of money throughout the month that can be used for extra payments that whittle down your debt faster.
Qoins costs $2.99 to $4.99 per month.
Cut Recurring Expenses
Invest Automatically—
Pennies At A Time
Acorns was one of the first round-up apps to hit the market. You link spending accounts to Acorns, which then monitors transactions and rounds up each as they clear, transferring the excess to your Acorns account. The idea is to help you save and invest in an automated and painless way. You can choose from a number of investment options, all using low-cost exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Choices range from conservative (100% bonds) to aggressive (100% stocks) and include an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) option.
In addition to its investing service, Acorns also now offers an FDIC-insured checking account and debit card, with the round-up features of its investment platform integrated into the bank account.
Acorns costs $3 a month for an individual account and $5 for multiple users in one family.
Improve Your Credit Score
If you’re planning to borrow to buy a house or a car, or would just like access to the best credit cards, it’s important to have a strong credit score. Credit Karma was a leader in offering consumers free and continuous access to those once-mysterious credit scores.
Its app shows your VantageScore 3.0 credit score generated from reports on file with credit bureaus TransUnion and Equifax, offers tips on improving your scores and explains what factors are reducing your scores—for example, you may be using too high a percentage of your credit lines. You can also sign up for free alerts to changes in your credit report, which could tip you off to a fraudster applying for credit in your name.
The app is free. But be forewarned: Credit Karma makes its money by referring users to credit products, so expect to see plenty of recommendations and ads for credit cards, personal loans and the like.
Truebill combines budgeting with features designed to help you pare down recurring expenses. After connecting to your bank and checking accounts, the app imports transaction and balance data and tracks your spending, offering you insights on that spending and the option of creating a budget. You can also track and monitor your credit score with Truebill.
Here’s the special part: Truebill identifies each of your subscriptions, including those you may have long forgotten; the paid version of the app will even cancel subscriptions for you. Truebill will also try to negotiate better rates on monthly services such as cellphone and cable bills in exchange for a percentage of your savings.
Truebill comes in free and premium versions, with the latter starting at $3 a month.
Track Your Financial Progress
If you’re a dedicated planner or someone who likes to keep close tabs on your portfolio, the free Personal Capital app could be for you. As with most of the other apps in our list, you can link bank, credit card and investment accounts to Personal Capital. Once linked, the app tracks your net worth (including home values through Zillow), income, expenses and investment returns.
Where Personal Capital stands out, however, is with its suite of analytical tools and its clear user interface, including charts and graphs that help you visualize various aspects of your finances. The app calculates everything from the impact of the investment fees you pay on your wealth over time to your portfolio’s asset allocation. It will even suggest allocation tweaks that could make your portfolio more efficient (that is, reduce risk without sacrificing much return). There’s also a robust retirement planner that estimates the chances—based on your current wealth and savings plans and a range of market returns—that you won’t run out of money in your old age.
The app is free. The downside is that Personal Capital uses the information it collects to promote its investment management services, including pop-up advice offers and even by calling you to schedule a free assessment of your investment portfolio.