"The app's the thing," are the inevitable, timeless words that someone will probably use to sum up the current decade. Whether it's for personal fitness, romance, studying or becoming more financially stable, there definitely is "an app for that." What are the top personal finance apps for this year? Five iPhone apps stand out as being able to get the job done for the cool price of zero dollars and zero cents. If you're looking to track loose change, follow a heavy-duty stock portfolio, save for your first (or fifth) home or track that extra windfall from a life insurance settlement, the following five apps for your iPhone or iPad are the best of the best:
Acorns
Acorns is focused on investing for those new to the bulls and bears game of Wall Street. The beauty of the app is its ability to let you send very small sums into a managed investment account. It's up to you, with help from the app, to decide where to invest, whether to include stocks, bonds or other investment instruments. Put as little as $5 at a time in your investment portfolio and let the app do all the heavy lifting for you. You can also connect your credit cards for monitoring and read up on relevant financial news.
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Credit Karma
People who like to keep a sharp eye on their credit scores simply love the Credit Karma app. Not only does it help you monitor credit scores and get alerts when any of the bureaus update your score, it helps you file your taxes and is a super-good "identity theft" detective. If that's not enough, Credit Karma will locate the best credit cards with the lowest rates that you are likely to qualify for.
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Good Budget
Good Budget's name says it all. The app is about helping users spend their money wisely via the old "envelope" spending system. You create virtual envelopes for each one of your major categories of life expenses. The simple system shows you, at any given moment, how much you have spent in all your categories so you are always right on top of your money situation. The simplest of all the apps listed here, many users love the basic look and feel of Good Budget and the fact that it does exactly what it says: it will help you control your spending.
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Mint
Mint is one of the most popular of all the finance apps. It's can be set up to nag you into saving more or simply to be an effective watchdog over how often you use credit cards and eat out. It's ability to help you create a budget from scratch is amazing. Plus, Mint does all the regular stuff too, like tracking spending and offering up savings tips.
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Empower Money Management
Last year, EMM won a prestigious "App of the Year" award from a major tech magazine. Its seamless and brainy functionality helps users follow all their personal accounts, cards and portfolios. Another gem of a feature is EMM's ability to help guide you toward having less debt. The app uses advanced machine-learning tech and is able to achieve some pretty scary feats of numeric magic, like perfectly categorizing all your expense and income accounts.
