10 Best Apps That Make Budgeting Easier

As an app that many use incessantly to manage how much they spend, Mint is a free budget planner that is both easy to use and comes with a wide range of tools to help you track where your money is going month-to-month. Powered by Inuit, the same company that makes QuickBooks and TurboTax, Mint is not only an app in your pocket. It also offers an online website account for you to track your coin on your desktop too. Everything you need you can access through an online browser or your mobile app. This one-stop-shop will let you view your cash flow, bills, investments, set personal goals to pay off your debts and see your progress all in one place.

By combining spending directly from your various TD deposit and credit card accounts, TD MySpend alerts you every time you tap, swipe, or enter your card information. Scary but effective. While you do need to be banking with TD Canada Trust, Canada’s second-largest bank, this app warns users when they are “ABOVE” or “BELOW” their usual spending trends to teach you how to budget that hard-earned cash.

What other app do you know that helps you build an emergency fund automatically, and that always allows you to have some extra pocket money and cushion when you need it most? YNAB, short form for You Need A Budget, provides a 34-day free trial to help you not necessarily spend less, but spend right. This app doesn’t just follow you everywhere from your phone to your desktop to your Apple Watch to your Alexa, it also teaches you how to be smarter with your money following four cardinal rules, workshops, and video courses, going way beyond a management application.

Just as the name suggests, PocketGuard protects users from emptying their pockets on careless shopping. With a much simpler approach to crunching the numbers, PocketGuard shows you what’s left “in your pocket” by helping you set limits.

Not only does this free budgeting app help you organize your expenses, but it also yields the most powerful management tool that allows you to remember what free subscriptions you are now paying for and probably should cancel to keep your money, yours.

Formerly EEBA, the Easy Envelope Budget Aid, Goodbudget is the best budget app for couples and families searching for a household budget manager. Using the “envelope model,” Goodbudget allows two different personal financial accounts to merge and work together to put money away in an envelope and use it for specific monthly spending (for example, coffee, gas, eating out, etc.). Speaking of subscriptions with Clarity Money, while there is a free option for essential app services, members can also purchase a monthly subscription of $5 for a more advanced experience to contain household debt.

Despite doing what most budget apps do, Wally focusses on one thing and doing it well: budgeting. On top of letting you set budgets by category to monitor your day-to-day spending, Wally allows you to take a photo of your receipts, bills, and warranties. You can also schedule your bill payments ahead of time using the calendar feature and create grocery lists for all your expense essentials to be in one place. Wally works smarter, not harder.

Acorns works for your pocket change, so you don’t have to. Built on the premise that you can invest your spare change, Acorns uses your left-over money and invests it in a portfolio explicitly created for you by investment experts. Take, for example, you spend $47.60 at the grocery store, Acorns takes your remaining 40 cents and invests it for you. And all you have to do is spend your own money. Genius.

Like TD MySpend, RBC myFinanceTracker works with your RBC accounts to track expenses, create budgets, and set overspending alerts, so you know if you are over budget in minutes.

Inside the BMO banking app is this helpful free resource, BMO Insights, that affords personalized money management tips about your relevant spending, savings, and more.