The Best Accounting Deals This Week*
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Between COVID, inflation, and housing market fluctuations, the last four years have instilled feelings of uncertainty about our finances and our lives. Knowing where you stand with your money—your income, expenses, budget, investments, and credit score—is essential. If you commit to using a personal finance app, it can keep you up to date with all of that and potentially help you get out of debt. Many apps are free, and the rest cost a few dollars per month.
If you’ve been using Mint to track your finances, you know by now that Intuit shut it down on the first of the year and let you migrate to Credit Karma (also owned by Intuit). It’s not your only option, however, and it’s not our top recommendation as a replacement, though it is very good at some of what it does. For most people, we recommend replacing Mint with Simplifi, Quicken, RocketMoney, or NerdWallet. The first three cost a few dollars a month, and NerdWallet is the best free Mint alternative, though you can’t currently make a custom budget with it.
But you may want to use other personal finance apps in conjunction with one of those to get more financial information, such as updates about your credit history. With all that in mind, below is our list of the best personal finance apps and a few words about what makes them different. After that, you’ll find even more detail on how we choose the best personal finance apps and what to look for based on your needs. Finally, if you’re getting ready to prepare your taxes, be sure to also see our list of the best DIY tax apps.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
Why We Picked It
Simplifi by Quicken has only been around for a few years, but we’ve been impressed by how fast it has grown into an excellent personal finance website. A concise and helpful dashboard gives you a good overview of your finances. Innovative views of your data (watchlists, spending plans, and reports) keep you in constant sync with your finances. An exceptional user experience makes it a pleasure to use.
Who It’s For
Though the makers of Quicken developed it, Simplifi is not “Quicken-lite.” This app is designed for a younger or less demanding demographic who wants to track financial accounts, keep an eye on day-to-day spending, and work toward savings goals—without spending hours poring over charts, lists, and reports.
PROS
- Exceptional user experience with a great dashboard
- Excellent transaction management
- Flexible budgeting tools
- Great reports
CONS
- Modest subscription fee
- No credit score included
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
Quicken Deluxe
Best for Micromanaging Finances
Why We Picked It
Quicken has been helping people track their income and expenses for decades. It’s evolved into the most feature-rich personal finance application available today. Quicken Deluxe for Windows is desktop software with a companion app that shows you the financial information you need while away from your computer. The software earns its annual subscription fee by supporting every element of personal finance, including detailed account management, budgeting, bills, and investing.
Who It’s For
Quicken Deluxe for Windows is best suited to personal finance power users who don’t mind setting up an application on their desktop and doing some of their work there. The software comes in four versions so a beginner might like the Quicken Starter edition, and people who need more in areas like planning, investing, and small business money management could use one of the more advanced versions. Anyone comfortable working with Windows applications should find it easy to use.
PROS
- Robust set of personal finance tools
- Connected companion website available
- Flexible, in-depth transaction tracking
- Excellent set of customizable reports
- Advanced investment tracking
CONS
- More desktop-dependent than most other personal finance apps
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
Why We Picked It
People have a better shot at being responsible with their money if they get a head start while they’re young. Greenlight is the best app we’ve seen targeted at kids. It lets grown-ups supervise as kids learn to save, spend, give, and invest using a family debit card. The adult account owner can send money to their kids through the app and monitor their activity.
Who It’s For
It’s hard to imagine a family with kids that wouldn’t benefit from using Greenlight. While there is a subscription fee, it starts at $4.99 per month, which isn’t too much. The company recommends it for ages 8 to 22, and how much they can do with their money increases with age. Teens can even be authorized to use a credit card and start building a good credit score. Younger children might enjoy the educational games.
PROS
- Excellent controls for the supervising adult
- Savings and investments supported
- Family safety features
- 24/7 customer support
CONS
- High monthly fee to get a decent savings rate
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
NerdWallet
Best for Free Finance Management
Why We Picked It
The free NerdWallet app and website arms consumers and small businesses with the tools, information, data, and insight they need to make financial decisions and improve their financial health. This content takes two primary forms: articles and tutorials on personal finance and offers for credit cards, mortgages, and other financial products. Like many of the best personal finance apps, NerdWallet lets you track your transactions, net worth, and cash flow, as well as learn about your credit score.
Who It’s For
NerdWallet is a good choice for people who want to not only just gauge their progress but also want free financial account management and credit score details without being constantly interrupted by ads for financial products like credit cards.
PROS
- Free
- Imports financial transactions
- Explores credit score, net worth, cash flow
- Voluminous financial literacy content
- Minimal advertising intrusion
CONS
- Can’t create your own budget
- Little editorial content on mobile app
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
Rocket Money
Best for Negotiating Bills, Canceling Subscriptions
Why We Picked It
Rocket Money (formerly TrueBill) is a breeze to use, with useful notification options. It helps you manage your money in interesting ways, such as negotiating bills on your behalf and helping you cancel unwanted subscriptions. Your credit score and daily financial transactions are part of the mix, too. An exceptional user interface makes it stand out from other personal finance apps.
Who It’s For
Rocket Money is precisely what many people want: an app where you pop in, get a quick look at money and where it’s moving, and get out. Most of Rocket Money’s features require a subscription fee of at least $3 per month (you decide how much to pay). However, that gives you some things other personal finance apps don’t, like the bill negotiation and subscription canceling services mentioned above. It’s best for people who want to track their money but don’t want to micromanage their finances or investments.
PROS
- Includes transaction tracking, bill management, and credit score
- Can negotiate bills on your behalf
- Helps you cancel unwanted subscriptions
- Excellent UI and navigation tools
CONS
- Subscription fee required for all features
- Some problems with bank connections
- Weak investment tracking
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
Credit Karma
Best for Free Credit Scores
Why We Picked It
Credit Karma not only keeps you up to date on your all-important credit score but also informs you of potential credit breaches. It has tools that help you find and secure the best credit card, loan, vehicle, and auto insurance deals. If you have ever wondered why your credit score is what it is or how to improve it, Credit Karma can answer those questions. It does all of this at no cost.
Who It’s For
Credit Karma is especially good for people who want to improve their credit scores. Those with good scores can use it to stay alert to unexpected credit problems and search for better financial products when it’s time.
PROS
- Free
- Daily scores from two credit bureaus
- Credit card snapshots
- Save and spend accounts, Credit Builder
CONS
- Ubiquitous financial product recommendations
- Requires a new checking account for bill tracking and Credit Builder features
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
Credit Sesame
Best for Credit Score Education
Why We Picked It
Credit Sesame is another site that promotes smart credit management. Its free version helps you learn how to bump up your credit score and offers handy credit- and debt-tracking tools. However, you need a Premium subscription if you want a more detailed view of your credit. A companion bank account, Sesame Cash, may help you get paid two days early.
Who It’s For
The real differentiator for Credit Sesame is the companion Sesame Cash account. It may be a smart choice for people in underserved communities who have had bad experiences with traditional banks. Thanks to its Credit Builder program, it’s also useful for those who want to be rewarded for using cash to improve their credit scores. The app also helps you report your rent payment track record for consideration as a part of your credit score.
PROS
- Free subscription tier
- Includes debt tracking and analysis
- Great mobile apps
- Rent payment reporting offered
CONS
- Free version only pulls from one credit bureau
- Must subscribe to Premium to get tools like credit monitoring
- Lacks calculators, simulators, and other tools
- No assistance with retiring debt
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
WalletHub
Best for Reviews of Financial Products
Why We Picked It
WalletHub has a singular focus, unlike other personal finance apps that offer a variety of tools and resources. It’s all about your credit score—what it is, how to analyze it, and ways to improve it. Because it emphasizes that one element of personal finance, individuals can pop in and quickly get the information they need without wading through other financial data.
Who It’s For
Since WalletHub pays for itself by showing you credit card and loan ads, it’s a good site for credit shoppers who want help finding the best financial products for their situation. Staff reviews help with that, too. WalletHub’s numerous calculators also make it an appealing personal finance app to anyone looking to shape their budgets, compare borrowing costs, and plan for the future. It also has good calculators for figuring out the best way to clear your credit card debt.
PROS
- Free
- Detailed financial product profiles
- Trustworthy reviews of financial products written by staff
- Targeted recommendations
CONS
- Hard to find some content
- Can’t import bank and other financial transactions
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Free Version | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Web Interface | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Android App |
Learn More
Buying Guide: The Best Personal Finance Software for 2024
Is Connecting an App to Your Bank Accounts Safe?
Many personal finance apps support online connections to your financial institutions. Such apps download lists of transactions and other account data from your bank accounts, credit card accounts, brokerages, and other financial institutions so that you can see all the activity neatly in one place. To connect, you typically enter your login credentials for those financial sites, though you usually have to provide additional security information—which is, of course, a good thing.
The personal finance apps we reviewed all employ robust security protocols. Those that connect to your financial accounts use encryption and other safety measures to protect your login information. Many use third parties, such as Plaid, to make secure connections. However, you must also do your part to make the experience safe.
Three key things you can do are:
-
Use a unique username and password for your financial logins and the personal finance app. A password manager is the tool you’ll want to use here.
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Enable multi-factor authentication wherever it’s supported, especially for logging into the personal finance app and any connected bank accounts. Yes, it takes some extra time, but not nearly as much time as reconstructing your financial life if you’re the victim of identity theft.
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Keep all your details, such as your date and city of birth, private because they can be used as authenticators to access financial data and accounts.
Brushing up on the best practices for preventing identity theft is always a good idea.
What Is Two-Factor Authentication?
What Is the Best Free Personal Finance App?
Most personal finance apps are free or have a free tier of service. They typically make money by showing you targeted ads for financial products like credit cards or savings accounts.
NerdWallet is our favorite totally free app. It combines bank account imports and transaction management with excellent information about your credit score. It also has a huge amount of editorial content (including tutorials) on personal finance topics. NerdWallet is partly supported by ads, but they don’t get in the way. The app also tracks your net worth and cash flow as long as you connect to all your online financial accounts. It does show you your credit score and explain how it came to be, although Credit Karma (also totally free) does a better job here.
What Can You Do With a Personal Finance App?
Personal finance apps do a lot more than help you budget your money. Here are some of the other things they help you do.
1. Watch Transactions Across All Your Accounts
Connecting a personal finance app to all your bank accounts and credit cards allows you to watch all the transactions that happen to your money in one place. So, instead of logging in to each of your banking apps once a day to see what charges posted and what transactions cleared, you can do that from a single view in a single app. Additionally, this single view may help you spot an unauthorized transaction quickly, and the sooner you can find and alert your bank about that, the quicker the bank can cut off access to the account.
2. Categorize Your Spending
After importing a batch of transactions from credit cards and bank accounts into a personal finance app, most people spend some time cleaning up the data. Transactions need to be correctly categorized for their type of income (salary, freelance payment, and interest, for example) or expenses (food, mortgage, utilities, and so on). Most apps guess the categories, but you can always change them and split transactions among different categories. So, if you go to one store and buy dog food and a new lamp, you can categorize the correct amounts as pet care and home furnishings.
(Credit: Rocket Money)
If you’re conscientious about categorizing your income and spending, the apps will make charts and reports that accurately summarize where your money comes from and where it goes. This information is crucial for budgeting and when tax preparation time rolls around.
Depending on the personal finance app, you might be able to add tags to transactions, too. That way, you can search for transactions that are related in other ways. For example, you might make a tag called tax-deductible, which gives you an easy way to pull up all your tax-deductible expenses at the end of the year. Rocket Money includes an option for this designation in its transaction details.
3. Get an Overview of Your Financial Situation
The best personal finance apps show you a dashboard when you log in. Sometimes, the dashboard is the only page you need to see because it has the most pertinent information about your financial situation, such as your account balances and pending bills. The charts and graphs on the dashboard give you an overview of your financial situation. They might tell you, for example, your income versus spending and how you’re doing with your budget. Or you might see your net worth and credit score. Or your dashboard might show your customized financial goals and your progress at meeting them. In short, the dashboard of your personal finance app gives you a quick look at your money situation and is a springboard to deeper financial study.
(Credit: Quicken)
4. Learn How to Budget
Being conscientious about your finances includes minimizing your expenses so that they are lower than your income. That’s the goal, anyway, and personal finance apps help you achieve it through budgeting.
The mechanics of creating a workable budget are much easier than the process of specifying your limits. It’s often guesswork until you’ve had a budget for several months and start seeing how your money comes and goes. For that reason, Quicken Deluxe and some other personal finance apps let you use past income and expenses as models. That way, you can answer the question, “How much do I usually spend each month?” and get an answer that relies on past data.
5. Set Your Financial Goals
Setting goals, such as establishing an emergency fund, isn’t rocket science. With a personal finance app, you specify the amount you’re trying to save and the target date for achieving it, and the application tells you how much you have to save every month to meet your goals. Some sites do more. NerdWallet, for example, lets you link your goals to the appropriate spending account, so your progress is automatically tracked.
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6. Plan for Retirement (Quicken Deluxe only)
Most personal finance apps do not focus on retirement planning, much less lifetime financial planning—but Quicken Deluxe has tools to help you pay off your debts faster, plan for taxes, and establish a comprehensive lifetime financial plan.
7. Keep an Eye on Your Bills
Most personal finance apps let you record bills and bill payments, but you usually can’t pay the bills through the app itself—unless you use Quicken Deluxe and pay an additional fee. Still, with most personal finance apps, you can at least factor in the cost of your bills when analyzing your personal finance picture.
With Quicken Deluxe, you can set up automatic connections to online billers (Xcel Energy or Verizon, for example) or enter offline bills from suppliers who don’t bill you electronically, such as a dog walker or babysitter. Quicken alerts you when they’re due to be paid and lets you record payments manually.
8. Manage Your Money on the Go
You probably don’t need advanced money management tools when you’re away from your desktop or laptop. But when you’re out spending money, you do need to know how much you have available. All the personal finance services reviewed here are available as mobile apps. Most offer somewhat reduced functionality, but you can at least check your account balances, view transactions, add transactions, and see graphs related to your spending and income. You may also be able to get your credit score and check the status of pending bills.
Recommended by Our Editors
9. Educate Yourself About Personal Finance
One of the biggest benefits of using personal finance apps is that they help you learn more about your money and personal finance in general. NerdWallet, for example, has excellent articles and resources about everything from bankruptcy to investing. Apps that focus on credit scores and credit reports detail how and why different factors, such as how often you pay your credit cards on time, affect your credit score. WalletHub and NerdWallet have excellent debt payoff calculators that help you decide the best way to pay down debt while teaching you one way might be better than another, given the specifics of your situation.
Can Personal Finance Apps Boost Your Credit Score?
An excellent credit score is gold. Beyond helping you get approved for a credit card, mortgage, car loan, and so on, it helps minimize the interest rate you pay. It’s important to know your credit score at any given time, how it gets calculated, and what you can do to improve it.
Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, NerdWallet, and WalletHub—all free—do this. Credit Karma is especially comprehensive and efficient in this regard. It pulls your credit score daily from two of the three major bureaus and gives you access to your credit reports. It also explains how different factors contribute to your credit score and what you can do to try and boost it.
3 Sure-Fire Ways to Improve Your Credit Score
One of the ways you can improve your credit score is to use financial products—credit cards, mortgages—that have attractive interest rates and other benefits, making it easier for you to pay off debt as quickly as possible. Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, NerdWallet, and WalletHub help pay for the services they provide by displaying occasional ads for products that might appeal to you based on your credit profile. You can also browse marketplaces for additional candidates.
Be warned, however, that frequently canceling credit cards and acquiring new ones affects your credit score. Still, it’s good to learn about these suggested products so that you know the best options when the time comes.
Do Personal Finance Apps Know Your Net Worth?
Do personal finance apps know your net worth? Well, it depends on how much you tell them. You may only want a personal finance service for day-to-day income and expense management, budgeting, and goal setting. In that case, you don’t need to tell the app about other assets and funds you have, whether it’s a trust fund or a property. If there’s an account you don’t want to be reflected in your app, just leave it out.
This Is Why You Should Never Trust Personal Finance Gurus
Quicken Deluxe and a few other apps let you input your assets, including properties, vehicles, and investment holdings, which contribute to your net worth. If you keep your financial data and assets updated and connect the app to all your financial accounts (including accounts in debt), you get a running tally that reflects your total net worth.
Pick the Best Personal Finance App for You
Which personal finance app is best? It depends on what you need at the moment. If you don’t want to pay anything for a personal finance app and you want the most information about not only your money but also personal finance education, NerdWallet is best. If you want an excruciatingly detailed picture of your money and financial health, plus some of the best tools for managing investments, Quicken Deluxe is best. If you want to understand and improve your credit score, you’ll probably want to use Credit Karma or NerdWallet. And if you want the best overall user experience that features the financial basics and some innovative tracking tools, try Editors’ Choice Simplifi by Quicken.
