Top Free Personal Finance Tracking Apps

Tracking your personal finance is easy to do, and even easier to forget. While recording every single expense, even the small items, is important to ensure accuracy, it can be very tedious to record it. This is especially so as you need to record it at the moment in time in which the purchase is made (which can be very inconvenient if it’s an ice cream, or very awkward if it’s our date’s birthday meal), or accumulate a whole stack of receipts for tracking at the end of the day or week. This commitment towards something so troublesome and inconvenient is often the reason why people do not track their personal finance.

However, gone are the days in which you have to key all your expenses into a boring excel sheet. My inertia to open an excel sheet is strong too. Thankfully, there are now interesting, vibrant and fun apps that can help you track your personal finance. Psst, they are free.

1. Fortune City

This is a third offering in a series of popular habit forming games from Fourdesire, better known as the creators of the Plant Nanny app and Walkr app. Similar to how the wildly popular Plant Nanny app (which is also free) encourages you to drink more water by personifying a potted plant that will die of thirst, Fortune City gamifies the bookkeeping experience with an adorable and colourful city simulation. In this game, you aim to expand and build your city by keying in expenses when incurred. Over time, you get to watch your city grow. This is an interesting way to visualise spending as opposed to the usual pie charts and bar graphs that can be a tad boring. One thing to note will be that the city does not grow proportionate to the amount that you incur. As such, it is not an accurate visualization. Fret not as the app will ultimately still generate charts to show your spending patterns and where your money went.

There are even achievements that you can unlock in the game when you spend less, assign jobs to citizens, increase coin storage capacity and more. As ironic as it sounds, you will need to spend money to record transactions in order to build your city. Still, it is definitely a fun way to track expenses and cultivate good financial habits.

2. Dollarbird

While there are an abundance of personal finance tracking apps, Dollarbird stands out as it uses a calendar to track your expenses as opposed to less relatable grids or spreadsheets. It functions just as how a calendar functions, so it is very easy to use. You can also colour code categories to make it easy to see at a glance what you have spent on. You can also set reminders to pay bills or recurring payments. A monthly summary will also show you where your money went.

3.Unsplurge

This app uses a different approach, by encouraging you to save so that you can buy something that you want. Like a vacation. Besides, who couldn’t use a little extra money in their pocket at the end of the month?

The Unsplurge app is meant to help you save money so you can reach all your goals and live a comfortable life. The app uses three simple steps that help you save and there are no budgets used. It’s hard to believe you can save without a budget, but that’s exactly what Unsplurge walks you through. This app is all about keeping you on track where savings are concerned and by helping to motivate you by showing you how your friends are doing with their own saving. You can all cheer each other on and inspire each other to meet your financial goals.

The app uses a very simple process and approach to saving. You begin by setting your own personal goals which is something you want to save for. It could be a brand new coat, maybe a new piece of furniture for your home, or bigger yet. Then again maybe you don’t want to buy something but want to pay off something by paying your debt. The goal is completely up to you.

Next you’re going to be building a brand new habit which is actually logging your savings each and every day into the app. It can be a small amount saved or a large amount; this is about creating a habit. Keep this habit going and you will be able to see the results as will others who will want to congratulate you.

When you do manage to reach your savings goal you can then share your success with the whole Unsplurge community and feel great for your achievement.

I would describe the user interface in this app as smooth, simple, and inspiring. It really manages to hit all the high notes by providing a lovely design that makes saving even more rewarding. I love that the app refers to itself as your wallet’s BFF because it’s true: it’s catchy, and if used correctly, you can see some incredible results from your new BFF.

You need to sign in through Facebook or with email and then you are ready to begin. There are all kinds of cool features inside such as being able to pick a couple buddies that will offer you encouragement throughout. I also love that you can see other goals from the community which helps to motivate and inspire you.

Why do we make a budget? Because we want to save! And why do we want to save? Because we want to spend it! – Ironical but true.

With Unsplurge, you save with a motivation in mind. This idea to budgeting makes it all the more fun.

You can log all your expenses on Unsplurge and you can get help from the community about tips and tricks to save up for that special something.

4. Mint

Mint is a widely known as the budgeting app that takes all the annoyance out of building a budget.

After connecting your bank account and Mint together, you just sit back and relax as Mint uses your details to create your personalized budget.

The team which brought us apps like TurboTax and Quicken are behind the Mint app, so you shouldn’t get worried as your data is not in wrong hands. Furthermore, steps are always taken to secure your account and information.

As a further benefit, Mint will provide tips which will help you reduce the money you spend on bills.

5. Wally

Wally is a well-known budgeting app among the mass and it is quite aesthetically pleasing.

Wally lets you manually log your expenses and store pictures of receipts all within a well organized and beautiful virtual budget journal.

Again give Wally access to your location and it will tag your current location when you log on your expense and giving you an extra detail.

It also alerts when you have hit your saving goals or when you need to pay your bills.

Platform availability: Wally is free to use and available on both iOS and Android

6. Level Money

We generally want to make a budget because we want to know how much we can spend. But your regular budget doesn’t alert you how much you can spend unless you take a look at it.

That’s the benefit of having an app, it can remind you, and just like that Level Money will constantly (but not annoyingly) remind you and help you stick to the budget you made.

You can have Level Money connect with your bank, and the app will detect your income, expense and analyze what you can spend.

The app iss pretty handy if you want to save up for a big purchase or pay the debt.

(By Vanessa Ng)

Related Articles
- Personal budgeting techniques that really work
- The top 6 personal finance rules