Top Mobile Financial Apps for 2016

No matter what your financial goals are for 2016 – saving up to buy a home, paying off credit cards or just staying on budget each month – you want a good finance app to help you do it.

The best apps go beyond simply helping you track your spending, savings and investments on a mobile device. They also provide you with tools that let you manage every aspect of your financial life, quickly and easily. They’re secure, so you won’t have to worry about your sensitive information falling into nefarious hands. And, they’re free.

With those prerequisites – mobile, useful, secure and free – firmly established, what are the top apps for taking care of your personal financial business in 2016?

Level Money

This free and easy-to-use app tracks your budget, with one killer function: ‘Spendable.’ It’s your ‘safe to spend number’ for the month, the week and the day. The app provides a clear, simple look at your overall financial picture and helps you set a goal – and stick to it – for savings.

Checkbook

This app helps you keep track of all your accounts, including credit cards, cash expenses and more. And as the name suggests, it helps you replace your paper checkbook register. With the app’s free version you can create accounts, transfer funds, view reports, save recurring transactions and more. A Pro version adds more functionality.

Personal Capital

If you like charts and graphs, you’ll love Personal Capital. This app helps you slice and dice your finances in myriad ways, such as tracking your investments by asset class, individual security or account. You can learn whether you’re dishing out too much in fees with the mutual-fund fee calculator and the 401(k) fee analyzer tool. Using the app is free, but there is a charge for asset management.

Square Cash

This app lets you send money to family and friends using your debit card, at no cost. Choose a user name, what they call a $Cashtag, and you can share a link to your cash.me profile that lets other people pay you instantly. For business accounts, there is a charge of 2.75 percent per transaction.

Mvelopes

If the idea of budgeting with envelopes intrigues you but you don’t want to carry cash, Mvelopes may be your solution. After linking to your online banking accounts, you create a custom budget that puts your spending into virtual ‘envelopes.’ You can create up to 25 categories with the app’s free version; $95 per year gets you a Premier account and unlimited envelopes.

Spendee

This wittily named app features an easy-to-navigate user interface and lets you log expenses into categories. You can also snap quick photos of receipts and bills to quickly store them within the app for safekeeping. Using the Feed tab, you can browse your expenses; use Overview mode to view graphics that lay out your spending over a period of time along with categories of expenses. The app lacks tools for creating a budget, but it works well for simply tracking your expenses and income.

Slice

Helping you keep track of money you spend online is Slice’s primary mission. The Slice app watches over your email inbox for details of shipments and receipts then conveniently displays updates of your shipments on a map. You’ll receive notifications when packages ship or when the price drops, and you can file requests for price adjustments from within the app.

Dollarbird

This app bills itself as a ‘smart calendar app’ for your financial life. Dollarbird helps you learn how you spend your money, project the amount of money you’ll have in the future and receive reminders for your monthly expenses. To see a cash flow forecast, you’ll enter the amount of money you have now and add recurring sources of income and expenses.

Get a handle on your finances in 2016

By using one or more of these financial apps in the New Year, you can get a clear picture of where your money is going and how to rein it in. With up-to-the-minute details on all your money matters, you can learn to make smart decisions that help put you on the road to financial security.

Call today for more information.

PUBLISHED 1/4/2016

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