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As a kid, I remember watching reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show and watching Mary Tyler Moore painstakingly calculate her monthly budget and cash withdrawals in her little pocket notebook. Thankfully, those days are no more, and there are any number of apps you can use to track your spending. With money matters seeming more complicated than ever, there are a slew of platforms you can use or subscribe to in order to set financial goals, invest your savings, develop diverse portfolios, learn financial literacy, maximize your wealth, balance household income, and more – no matter how complicated you think finance is. Let’s take a look at some of our favorites:
Empower, the internet's favorite Mint replacement, allows you to create a budget and track your expenses for free. Accepting account links from over 16,000 financial institutions, you can also add your mortgage and credit card payments for a total financial picture. You can create specific spending goals to meet your needs for each category of expenses – rent, food, clothing, and iced coffees. If you're already a money maven, you can connect your investment portfolios, retirement account, and health savings to view your entire net worth quickly and easily. The app also provides expected returns and market volatility for investments.
This app effortlessly allows you to save for small goals and big payments alike, without ever thinking about it. Oportun uses automation and AI to break down your spending habits and income patterns – then makes small transfers from your checking account to your Oportun account, depending on how much is in your own balance and how much your spending goals are. Oportun will quite literally save money for you, pain-free, whether it’s for a specific year, event, or just a rainy day fund. After a month-long free trial, you can access easy-breezy savings for $5 a month.
Ellevest was founded with the goal of helping women build their own wealth. For $12 a month, you can access automated investing and retirement goals, email courses, workshops, and discounted financial planning – with no account minimums or asset transfers. Their portfolios are tax-minimized and personalized based on goals and lifestyle, with a mix of stock, bonds, and mutual funds that help advance woman’s groups and wealth managed by people of color. Ellevest’s team keeps your money secure with Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions, an SEC-regulated custodian.
Changed allows you to securely link your loans (with bank-level encryption standards) and order them by payoff priority -- then, your purchases are rounded up by a few cents or dollars to make micro-contributions toward your savings. When your savings totals $5, it goes toward your debt. You can also schedule savings based on your budget, and split your spending money between savings accounts and debt payoff. Changed's summary page allows you to view your overall progress, monitor your credit, and receive personal recommendations for maximizing your savings.
Acting as "your money mentor through all life's stages", the free app provides in-depth courses, resources, financial news, and savings trackers to achieve your money goals. Their mission is to close the gender gap in financial income and literacy. Your Juno has a complimentary library written and produced by financial experts, with articles on everything from inflation, to retirement, to side-hustles, to freelancing, to investing, to property purchases. You can also get a weekly financial roundup straight in your inbox, to be in-the-know for all money matters and financial education.
Honeydue allows for full transparency and collaboration, if you so wish it, for households of all kinds. It let’s you track separate and joint account balances, credit cards, loans, investments, and bill reminders. You can also send transactions to your partner and chat about them in-app. Budgets can be manually entered and displayed to both parties, to ensure you have each others support to meet your goals. And if you have separate, individual accounts, you can choose what your partner sees or doesn’t see. Couples can also set spending limits and goals for different categories, and receive notifications when they’ve hit certain percentages.
