Personal Finance Apps For Your Smartphone

Remember that foggy zone you used to be in when you wanted to take complete control of your finances? When you wanted to be more responsible in saving and spending to plan the present and future? Those foggy days are over and the days of finance apps on your smartphones that bring more clarity with ease of use are here. We are discussing top 5 finance apps that will prove to be useful to you.

    Mint.com Personal Finance

This application is one of the best personal finance apps. It syncs with your bank transactions and categorizes them automatically. It creates customized budget based on your past spending. It keeps track of your spending and keeps reminding you about your budget. You can create separate mini budget for entertainment, gas, eating out- things you want to monitor. The app sends you reminders, alerts and colour codes the categories so that you know when you reach danger zone. It also offers tips on stocks and investment.

Platform: iOS, Android

Price: Free

2. MoneyWise

This app is very easy to use. It is a budgeting and expense tracking app. MoneyWise enables you to set your financial goals. It monitors the cash flow, categorises your expenses and with the help of colourful charts and graphs it lets you know about the status of the expense categories. You can export the data from this app as HTML or CSV files.

Platform: Android

Price: Free

3.Spending Tracker

This app as the name suggests tracks your expenses. It will help you unlock the mystery of where exactly your money goes every month. You will be able to organise your expenses on daily, weekly or monthly basis. It can be customized to suit your needs. The easy to read fonts and charts make it a fun little tracker.

Platform: iOS

Price: Free

4. Expense Manager

This app enables you to track your expenses across categories on weekly, monthly or yearly basis. You can search for individual transactions, set up payments alerts, import and export data from your phone to your desktop and take pictures of receipts while storing. It has currency calculator, tax calculator etc. It is a neat little useful app.

Platform: Android

Price: Free

5. You Need A Budget (YNAB)

This app is one for the whole family. It syncs with YNAB desktop software (required). It can budget across multiple accounts, analyse and can show the transactions of the whole family instantly. A free version is also available.

Platform: iOS, Android

Price: $4.99

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Personal Finance Management and It's Benefits

The major emphasis on material wealth and status symbols means that more and more people are now finding themselves firmly trapped in the debt trap, with a vicious cycle of extended credit, interest rates and penalty fees all eating into their savings. Record numbers of people are struggling to come to terms with the loans that they have taken out with their banks, only to discover that they can no longer comfortably sustain the level of interest repayment they were paying.

This is why personal financial management is essential, as it will ensure that you do not need to worry about your financial situation should you lose your job or otherwise lose your income. Remember, if you are careful with your personal finances you will be able to get plenty of different advantages for your efforts.

Credit cards are commonly the source of peoples debts. This does not mean that they themselves are faulty or dangerous, however, people do not respect them and so this means that people end up getting caught out as a result. Remember, never take out money with a credit card which you know you cannot comfortably afford.

Another cardinal mistake people commit when using credit cards is that they fail to pay them off when they are supposed to either because they genuinely forget, or because they simply do not have the cash to do so at that current period in time. The truth of the matter is that if you do not pay you will end up paying more money in the long term and this is because of the interest payments that you will be hit with.

Make personal finance management a top priority and a major feature of your life, and you will be able to breathe easy whenever the mailman comes with fresh mail. No longer will you need to worry about creditors harassing you, or hounding you for payments.

Maintaining your personal finance can be one of the toughest tasks that you will have to face in life. Make use of the personal finance tools to manage your personal finance effectively.

Personal Finance Tips: 4 Ways to Become Financially Free Even When You're Single

Being financially free can sound like a far-fetched idea for most single women. The average American today spends more than they earn and can barely keep up financially. Becoming financially free is not impossible, no matter what you might think today! Keep reading to find some personal finance tips that every single woman should know.

Start with a budget. Whether you make a lot of money or a little money, you need a budget to know where you are going. Think of your budget as your financial road map for your future. If you were going some where you have never been, you wouldn't start out just driving, would you? It's unlikely. It would be a waste of time and gas to do that. The same goes for your finances. Why would you continue to work week after week without taking some time to plan how you are going to use your money you worked so hard for? Budgeting can help you do just that. Make a budget a priority so you are not wasting time working and the money you earn. Even if you are single and don't think you make enough money, you need a budget to know where your money is being spent.

Save early and often, even if it seems impossible. Saving money each month is important on so many levels. Not only does it give us something to fall back on when times are tough, it helps us remain disciplined with our money. Think of saving your money sort of like the gas you would put in the car for the trip in example one. Without saving money, how will you have anything for the future? If you have nothing in savings, your first goal should be to have $1,000 in an emergency fund you can fall back on. The emergency fund allows you to rely on your own cash rather than credit cards when something unexpected comes up. Once you get your emergency fund built up, start contributing to your retirement but investing in your company's 401k plan or start your own fund. It's never too early or too late to start saving for the future! This is especially important for single women. If you wait until you have a better job, more money or more of something else, you might just never get started.

Debt can be crippling to personal finances. In order to be financially free, debt needs to be eliminated so the income coming in can go towards savings, rather than paying off debt. Begin small by paying off the cards with the smallest balance first. After that card is paid off, start applying that money towards the card with the next smallest balance and so on. If you receive a raise or a tax return, apply this money towards debt instead of spending it. This "snowball" effect is an excellent way to pay off debt quickly. This can be done on just one income! When you see debt being eliminated, it is rewarding and motivating!

The little things can have the biggest impact. While it may not seem like it, the little things can add up the most when it comes to your money. Spending just $5 extra a day can add up to $150 in unplanned expenses for the month. But this can also work in the opposite way. Adding $5 a day to pay off debt can equate to an extra $150 paid off in debt each month!

It can seem next to impossible for a single woman to start to get her personal finances under control. The most important thing to remember is personal finance is nearly always about behavior. If you can change some of the habits you are accustomed too, you can start to see huge a huge impact on your financial situation.

Jenny Kerr is an expert author, consultant, blogger and social media professional. She loves living a flexible lifestyle and spends most of her time reading, gardening and trying new recipes she has cooked from scratch. Jenny is passionate about helping people save money and blogs about it on her site, The Jenny Pincher She has taught her self-developed "Basics of Budgeting" course throughout the St. Louis area. She has developed a Budget Bootcamp to educate women on the topic of personal finance. She has also taught budgeting in the college setting.

Emotional Cost of Personal Finance

What's your reaction when the monthly bills arrive? Do you feel nauseous? Do you feel sick to your stomach or have headaches? Or, do you feel overwhelmed or panic?

I am sure that you are working very hard to pay off your bills. However, your bills seem to never get smaller. Actually, it looks like they keep growing! You are not sure what is happening here, but you feel very exhausted working to pay all the bills. You feel like you can't do anything you want, no matter how hard you work. You feel upset and even despair. You feel inadequate, shame, and don't know what to do.

What's happening here? Your life is being taken over by the bills! Notice, your personal finance issues are costing your health! They are affecting both your physical and mental health. Are you stunned? As you see now, personal finance issues are very much intertwined with your emotional well-being, and they can even increase your chance of developing clinical depression and anxiety.

We are living in materialistic and consumption driven culture. The society makes us feel that we constantly need to purchase stuff. I know, we just try to fit into the society's norm. We don't want to feel left out. We don't want our kids to feel inferior. So, we continue to spend money to buy things. Besides, it feels good to buy stuff. Buying kind of comforts our feeling. So, what happens then? Basically, we work for stuff, and we drive ourselves into personal finance trouble.

Are we working for things?!?! Actually, we work to improve our life, don't we? Does stuff make our life better? Yes, in some degree, but when all your basic needs are met, probably, having another "I-phone" or "Shoes" will not make our life much different, would it? Yes, we get temporary comfort from buying stuff, but it will not last for so long. Then, we start to feel anxious. So, what do we do? Buy more stuff! It's a vicious cycle.

Controlling your finances is one way to boost your mental health. Instead of buying merchandise to comfort yourself, maybe, you can learn a new way to cheer yourself up. For some, maybe, there are underlying emotional issues of your financial struggle. Maybe, you could talk to someone? It may give you a new perspective on your problems. Going to see a therapist or life coach may be one way to straighten out your personal finance issues. Instead of spending money for stuff, maybe, you may want to invest money on yourself? Investing in yourself may be the best deal for your life.