With smartphones always in our pockets, we have the power to be financially empowered! Today we will be covering some of the best apps out there for personal finance. These will help you keep track of spending, invest your hard-earned money, and set budgets.
Mint
Via Mint
Mint is an extremely popular finance app, and that popularity is well-deserved. You can connect all of your bank and investment accounts, then the app tracks your expenses in various categories. You can also track bills and view your credit score. Mint is a completely free app, and offers many useful features for that price!
YNAB (You Need a Budget)
Via YNAB
YNAB is great if you're tired of living paycheck-to-paycheck and never paying down debt. The app creates budgets based on your income, and has built-in features that help users pay off debt. In fact, the average user pays off $500 of their debt in the first month. This app does come with a fee, but many users find that worthwhile, when it is helping them save money in the long term!
Robinhood
Via Robinhood
If investing thousands of dollars scares you, or you just want to understand how investing works, Robinhood is a great place to start. This investment app is ideal for people who only want to invest a little bit in stocks, and not do anything more advanced like day trading. Investing and trading is easy, and you can even get alerts when your stocks go up or down.
Acorns
Via Acorns
Acorns is an even more friendly investment app, because it doesn't even require you to do the investing! For a $1 monthly fee, Acorns lets you connect a card, and every time you make a purchase, it rounds up the total to the nearest dollar. That difference is then invested in a low-risk stock. Basically, this app takes pocket change and turns it into more money, with almost no effort on the user's part.
Spendee
Via Spendee
Not every person needs a financial app designed for an individual. If you're married, or otherwise share a home with other people, you may need access to shared expenses. Spendee allows you to create shared wallets that can be used for household expenses. It also comes with plenty of other features common in financial apps, such as expenses tracking, bill pay reminders, and more.
PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, etc.
Via PayPal
Digital payment platforms like PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, and plenty of others, can be incredibly convenient. If you need to pay back a friend for dinner, you can just send them money in one of these apps, for no charge. It's like having cash, but all digital. PayPal can also be used for paying for online orders. This can put an extra layer of security between an online vendor and your credit card.
Your Credit Union or Bank's App
These days, every financial institution has an app. These come with a lot of useful features, including mobile check deposit, quick budgeting tools, and many of the same transferring and bill-paying abilities as your institution's website. At Oregonian's Credit Union, we offer these things and more in our mobile app! If you're an OCU member, you can find more about our official app on our website.
