How to Find the Best Budget App to Budget Your Income

When it comes to finding best budget app, I know it is an overwhelming task

I don’t blame you if you think it as a daunting task

For myself, I had to install and try different apps

Till I finally found the best budget app that suits my needs

There are few affiliate links, if you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you

Below I will summarize my findings

I will keep it biased as what I like may be different that yours

All apps are available on iPhone and Android so let me start with

EveryDollar

EveryDollar is created by the financial guru Dave Ramsey, writer of Total Money Makeover

It is one of the best budget app where it is available on both Android and iPhone IOS

You can use it for free or paid using the plus feature billed yearly at $129

Plus feature covers the ability to get you connected to your bank account to collect your income easily

Also it connects to your credit cards to keep track of your spending

With Plus you get premium support for any help

The app is easy to use, it is classified into Planned and Spent tabs

While the Remaining tab is the difference between both planned and spent

The app covers all the expenses categorized in an easy way as shown below

Starting with giving, savings, housing, transportation, food, personal, lifestyle, health, insurance, health and debt

What I did not like about EveryDollar app is that

It is not that convenient to copy any number easily between planned and spent

For example, you know that you donate every month let’s say $400 to a charity

So when you add it under giving in Planned tab

You have to go and add it under Spent too with the same amount

It could have been easier when you add any amount to get a popup asking you if you expect the same amount under spent tab with Yes and No

Or they can have a feature to hold your finger on any income/expense amount in case of cell phone and you get an option to clone it to spent if spent amount is zero

Goodbudget

Goodbudget is available on both Android and iPhone iOS system

It is based on the cash envelope system for those of you who don’t know this system

It is using envelopes to pay cash for most of the expenses you have control on like grocery, gas and dinning out

After I downloaded the app on my iPhone, I could not sign up

I realized that you cannot sign up from your phone where sign up process is only available from their website

Anyway I completed the sign up process and selected the free plan as shown below

There are 2 plans available, free and plus plan which costs $7/month – paying $84 if you pay monthly or $60/year – paying $5 per month if you pay one time for full year

The plus plan gives you unlimited envelopes compared to the free plan which has 10 regular envelopes and up to 2 devices to synchronize your data

In my personal opinion I don’t see any benefits in upgrading to plus

You can import your bank transactions by using CSV file which is available through most of the bank online accounts

Mint

Mint is available only in US and Canada

The first time I opened the Mint app I found it is built by Intuit

Which I use for the last 8 years to file my annual household taxes

Mint app won’t work unless you connect your bank account

I felt comfortable doing that because when I file my taxes I connect the CRA – Canada Revenue Agency account to allow Intuit Turbo Tax to collect my tax information

I believe this is one of the best budget app as it does so many things automatically for you

If you have a Turbo Tax account you can use it to log on without signing up

Mint will connect automatically to your bank account to extract all spending

It detects what each expense falls under and display a report like the July spending one

If you click on the July budget you will get a report similar to the one above on the right hand side labelled Budgets

Spending Tracker

Unfortunately the spending tracker name is ambiguous

There are so many apps with similar name like that so look for by company MH Riley Ltd and the below icon

Anyway this app is very simple, it doesn’t ask you to login

Very cheap just pay $3.99 one time fee

I would say if you plan to use this app then backup and restore is very important

Why? remember I told you earlier this app doesn’t require any login which means it stores all data on your phone

This means if you get any phone upgrade and you app crashes

You will lose all of your data so if you plan to use it, pay $3.99 to upgrade

When you create a transaction whatever expense or income, you can select its category

You cannot select repeating on the free version without upgrading

Also when you select category, it will show the list of categories for either Expense like the one below or Income which has different categories

Budget and Expense Tracker

This app also has an ambiguous name so look for developed by Bookipi

It is just an indicator that you are downloading right app, just look for the icon below to download

It is easy to start with creating an account specially you can integrate with your Google account by using Log in with Google

After you log on, the app is very easy to use

Just click on the plus sign the one in the red square

You will get the add expense transaction page as shown below on the right hand side

If you switch the expense to income, you will be able to add income

Again if you click on the white circle which has multiple circle you will be able to see all the list of expenses or incomes according to which type you were in

YNAB – You Need A Budget

The app is called YNAB which stands for the acronym You Need A Budget

Once you open the app, you will see a list of all items on your budget

I did not add them as YNAB added them by default with the flexibility to add/remove as you wish

Just click on the Accounts icon and you will be able to link to your bank account or work completely manually

As shown below you have the option to use the linked where it is similar to Mint

Also you can link your bank account or use the unlinked to add all transactions whatever incomes and expenses manually

Screenshot below to the left indicates that you used the unlinked account

Adding a transaction takes place from the middle icon on the bottom labelled Transaction

If you switch the minus sign you will switch to transaction of type income

Also you can flag the transaction – giving it a unique color in other words

Finally which best budget app to use

In my humble opinion, you have to install all of the above budget apps

Try all of them quickly for yourself

Check to see which one catches your attention and easy to use for your family budget

Also if you would like to use a paper or digital budget sheet and to learn more about budgeting

Then I recommend to check how to bugdet like expert