Best Personal Budget iPhone Apps (2024)

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Budget Envelopes is based on the popular method of personal finance management tracking expenses by different buckets of expenses or "envelopes". This app is easy to use and excellent for managing both regular expenses such as rent / mortgage payment, cable and internet, food, and gas as well as irregulars such as entertainment and other random expenditures is Budget Envelopes.

A few of the features of this app include:

• Set up budgets, including daily, weekly, bi weekly, monthly, 2 months, up to annually
• Add expenses as they occur
• Add recurring charges
• Set Up Incomes and Add Special Income
• Sync with family members that have the app installed
• Create reports and visuals of personal finances
• Print and email the budgets and reports

This application allows you to easily create an unlimited number of "envelopes" i.e. different budgets. This allows you to set up an envelope for all activities that need to be monitored such as if you are in charge of a party with a group of friends, the budget can be set and then each expense added in real time while you are preparing. This is helpful in managing expenses that do not occur repeatedly such as buying back to school clothes or shopping for Christmas, birthday's and other holidays which are easy to go over budget if you are not monitoring it well. There are other apps that are great for looking at your entire financial situation so that you have a good idea of your personal net worth, how well you are saving for retirement, and connect with all of your banking accounts, however if you can not set a budget and stick to it, saving money can be a big challenge. This app is designed to making sure you follow your desired budgets and it is easy to use and identify how much you have to spend before going beyond your financial means.

Everyone has different needs so if you are looking for the right solution check out these additional applications to help manage your personal financial well being.

1. Mint - The Mint.com application provides a great snapshot of your personal and family financial situation. While the Mint solution is excellent at displaying your overall finances it is not the best application for managing budgets in real time. It is not easy to add in expenses as they occur as the benefits from Mint come after you sync your account with all of your personal checking and savings accounts, credit cards, 401k's, and other investment accounts. Use Mint to help save for retirement in Hawaii or to make sure you will have enough cash to help pay for your children's education, but it is not simple and easy to use for sticking to a weekly food or gas budget since many of the transactions will show up in the system 3 - 5 days after they have already occured.
2. MoneyBook - The MoneyBook app is a well designed budgeting app that allows the user to easily track transactions and lets the user add notes, create new categories, and individual transactions easily. The app does have an export feature and a free backup service to the cloud, however it does not provide much in regards to generating charts, graphs, or other visuals of the data that is aggregated over time with the application.
3. WalletWhiz - The best feature of the Wallet Whiz budget application is that it has a unique way of viewing your budget, it uses a calendar view as the default option with the ability to switch by category. This is a nice solution for people getting paid on a weekly budget.
4. Simple Budget - This application allows the user to manage their money on a daily basis. This is perfect for kids and college students that are on a very fixed allowance / budget and need to be very conscious about not spending too much at any given time. Set up your budget for the day and try and keep on track. This app is not designed for complex financial management such as budgeting for an entire household but a nice alternative for someone looking to not spend a weeks worth of beer money in one night.
5. BillMinder - This iOS app tracks your bills and makes sure that you are know what you owe and when it is due. This app includes a calendar view to identify upcoming expenses and includes push notifications when a bill is due and also includes graphs with categories for understanding the bills you are paying on a regular basis better.