6 Personal Budget Software Options for You to Consider
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Personal budget software makes it easy to keep track of expenses, categorize spending and generally manage your overall finances. These programs can be a valuable way to stay the course when it comes to your financial goals, with options for limited programs that offer the basics all the way up to ones with a wide range of services and budgeting tools.
Software, for the purpose of this roundup, includes computer programs, web-based programs and apps for mobile devices. It’s important to do your own research when looking for budgeting software that fits your specific needs, but this is a good place to start.
| Software | What it does | Cost |
| CountAbout | A web-based personal finance software option that provides simple budgeting tools. |
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| Mint | Money management software system that allows customers to track and categorize spending to stick to a budget. |
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| Mvelopes | Personal budgeting software that uses the traditional envelope budgeting system with a digital spin. |
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| Quicken | Offers everything from basic account management to business needs like invoicing and tax tracking. |
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| Tiller | This spreadsheet based budgeting software links to your accounts and provides daily updates of your spending. |
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| You Need a Budget (YNAB) | Provides financial management software based on its “Four Rules” system. |
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CountAbout
- Cost: $9.99/year (Basic) or $39.99/year (Premium), with additional costs for add-ons
- Availability: Android, iOS and online
With CountAbout, users can pick from two levels of service — one requiring more manual upkeep than the other — to help track and budget their money. With CountAbout Premium, you’ll have access to automatic downloading of banking, credit card and other financial transactions, whereas with the Basic plan, you’ll need to enter that information in manually. Two major perks of this company: the ability to transfer all your data from previous Quicken or Mint accounts, and the fact that it’s completely ad free.
You can sign up for a 15-day free trial to test drive the software. Graphical and text-based widgets offer helpful overviews of your finances, and, despite its low-key interface, CountAbout offers plenty of helpful bonuses like invoicing for small businesses and access to financial reports.
Mint
- Cost: Free
- Availability: Android, iOS and online
Mint is a personal budget software program that allows users to connect balances and bills from multiple accounts and categorize their spending. The financial management software also offers personalized product recommendations to help with savings.
Mint offers an extensive place to organize and track bills, including a monthly bill payment tracker, as well as bill payment alerts and reminders that makes it easier to never miss a due date. Users can also see their credit score for free, as well as factors that affected their score recently.
Mint’s financial analysis software also includes an option for portfolio tracking.
Mvelopes
- Cost: $6/month (Basic), $19/month (Plus) or $59/month (Complete)
- Availability: Android, iOS and online
Although Mvelopes follows the traditional envelope-based budgeting system, customers are offered customized curriculums — complete with interactive online courses — based on their specific goals. Personal Finance Trainers, which are available on Plus and Complete plans, are also available to walk you through the basics. That means helping you stay on top of financial goals, whether new or old.
Mvelopes offers a free 30-day trial, though not for their Complete package. Although the Complete package comes with a steep $59 per month cost, it combines online services with a personalized financial plan, dedicated personal coach and monthly coaching sessions.
Quicken
- Cost: $34.99/year (Starter), $49.99/year (Deluxe), $74.99/year (Premier) or $89.99/year (Home & Business, for Windows users only)
- Availability: Android, iOS, Mac or Windows (certain features are only available on Windows), online
Quicken is among the longest-operating personal management finance softwares. It comes with four levels of service, so whether you simply want to see all of your accounts in one place and create a budget — or you need to separate business and personal expenses, email custom invoices and simplify taxes and investments — Quicken has a tool for that.
The service has a 30-day money back guarantee. It also allows people who link retirement accounts can generate spending and cash flow reports to go over with financial planners or advisors. You’ll also find tax services (available for both business and personal taxes), like creating custom reports, finding and tracking business deductions and the ability to export everything directly to TurboTax.
Windows users can even track their home value directly on their account by linking to Zillow.
Tiller
- Cost: $59/year
- Availability: Mac and Windows, via Google sheets or
A basic Tiller subscription includes automatic categorization and daily email account spreadsheet updates of spending. With the Tiller Money Feed, linked accounts are automatically added to your Google Sheet so tracking everything in one place is easy.
For prospective users, you can explore this budget software with a 30-day trial free of charge. You’ll find that Tiller can automatically import your daily finances into a spreadsheet template you’ve either chosen or customized. It also helps you keep track of daily household spending easily when you link accounts for both you and your partner to the profile and receive daily email summaries based on the combined data.
YNAB
- Cost: $11.99/month or $84/year
- Availability: Android and iOS, online
YNAB follows a zero-based budgeting process for helping you budget your money, which means you’ll only be budgeting for the money that you currently have in your checking account, regardless of any paychecks that might be coming in the future.
YNAB’s Four Rules implore users to assign their dollars a “job,” embrace expenses, learn to roll with the punches and plan to get ahead. To break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, YNAB aims to have users get to a place where any money they spend is cash that’s been earned at least 30 days ago.
YNAB offers a 34-day free trial. You’ll get to see personalized reports that help you track your progress. A new and optional application programming interface — or API — also grants customers access to an even more personalized system — like a grocery budget reminder that shows up on your phone when you walk into the grocery store.
As well as its mobile apps, YNAB is also available as a web app and for Amazon Alexa.