They can teach users financial tricks they might not know about, like the importance of setting up an emergency fund or taking advantage of my employer’s 401(k) match.īut Press brought up a good point: If you're splashing out $100 or more a year for an app, it might be wiser to use that money to get individualized attention from an expert. Press says these can help get young adults on their feet when they're first starting out. YNAB, which brags that new users save an average of $600 in their first two months, offers goal tracking, personal support and reports. Now, paid services do have some impressive bells and whistles. Mint is free, but You Need a Budget is a hefty $11.99/month (or $84/year).
The hangup comes when they start charging for their services. “‘Maybe I should be putting that into an emergency fund or retirement account.’” “When you can break down and look to see that you're spending $500 a month at Starbucks, that might be an eye-opener for people to say, ‘Oh boy, maybe I shouldn’t go every day,’” Press says. Whether you make a budget by hand or by app, the goal is the same: to become more conscious of your money decisions. Mint, for example, will hook up to your accounts and instantly sort your recent expenses into a nice rainbow-colored pie chart with slices for gas, utilities, shopping and more. You could make your own visuals by printing out your last three months of credit card statements and using different-colored highlighters to classify the different line items.īut if you're lazy, it might be faster to just have an app take care of it for you. In theory, you don't need an app to set a budget. Press says the primary benefit is that they categorize my expenses - “give you a really good visual on what you’re spending on.” Popular excuses for not sticking to a budget include “I don’t earn enough,” “it’s too time-consuming” and “it makes me feel anxious/bad.”īudgeting apps aim to make tracking my spending easier. In a survey from earlier this year, 97% of respondents said “everyone” should budget - but only 80% of them had one themselves. There’s a gap between the number of people who know they should budget and those who actually do it. Hawaii Alaska Florida South Carolina Georgia Alabama North Carolina Tennessee RI Rhode Island CT Connecticut MA Massachusetts Maine NH New Hampshire VT Vermont New York NJ New Jersey DE Delaware MD Maryland West Virginia Ohio Michigan Arizona Nevada Utah Colorado New Mexico South Dakota Iowa Indiana Illinois Minnesota Wisconsin Missouri Louisiana Virginia DC Washington DC Idaho California North Dakota Washington Oregon Montana Wyoming Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Pennsylvania Kentucky Mississippi Arkansas Texas Start Now