The Best Personal Finance Software

Personal finance software refers to any app, program, or application that helps you make better financial decisions. Though a personal finance app may sound trivial, it can help you learn about essential financial management, help you organize your money, and move you closer to your long-term financial goals.

The best personal finance software for you will depend on your financial situation and how much time and money you’re willing to invest in the software. This post will share some of the most popular personal financial software on the market today. From websites that let you efficiently do small business accounting to apps that help you track your personal financial goals, there’s sure to be something on this list of interest to you.

Best Personal Finance Software of 2022

These are the best personal finance software of 2022. For each one, you’ll get an overview of the software as well as unique pros and cons.

ChroniFI

Founded recently in 2020, ChroniFI is a personal finance application/dashboard that gives users control over their time and money. The founder Ben Miller realized that the accurate measure of wealth is not money but rather time. To that end, the ChroniFI dashboard lets users quickly see how many years of FI (financial independence) they have right now and also how many more years it will take for them to reach true financial freedom.

To use the dashboard, enter your current financial situation and update snapshots twice a month, and you’ll receive a clear outlook of your net worth, where things stand currently, and where things are going. ChroniFI costs $9.99/month, but you can get a 30-day free trial if you sign up now.

Pros:

• Secure – Unlike various other online personal finance management software, ChroniFI does not require you to link your bank account information with their system. You can rest assured knowing that there won’t be any potential security breach to your accounts.
• Simple – ChroniFI’s dashboard is highly intuitive and easy to understand. From it, you can see your total net worth, as well as graphs that forecasts your ChroniFI number. This information allows you to quickly gain various personal finance applications that you can put into effect immediately.
• Cheap – At $9.99/month, ChroniFI is relatively inexpensive compared to alternative services. Plus, you get a 30-day free trial to test out the software without committing to anything.

Cons:

• Manual information entering – Though you won’t give anyone access to your financial accounts, the lack of linking to bank information also means that you must manually input information twice a month to get the most out of ChroniFI.

Try ChroniFI

Mint

One of the best budgeting apps available today, Mint syncs up seamlessly to your bank accounts, credit cards, and retirement accounts. It dynamically tracks all of your income, purchases, and savings and comes with a daily budget planner. Mint can help anyone trying to get a high-level overview of their financial health but doesn’t want to do it manually themselves.

After you connect your accounts, Mint automatically categorizes your transactions into budget categories to simplify your tracking. You can also make unique categories to fit your own needs if you want.

Pros:

• Free – The Mint personal finance app is entirely free for all users, and there isn’t even a premium version that you can purchase. All users are getting the highest level of service that Mint can provide.
• Credit score access – Mint lets you easily view your credit score in the app. Daily credit score reminders can serve as a good reminder to use your credit wisely in the long run.

Cons:

• Advertisements – Because Mint is free, it makes all of its money off strategic partnerships and advertisements. The ads on the app may seem intrusive and annoying for some people (and there’s no paid option to get rid of them).

YNAB

YNAB stands for You Need A Budget, and after you start using this money management software for a few months, you’ll realize that you perhaps needed a budget sooner! YNAB’s basic philosophy is to assign a role to every dollar you earn. Whether the role is spending the dollar or saving it up is up to your own long-term goals. YNAB does not intend to control your spending habits but rather help you become more conscientious about your money.

YNAB connects directly to your accounts so that you can see transactions flowing into your budget at all points in time and quickly set savings goals. This budgeting service costs $11.99 a month, but it’s personal finance software worth much more than that for many people!

Pros:

• Free in the beginning – With YNAB, you get a 34-day free trial if you sign up right now (essentially saving you $11.99 you can put towards investments).
• Flexibility in bank provider – YNAB syncs to over 12,000 banks, meaning you don’t need to worry about whether or not you need to input your financial information manually.
• Supports multiple currencies – Regardless of where you’re from, YNAB will convert the money you earn into the currency you budget in so that everything remains consistent.

Cons:

• No investment tracking – Unlike many competitors, YNAB lacks a solid investment tracking feature. YNAB is one of the best personal finance software for budgeting, but not for financial freedom projections/attainment.

FutureAdvisor

FutureAdvisor is a Robo-advisor that also provides you with retirement analysis. The tool allows you to link your accounts and receive custom recommendations based on your portfolio and long-term goals.

The paid offering requires a balance of $5000 or more. With it, you’ll receive comprehensive investment management in the form of tax-loss harvesting, automatic rebalancing, and access to a team of financial advisors.

Pros:

• Partnerships with popular online brokers – To use FutureAdvisor’s premium offering, you must hold an account with TD Ameritrade or Fidelity. If you already use one of these brokers, there’s no need to switch, and you can seamlessly integrate it into the program.
• Comprehensive free tools – FutureAdvisor offers one of the best free personal portfolio analysis services in the industry today. You’ll get investment recommendations and notifications to let you know when you should rebalance your portfolio.

Cons:

• Management fee – To use their premium offering, you need to give up 0.5% of your total portfolio value in management fees. Compared to other paid personal finance services, this cost can be pretty high.

Personal Capital

Personal Capital is another robot-advisor service that isn’t for everyday individuals just starting their investing journey. Instead, it’s for affluent individuals that will take advantage of the high standard of service and custom investment advice. With that in mind, everyone can still utilize their free suite of products every day.

Those who use Personal Capital for the latter reason will receive a slick-looking budgeting dashboard that syncs up with your financial accounts and lets you track your spending and cashflows.

Pros:

• Robust retirement planning platform – Personal Capital is pretty high up on the list with a proper set of free budgeting and management tools for finance software options.
• Access to live professionals – Unlike some other software, Personal Capital lets you speak with real financial professionals about your financial situation.

Cons:

• Very high account minimum for the Robo-advisor – To invest with the Robo-advisor, you need an account minimum of $100,000.

Credit Karma

Credit Karma is a top personal finance software that helps you build up your credit score. Not only does it keep you up-to-date and informed about your current credit score, but it also notifies you of any potential credit breaches. On top of that, it will also help you secure today’s best deals for auto insurance, loans, and credit cards (so you can stop worrying about which credit card accounts are best).

With a subscriber base of over 110 million people, Credit Karma is one of the most popular free personal finance software on the market today.

Pros:

• User friendly – To use personal finance software, you need to make sure you can understand it. Credit Karma’s dashboard and graphs are incredibly easy-to-use, meaning you won’t need to waste any time trying to interpret the meaning of metrics.
• Daily credit score – Seeing your credit score every day is helpful when you’re trying to increase it.

Cons:

• Advertisements – Since Credit Karma is free, it makes money solely off ads. If you’re not comfortable seeing ads and would rather pay to have an ad-free experience, Credit Karma might bug you a bit.

Quicken

You’re likely to run across Quicken when you choose personal finance software. Quicken has been around since 1983 and is something of a dinosaur when it comes to budgeting applications. Don’t let its age fool you, though. Over time, Quicken revised its software and added newer features to keep up with the times. Today it’s one of the best personal finance products on the market whether you’re running a small business or just managing your own money.

Pros:

• Flexible pricing – With Quicken, you don’t need to stick to one payment plan. You’ll find a level that fits your needs from the lowest tier with just the basics to the more advanced (and expensive) offerings.
• Secure – Quicken encrypts your data using 256-bit encryption, meaning it’s safe and secure.

Cons:

• No app – Nowadays, almost every personal finance software comes in app form. Unfortunately, Quicken has not caught on yet and does not currently offer an option to use it with a mobile device.

Honeydue

Designed for couples specifically, Honeydue is an app that can help make money matters more straightforward for the entire household. Honeydue lets you seamlessly set spending limits oversee and collaborate on all transactions and bills.

Not only does Honeydue come with an app, but they also offer a joint bank account for partners who choose to manage money together. The best part is that Honeydue is entirely free. The only way you pay is through watching advertisements on their app.

Pros:

• Share budgets and transactions – Honeydue is one of the only apps on the market today that lets you share your budget and transaction details with your partner.
• Free – You can download Honeydue entirely for free and get a no-fee checking account along with the app.

Cons:

• Only available on mobile devices – As of now, Honeydue does not have a computer-supported application and is just a personal finance app. If you don’t like managing your finances from your phone, you might find Honeydue a little tedious.

TurboTax

TurboTax is currently one of the best tax software available for purchase. If you dread the tax season, consider using TurboTax to help you prepare your returns and simplify your filing situation.

TurboTax provides both online and desktop versions of its application, packaging up complex and unique tax situations to make the process that much easier for you. Whether you work a regular 9-5 job or make your money primarily through passive income, TurboTax will let you know precisely how you should file your taxes.

Pros:

• Easy to use – Some of TurboTax’s best features are how intuitive and straightforward it is. For example, you can automatically fill out your tax forms by snapping photos of your W-2.
• Customer service – TurboTax is one of the best personal finance software in support and customer service. There are tons of links to articles helping specific situations, an online forum where you can discuss real problems, and tax experts available to you in real-time.

Recap: Best Personal Finance Software

Managing money is challenging to keep up in today’s fast-paced world.

There are too many things to keep track of and not enough time to do so. Thankfully, personal finance software can make money management significantly more straightforward. From forecasting investments into the future to getting out of debt, to creating a spending plan, whatever your need, it’s likely to be satisfied by one of the software on this list. As a quick recap, here are some of the best personal finance software you should consider:

• 1. ChroniFI
• 2. Mint
• 3. YNAB
• 4. FutureAdvisor
• 5. Personal Capital
• 6. Credit Karma
• 7. Quicken
• 8. Honeydue
• 9. TurboTax

From budgeting software to personal finance apps, there’s an app out there for everyone. Don’t waste any more time managing your money, and start streamlining your process today with one of these personal finance software.

This article is originally on Wealth of Geeks.