Best Budgeting Apps

What are budgeting apps?

Budgeting apps are exactly what they sound like: applications designed to help you create a realistic budget and achieve your financial goals. There are many budgeting apps available for various platforms (iOS, Android, and web). Many of these apps offer both free and premium versions with additional features.

→Related article: How to Write a Budget

Benefits of budgeting apps

Budgeting apps offer a range of benefits for individuals and households looking to manage their finances more effectively. Here are some of the key advantages of budgeting apps:

Increased financial awareness

Budgeting apps help users gain a better understanding of their income, expenses, and spending habits. By tracking and categorising transactions, users can see where their money is going and identify areas for improvement.

Budgeting apps can also foster financial discipline and accountability, helping users make informed financial decisions and avoid impulsive spending.

Automated data entry

Many budgeting apps can link to users’ bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial accounts, automatically importing transaction data. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and ensures that transactions are up to date.

Achieving financial goals

By providing a clear overview of income and expenses, budgeting apps help users work toward and achieve their financial goals, whether they involve saving for a major purchase or repaying debt.

→Related article: How Can I Get Rid of My Credit Card Debt?

The best budgeting apps

Mybudgetpal

Mybudgetpal is a free budgeting app offered by Booster. Mybudgetpal helps you improve your spending and saving habits by tracking your spending across multiple expense categories.

The app helps you to build a budget by setting spending limits for each expense category and track your changing spending habits over time.

Mybudgetpal offers the following features:

• Track your spending habits
• Syncs with your bank account daily
• Automatically sorts your transactions into expense categories
• Sets reminders for upcoming bills and expenses

Mybudgetpal is available for web use or can be downloaded via the App Store or Google Play.

PocketSmith

Made right here in NZ, PocketSmith is designed for Kiwis from all walks of life. Track your income, expenses, assets and net worth, customise your budgets, forecast your cashflow up to 60 years into the future, and see it all in a nifty calendar view.

PocketSmith offers the following features:

• Customisable budget creation
• Connects to all major banks in New Zealand over 12,000 banks and financial services worldwide
• Budget calendar to help you plan ahead
• Multi-currency personal finance software connects your accounts in different countries and tracks them all in native and converted currencies
• Personalise your data with your own categories, labels, notes and pictures

PocketSmith offers a free version and three paid subscriptions, depending on your needs.

*Note you can save up to 33% by being billed annually

PocketSmith is available for web use or can be downloaded via the App Store or Google Play.

Sorted

Sorted is a tool to help you build a budget rather than a fully-fledged budgeting and tracking app. The app will begin by asking you some basic questions, including your spending habits and financial goals. You can easily enter your budgeted amounts on an annual, monthly, fortnightly or weekly basis, and add in saving and investing goals. There’s no fancy expenditure tracking or coding going on here, it’s a simple tool to help you build a simple budget. This makes it an ideal app for first-time budgeters.

Sorted offers the following features:

• Regularly posted financial guides and articles
• Weekly, fortnightly, monthly and yearly budget templates
• Interactive and customisable budget
• Set financial goals

Sorted is available for web use only at this time.

MoneyLover

MoneyLover is another great app for anyone new to budgeting and expense tracking. Unfortunately it doesn’t doesn’t allow access to bank feeds from any NZ banks (it does support Australian banks, however, so this could be on the horizon). MoneyLover offers the following features:

• Simple money tracking
• Record daily transactions in seconds and put them into customisible categories
• Easy-to-read graphs to breakdown where your money is going
• Safely synchronise across devices with bank standard security
• Manage your goals, debts, loans and payment process in one place
• All currencies supported with up-to-date exchange rate
• Take pictures of your receipts to auto-process and organise them

MoneyLover is available for free on the App Store and Google Play.

If you’re still not sure where to begin, you might want to consider using a budgeting app or Canstar’s budget planner calculator.

Ultimately, the right budgeting app should complement your financial habits and preferences while providing the tools and features you need to manage your money effectively. It’s a personal choice, and taking the time to evaluate different options and select the app that best fits your needs can have a significant impact on your financial success.

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About the author of this page

This page was written by Canstar Content Producer, Caitlin Bingham. Caitlin is an experienced writer whose passion for creativity led her to study communication and journalism. She began her career freelancing as a content writer, before joining the Canstar team.