If you want to take control of your finances, keeping track of how much you earn and spend is something you must do. Writing down your expenses and how much money you’ve taken in during a month will help you understand your cash flow and where you can make changes.
However, doing all of this manually can become stressful. That’s where free budget tools can help. They help you track spending, financial accounts and categorize expenses, making it easy to see where your money is going.
This article looks at some of the best free tools to help you plan your budget.
Mint
This well-known budgeting app makes it easy for you to track all your expenses. Like most people, you probably have a long list of things you spend your money on each month, like dinner with friends, rent, utilities, and entertainment.
Gaming has become the most popular form of entertainment, surpassing movies and music as most people’s favorite pastime. Poker, blackjack, slots, and other casino games are well-liked by many worldwide.
Once upon a time, you’d have to go to a land-based casino to play these games. However, technological advances have changed everything, and today, many people play entertaining online slots in Canada from their phones. Others prefer last-person standing games like PUGB or RPGs like World of Warcraft. However, whatever your source of entertainment, Mint can help you monitor how much you spend. The app has an intuitive user interface and will send you alerts when you approach your monthly spending limit.
Empower
Spending tracking, investment management, reporting options, and desktop capabilities are just a few of the things that make this budgeting tool stand out.
It gives you a holistic view of your finances, allowing you to monitor everything from the performance of your portfolio to your daily spending. If saving for retirement is a priority, it has tools to help you do that.
On the other hand, if you need to pay down your debt, this tool can assist you in doing that too. If you want to dig deeper into your finances, you can use the app’s advisory tools, including financial planning, cash flow tracking, investment checkup, and real-time network tracking.
It’s easy to get started using the app; all you have to do is link your bank accounts, credit cards, and other items. Once the app has all of this information, it’ll give you a detailed picture of your finances.
Google Sheets
Most people use Google in some capacity in their daily lives, so using the company’s free budgeting tool makes sense for a lot of people. The great thing about this budgeting tool is it gives you many templates to choose from, making it easy to find the best one for you.
Best of all, you don’t need to be an expert in spreadsheets to use this option. The budget template is your best option if you’re new to budgeting. It’s a basic yet powerful tool you can customize with a few clicks of your mouse.
With Google Sheets, you will have to manually enter your expense and income before it can tell you how much you’re spending each month. However, once you’ve done that, it’s easy to use it to track your spending habits.
Goodbudget
If you’re more interested in budget planning than tracking your past transactions, Goodbudget is worth a closer look. The app has a free and paid version, so you can choose the one that’s best for you based on your needs.
It uses the envelope budgeting system, allowing you to separate your expenses into categories. You can’t connect the app to your bank accounts, so you’ll have to enter your account balances, debt, and income manually.
Once you have added all that information, you can assign your money to different envelopes. The Goodbudget website features many articles and videos to help you get the most out of the app.
With the free version, you get one account that you can on two devices and a limited number of envelopes. Goodbudget Plus gives you unlimited accounts and envelopes that you can use on up to five devices.
PocketGuard
As the name suggests, this app helps you keep an eye on your spending. You can link it to all your financial accounts to get a snapshot of your financial picture.
It’s easy to get started using the app, and once it has information from all of your accounts, you can use it to track your income, savings, and monthly bills.
It also has a handy feature that analyzes your bills and helps you find ways to save on things like cable, internet, and phone bills. If you want to take a look into the future, the app’s projected expenditures function will help you do that, so you can manage your cash flow effectively.