EveryDollar was founded by Dave Ramsey, a talk show host, TV personality, and motivational speaker. He is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, has been inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame, and has been featured nationally on The Oprah Winfrey Show and 60 Minutes.

Like other budgeting tools, EveryDollar is designed to help you better track your income and spending, and set financial goals to help you reach retirement. It also helps you to get out of debt using the Debt Snowball method and incorporates Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps to debt management and financial freedom.

Among budgeting apps, the competition is stiff. Venture-funded companies like Personal Capital offer a free mobile app that helps you to track your daily spending and income as well as your investments. LearnVest, Mint and YNAB each has much to offer too. So what makes EveryDollar different and why should you consider it?

EveryDollar Spotlight

EVERYDOLLAR SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 3.5 out of 5 stars	Free Version: 15-day Free Trial Paid Version: $99 annually Get Started via EveryDollar secure site

Is EveryDollar Different From Other Budgeting Apps?

EveryDollar walks you through a 7-step plan to get out of debt, build wealth, and reach financial freedom.

The FinTech company has a unique twist on budgeting that is not applied by most other budgeting apps.

It is standard for a budgeting app to link to your bank accounts, gather your financial transactions, synchronize them on a single dashboard to save you the hassle of manual entries, and display your spending patterns, income, and net worth.

Where EveryDollar stands apart from its competition is in creating a roadmap that you can follow, called Baby Steps.

EveryDollar claims that:

EveryDollar will track your progress along the way as you complete 7 Baby Steps:

EveryDollar also partners with financial experts locally, so you can find professionals in your city to help you save money on:

• Term-life insurance
• Tax services
• Auto insurance
• Home insurance
• Retirement investing
• Buying or selling a home

Is EveryDollar Right For You?

EveryDollar is right for you if you subscribe to the debt snowball method which is supported by studies from Northwestern Kellogg School of Management and Harvard.

Dave Ramsey and EveryDollar support a method of paying off debt called the Debt Snowball method.

The way it works is that you list your debts, and start paying off the smallest balances first while paying the minimum balances on larger debts.

After you fully pay off the smallest debt, you move to the next largest debt without regard for the interest rates charged.

A contrasting debt reduction method is called the debt avalanche method or debt stacking method, whereby you pay off high interest rate debt first.

The steps in involved in the debt snowball method are:

1. List debts from smallest to largest.
2. At the very least, pay the minimum payment on every debt.
3. Calculate how much extra money can be applied to the smallest debt.
4. Pay the minimum amounts plus the extra amount until the smallest debt is paid off.
5. After paying off the smallest debt in full, apply the extra payment to the next smallest debt.
6. Repeat until all debts are paid off.

The idea behind the debt snowball method is rooted in human psychology. By paying smaller debts off first, you get a winning feeling that you are making progress and receive fewer bills each month.

The only debt that generally is excluded from the debt snowball method is a mortgage payment.

Whether EveryDollar is right for you depends very much on whether you subscribe to the philosophy of the debt snowball method.

The issue with the approach is that you first pay off debt with the lowest balance as opposed to first paying off debt with the highest interest rate.

Rationally, it makes more sense to pay off debt that is costing you more each month because otherwise the cost of compounded interest could exceed the gains from paying off debt.

In spite of the fact that it makes more rational sense to pay off high interest rate debt first, we humans tend to be irrational and sometimes prefer the feel-good factor of eliminating an extra bill each month more than having a little extra money in our pockets.

In fact, a Northwestern Kellogg School of Management study showed in 2012 that “consumers who tackle small balances first are likelier to eliminate their overall debt” and a 2016 Harvard study concluded the same thing.

How To Create An EveryDollar Budget

EveryDollar Pricing

The premium service of EveryDollar costs $99 per year, but you can try it free for 15 days.

When you sign up to EveryDollar, you receive a free trial for 15-days but thereafter you will be required to pay an annual charge of $99 for the premium service, EveryDollar Plus.

EveryDollar Pros and Cons

EveryDollar provides users a clear roadmap to reducing debt and helps connect users to local experts who can help save money on insurance and tax services, and comes with an annual price tag that rivals a Netflix subscription.

EveryDollar Summary

EveryDollar is a budgeting tool by Dave Ramsey, syndicated radio talk show host and author of numerous New York Times bestselling books.

The budgeting software is designed to help you pay off debt by providing you a clear roadmap of Baby Steps as part of a process called the debt snowball method.

You learn how to build small nest-eggs, pay off small debt balances first, and gradually grow your savings while continually reducing debt until you are financially free.

The method advocated may apply to most individuals but if you are hyper-rational than you will find it difficult to adopt a method that tackles the smallest debts each month first before targeting debt accounts that have the highest interest rates.

Get Started with EveryDollar

Have you used EveryDollar? Share with us your experiences in the comments section below.

The article EveryDollar Review 2020 was originally posted on Investormint

For most people, the first step in creating a monthly budget begins with a pencil and paper, jotting down how much has been spent on groceries, utilities, bill payments, and so on.

After a while, things get messy and a spreadsheet offers a more structured alternative. But wouldn’t it be better to automatically synchronize all your transactions in one budgeting tool and save yourself the hassle of manually transcribing each transaction?

CountAbout is a cloud-based budgeting tool designed to help you budget smarter from anywhere. All your bank account transactions are kept in one place so you don’t have to manually keep track of your income and spending.

And if you are looking for a cloud-based alternative to Quicken, CountAbout is worth checking out because it automatically ports over transaction categories, so you don’t have to worry about losing your past financial history.

Plus, if you are a Mint.com user, CountAbout syncs with it too – in fact, it is one of the few budgeting tools that connects seamlessly to both Quicken and Mint.

CountAbout Spotlight

Why Choose CountAbout?

If you struggle to keep track of where your money goes each month, a budgeting tool like CountAbout can help you to quickly spot areas to save and budget better.

By automatically connecting to your bank accounts, CountAbout helps you to avoid the time and hassle of manually keeping track of each cup of Joe you purchase – which can be tedious and error-prone.

If you are a spreadsheet ninja you should also find CountAbout a lot more friendly to use because it’s as easy to get a pulse on your finances at your desktop as it is on your mobile device when you are on-the-go.

Quicken and Mint users will find CountAbout to be a viable budgeting app alternative, and you don’t have to put up with those pesky ads you see on Mint.

If you are worried that your history of transactions will be lost, don’t be. CountAbout lets you import transaction categories so you pick up from where you left off as opposed to starting from the ground up.

The bottom line is whether you are synchronizing data from bank, credit card, or retirement accounts, CountAbout provides a clutter-free interface to help you better track your personal finances.

Budget Smarter With CountAbout

What You Get At CountAbout

Bank level security, access on-the-go from anywhere, seamless integration with Quicken and Mint, and visually intuitive graphs and pie charts are among the many features you get at CountAbout.

SECURITY

Perhaps the most important thing to consider when choosing a budgeting tool is your personal information security.

High profile data breaches hit the news headlines so regularly these days that it should bring some comfort  that no usernames, passwords, account numbers, phone numbers, or addresses associated with your financial institutions are stored.

CountAbout doesn’t connect directly to your financial institution but instead uses MX®, a widely respected third-party service that partners with thousands of financial institutions.

If your institution isn’t listed, CountAbout can request MX to add institutions. Plus, MX as an aggregator of aggregators maintains multiple connections to banks so if a connection goes down they can switch over to a new connection. Currently, MX maintains over 30,000 connections.

When you sign into your account, you will see that CountAbout relies on multi-factor login protection which is bank-level security designed to keep your information safe also.

MOBILE ACCESS

As a cloud-based budgeting tool, CountAbout connects with both iOS and Android devices, so whether you use a Google Pixel, Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy device, you can keep track of your finances from anywhere.

QUICKEN AND MINT INTEGRATION

A standout feature of the CountAbout software is how seamlessly it integrates with Quicken and Mint.

If you have been looking for an alternative budgeting tool, you can simply import a QIF file and all your transaction data and categorizations will be moved over to CountAbout without you needing to re-enter data or worry about losing your past history of transactions.

INCOME & SPENDING GRAPHS

CountAbout features Widgets that display line graphs and pie charts with income and spending patterns so you can quickly spot spikes in expenditures and areas where you may be overspending relative to your overall income.

INVESTMENT BALANCES

Most budgeting apps help  you to track regular day-to-day spending, whether on groceries, utilities, mortgage or rent payments, and so on but few will display investment accounts.

CountAbout stands apart from many other budgeting tools by helping you to track your investment retirement accounts also.

OTHER FEATURES

Some other features you get with CountAbout include:

Budget Better With CountAbout

CountAbout Pros and Cons

CountAbout is a low-cost budgeting app that lets you view your bank, credit, and retirement accounts securely in one place without interruption from ads. However, you cannot move money between bank accounts or pay bills online through the app.

CountAbout Summary

CountAbout is a low-cost budgeting app that syncs all your accounts in one place to help you better keep track of your income, spending, and retirement accounts.

If you find yourself overpaying from one month to the next on food or entertainment, or simply come up short of cash when it is time to pay your bills or buy presents for loved ones, CountAbout can help you to visualize where you money is going, categorize your transactions, and budget better.

For Quicken and Mint users, CountAbout provides an alternative by seamlessly integrating with both so you avoid the worry of losing any transaction history.

Plus, you can access your personal finances wherever you are with CountAbout because of its cloud-based solution that is compatible with iOS and Android devices.

One drawback at CountAbout is its lack of bill-pay options. But for an app that takes security seriously, doesn’t serve you annoying ads, and provides comprehensive reporting, CountAbout is well worth your consideration.

Get Started Budgeting Smarter At CountAbout

The article CountAbout Review 2020 – Quicken Alternative was originally posted on Investormint

If the software had kept up with changes in investment rules and procedures, the long history of Quicken would not be a problem. Unfortunately, it has not been modernized over the years and many users have reported synchronization issues with their financial accounts.

When customers have a problem with the software, getting phone support can be a challenge. To get a human on the line, you have to pay for premier service. If you prefer to use an app, you still have to get the desktop software. If you don’t own a desktop computer, you can’t use Quicken.

If you would prefer to work with a more modern piece of finance software for your investments, there are many alternatives to Quicken worth checking out.

Here we feature the best Quicken alternatives, offering modern features and different methods of customer support if you have a technical problem with your account. Many of these tools work on Apple products, too. Here are several for you will want to check out.

Personal Capital Mobile App

The Personal Capital mobile app focuses on where your money is going. It emphasizes investing and saving for retirement.

Personal Capital vs Quicken

You can use Personal Capital in order to track your expenses and investments.

The app also analyzes investing fees and offers suggestions on how to reduce or even avoid them.

On the app’s dashboard, you can view the “forest” of your whole financial picture, and the “tree” of each account is just one tap away.

It’s easy to link this app to your checking, savings, credit and investment accounts too. Plus, you can use the information to calculate your retirement income and optimize asset allocation.

Personal Capital supports iOS and Android versions, and both have two-factor authentication. The top drawbacks of the Personal Capital mobile app are that you cannot use it for managing or paying bills or for tax reporting.

Pricing

The Personal Capital mobile app is free. You can also get 24/7 phone and email support for free.

Status Money

Status Money is ideal for the person who already knows their net worth and wants to compare it to their peers. Its functions include tracking debts, income, spending, investments and credit scores.

Status Money vs Quicken

One of the top advantages of Status Money is the way that it breaks down your debts, assets, spending and income into categories.

Forecasts of future spending are easy to spot so that you can make changes to your habits.

When you log in, it tells you how much you have left for spending in each category.

Most recently, Status Money launched a social app, allowing you to ask questions and build your financial knowledge through the support of a community.

The primary drawback of Status Money is that only desktop access is currently available.

Pricing

Status Money is available for free.

STATUS MONEY SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4.5 out of 5 stars	Pricing: Free Best Feature: Compare Your Financials With Peers Get Started via Status Money secure site

You Need a Budget (YNAB)

YNAB uses a four-pronged approach to your personal finance. Those four prongs are:

1. Stop living paycheck to paycheck
2. Give each dollar a job
3. Save for a rainy day
4. Roll with the punches

It allows you to tell your money where to go. If you like a zero-based budgeting program, then this may be the product for you.

You Need A Budget vs Quicken

YNAB helps you to focus on how you spend your money. If you spend more in a certain category than you allocate, it alerts you through a text on your smartphone.

You have a choice to either connect YNAB to your financial institutions in order to track your spending across different categories or to manually enter your spending. The app also offers investment monitoring.

The two main drawbacks of YNAB are that its investments dashboard does not have as many tools as some of the other apps and that it has fewer options for goal setting or long-term strategies than some of the other products.

Pricing

YNAB charges a low monthly fee. This provides you with access to all features and 24/7 customer support.

If you are a student, you can use YNAB for free. You just need to provide information about your enrollment and wait for verification.

Tiller Money

Tiller Money is a basic spreadsheet tool. It allows you to automatically import your financial data into a Google Sheet and track your monthly income and expenses with standard spreadsheets or sheets that you customize.

One of its features is a debt snowball sheet. It will show you how you can pay off your debts faster and save more money.

Tiller Money vs Quicken

The major pro of Tiller Money is that it automatically updates your custom and standard spreadsheets every day. This means that you get an up-to-date picture of your finances.

The biggest drawback of Tiller Money is that it only works with Google Sheets.

If you prefer a different spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel, there may be a plug-in for it in the future.

Another major drawback is that it is only available on a website. If you use a smartphone, accessing its website could be challenging because of the site’s interface.

Pricing

A low monthly subscription fee is charged by Tiller Money.

TILLER MONEY SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4 out of 5 stars	Pricing: $5 monthly Promo: 30-day Free Trial Requirements: GMail Account Get Started via Tiller Money secure site

Countabout

Countabout is an online budgeting service that allows you to automatically download your transactions and track them.

More than 10,000 financial institutions are already linked. If yours is not linked to Countabout, you can email their support service and request that it be added.

Manual entry of income and expenses is also an option.

Countabout vs Quicken

Countabout is accessible through smartphones and desktop computers.

If you have any data in Quicken or Mint, you can import it. The primary drawback of Countabout is that it does not offer investment tracking or management.

Pricing

Countabout charges an annual fee of $9.99 to $39.99 per year.

The premier membership level gives you access to more customer support and tracking features. A free 15-day trial is available for the basic level of Countabout.

Moneydance

Moneydance is an app that provides you with budgeting and investment-monitoring tools.

The software has been modernized in order to keep up with the proliferation of mobile devices. Its app is programmed to be easy to use.

You can use it to create a budget, keep up with your monthly bills and watch your investments over time.

It can also tell you what is going on with individual stocks, like Google, Amazon, or Netflix, that you own. Link your online banking and billing accounts, or enter your information manually.

Moneydance vs Quicken

If you like graphics, Moneydance could be the right choice for you. Its charts and graphs are formatted with visual learners in mind.

Its ledger layout resembles that of Quicken. If you used to use Quicken, you can import all of your old data to Moneydance.

You can use Moneydance on a desktop computer or a smartphone. It comes in Android, iOS and Linux versions.

Pricing

In order to use Moneydance, you pay a one-time app purchase fee of $49.99. This fee includes unending customer support through chat, email or phone.

Moneyspire

Moneyspire is an app for streamlining your monthly income and expenses.

You can use it in order to track your bills and create a monthly, quarterly or annual budget.

The dashboard screen is easy to use, and you can access all of your information there instead of having to switch back and forth between different parts of the app. Moneyspire also tracks your investments.

Moneyspire vs Quicken

This app is easy to use. The user interface is simple and features a lot of charts.

If it is your first time using a personal finance software or an app product, you will quickly advance through the learning curve.

Moneyspire is available on Windows, Mac and Linux for desktop devices. The biggest drawback is that there is only an iOS mobile version. The company offers no Android support.

Pricing

You can try Moneyspire for free for 30 days. If you like it, you can pay a one-time fee of $59 for either the desktop software or the iOS app.

If you get the Mac software, it will link to the app, and you will not have to pay twice.

Pocketsmith

Pocketsmith advertises itself as a time machine for your money. It is configured for young people who are new to budgeting.

Its mobile environment is accessible on mobile devices, and the user interface is intuitive.

Pocketsmith features account tracking for your checking, savings and student loan accounts. You can link it with any bank accounts for automatic updates.

You also have the option to enter your income and expenses manually.

PocketSmith vs Quicken

One of the top pros of Pocketsmith is its calendar function. The calendar allows you to track recurring costs such as your rent or student loan payments. It color-codes them for you so that you know what is due and when you have to pay it.

It will generate income and expense reports. You can use these to track your expenses by category.

Pocketsmith is available on a website for use on your desktop or laptop computer. You can also use the iOS or Android app versions on your smartphone.

The biggest drawback of Pocketsmith is that you cannot use it for investment tracking. If you have investments, you will have to use a different app or piece of software to view them.

Pricing

Pocketsmith is available for a free 30-day trial. If you like it, the monthly cost is $19.95.

Best Quicken Alternatives Summary

Now that you know about the best alternatives to Quicken, you can compare their features, contrast their prices and make an informed decision.

Each piece of personal finance software offers different benefits, and some are more beginner-friendly than others.

When you make your choice, keep in mind your patience for learning new software, the amount of time that you have to spend on it and how much detail you want out of the product.

The article Best Quicken Alternatives was originally posted on Investormint

If you ever wondered how you were doing financially compared to your peers, Status Money, aka Status, can provide you with insights related to your net worth, spending, debt, and income levels.

Unlike most budgeting apps that help you to track your individual income and spending patterns, Status aggregates data from all users to provide peer comparisons without compromising the privacy of any user.

Previously if you wanted to compare your wealth, you were restricted to sites like Glassdoor, which provides salary comparisons.

What makes Status different is that you can see how much you spend in various categories compared to people in your age group and area.

You also get to see a breakdown of your mortgage, credit card, and student loan debt and how it fares relative to others. Plus, you can view your credit score free without hurting it because a soft check (as opposed to a hard credit check) is performed.

We found few budgeting tools to be as easy to use, polished, and insightful as Status. Mint, YNAB, and Personal Capital have a new serious competitor.

Status Money Spotlight

STATUS MONEY SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4.5 out of 5 stars	Pricing: Free Best Feature: Compare Your Financials With Peers Get Started via Status Money secure site

What Is Status Money?

Status is a personal finance management company designed to help you manage your finances using the wisdom of the crowd. That’s a fancy way of saying it gathers financial information from you and others to better understand averages among your peers.

So, if you wanted to know whether you are saving more money than people of a similar age, making more or less, and shouldering more or less debt, Status can tell you.

Status syncs with your TransUnion® credit file too so you can anonymously compare not only your finances with millions of others but also identify how your credit ranks.

Low credit scores can translate into higher interest rate payments on borrowings so Status also helps you to learn how to boost your creditworthiness in order to be viewed more favorably by lenders.

Having been founded by two data scientists, Majd Maksad and Korash Hernandez, it is no surprise that Status does an excellent job crunching through massive amounts of financial data to provide you with insights in natural language to help you easily find opportunities to save money. And best of all, it’s 100% free!

GET STARTED WITH STATUS MONEY FREE

Is Status Right For You?

Many budgeting apps are excellent at helping you to manage your individual finances. You can quickly discover how much you have spent on rent, groceries, and entertainment as a percentage of your income.

You can also find out how much debt you have relative to your salary.

And you can spot spending irregularities and plan for spikes in spending, like birthdays and vacations. But you can’t see how your finances compare to those of other people.

Knowing what other people pay is more than a voyeuristic thrill. You may be overpaying for financial services and waste money unnecessarily by paying higher interest rates, and hidden fees, which you could more quickly identify by comparing your financial habits to those of your peers.

Founder and CEO of Status Money, Majd Maksad stated that “most people don’t track their own interest rates and don’t know if their interest rates are competitive compared with other people” so Status can help by showing you if you are earning low interest rates on savings or paying too much when servicing debt.

Status can apply to anyone regardless of income level or spending preferences. It aims to help everyone save money by gathering insights from all its users.

Status pools financial data and securely reveals to you how your finances compare to those of anonymous people like you who have a similar age, live in the same city, earn a similar income, and have similar housing situations and credit scores.

For example, you can find out if you are spending more at restaurants or paying higher interest rates as people with similar income levels.

You can quickly see if you are earning less than your peers too. You can even create custom groups to compare the cost of living in different cities and see how much homeowners in your city are paying in mortgage costs.

A visual feature we found especially valuable is how wealth is distributed across the U.S. so, for example, someone with a net worth of $50,000 will discover that they rank in the top quarter of all Americans (they are better off than 77% of Americans).

So, is Status right for you? If you want your finances automatically analyzed with a view to boosting earnings on savings, lowering interest rate charges on debt, and maximizing net worth then Status can help to:

• View your credit score without affecting it
• Receive recommendations to help save money
• Compare your finances with your peers
• Track your net worth and see all your financial accounts in one place
• Create trackers to manage spending and income to maximize net worth

If you are in the top 1% of Americans by wealth, Status may not be especially valuable to you but as a personal financial management tool for most everyone else, Status is well worth exploring.

GET STARTED WITH STATUS MONEY FREE

How Status Money Works

Getting started with Status is fast and simple. It begins by creating a username and password, and is followed by entering information related to your financial accounts. We found it fast and simple to enter multiple bank accounts simultaneously.

Security is a top priority for Status, who claim to use bank level security protocols, such as encrypting user data. Status uses Yodlee (a top tier third party) to aggregate data and TransUnion® to verify your identity.

Once you sign into the platform, you will see a dashboard that compares your finances to those of your peers and national averages. You can even create custom groups to compare your financial situation to a specific target group whose age, location, credit score, housing situation, and income you can specify.

The dashboard is visually appealing and easy to follow. You get to see immediately your net worth, your national ranking, and opportunities to improve your financials. Paying too much in bank fees? Status will inform you right away!

Next, you will see how your spending looks over the past month and how it compares to peer averages. In each step, you are prompted to learn more and improve upon your financial situation. For example, you can see how your credit card spending compares to people like you as well as to national averages.

Status provides comparisons on how you your debts and assets compare too. Similarly, your net worth and credit score are visually displayed.

GET STARTED WITH STATUS MONEY FREE

What Can Status Do For You?

Budget Smarter

You don’t need to be a W-2 salaried employee to take advantage of Status. If you earn interest on savings or dividends from investments, Status is smart enough to combine all your income streams.

We tried to fool Status by entering an incorrect income level but its algorithms spotted the attempt and informed us that our input salary did not match bank account data.

While this may seem like a trivial item, it is valuable in particular to retirees who may assume a combined income each year that is higher than their true incomes.

For example, if a company lowers or cuts its dividend payments, you may not know about the change unless you closely track your investments but Status would reveal that your true income is lower than your estimated income which would alert you that you need to investigate further.

Status goes a step further than most budgeting apps also. It forecasts future spending and income patterns by analyzing past data. This can be helpful in anticipating spikes in spending that hit your bank balance infrequently, such as birthday gifts or vacations.

Like other budgeting apps, such as Personal Capital and Mint, Status will also break down your spending into categories so you have greater insight into how and where you are allocating your money.

Get Notified When Spending Limits Hit

Like Mint, Status will notify you when you exceed a threshold level of spending for a particulate category.

For example, if you want to allocate $500 to spending on groceries in the month, Status will alert you if you go over budget.

This can be helpful to reign in spending in another category. For example, you might have a $200 entertainment budget that you could reduce for the month so you remain on track with your overall budget.

Target Income Goals

As a salaried employee, it may be difficult to exercise much control over your income but that shouldn’t stop you from setting income goals to target a raise or a bonus at work.

If you are a self-employed worker, you could more easily target higher income goals by modifying your work schedule or perhaps taking on some extra work.

Personal Balance Sheet

Companies keep track of their assets and liabilities on balance sheets and so too can you keep track of what you own and owe on a personal balance sheet.

Status buckets all your cash reserves into a single item called Assets alongside any homes, cars, or investments you own.

So too will Status lump your student, mortgage, and personal loans into a single grouping called Debts alongside any credit card debt.

By combining your assets and debts, you can quickly see your personal balance sheet which allows you to target lower debt and boost assets.

GET STARTED WITH STATUS MONEY FREE

Status Money Pros and Cons

Status Money Team

Status was founded by Majd Maksad and Korash Hernandez.

Status CEO Majd Maksad was formerly the Head of Decision Management for Citi Global Digital Payments while Status COO, Korash Hernandez, was formerly a Vice President at Goldman Sachs.

Having been founded in New York in 2016, the team is still small but during our research we found team members came from top tier Fintech companies, such as On Deck.

Status Money Reviews Summary

Online Dashboard Tracks Progress

Status offers an easy-to-use dashboard that can help you reduce your debt more quickly.

The dashboard is simple to navigate and allows you to easily see all of your debt and compare it both to your peers and to people across the country as well as alert you to programs you could take advantage of to reduce your debt.

Status tracks your debt automatically so as you pay it off you can see it shrink right from your Status dashboard, giving you that extra bit of motivation you need to reduce your debt faster.

All of your debts are included. So whether you are trying to pay off a mortgage, student loan, credit card, or all of the above, you can track it from your Status dashboard.

You can also compare interest rates with people across the United States, which tells you whether you are paying too much in interest. If you are, you might consider refinancing.

The dashboard also tracks all of your income, assets, and spending, so you can see where you are overspending and re-allocate some of that money towards paying off your debt.

Best of all, it’s simple to find the information you need using Status. Just sign in and click around your dashboard. This makes it a lot easier to stay on track.

Many people are anxious or afraid when it comes to dealing with debt and will give up if they can’t do what they need to easily. But since Status is so easy to use, you’ll be more willing to stick with it. You might even find that you enjoy looking at your Status dashboard every day.

Get Credit Card Deals from Status

If you’re in debt, you might be wondering how credit card deals can help you. But there is a way, and Status offers it.

Some credit cards offer 0% balance transfers and lower interest rates than other credit cards. So if you find a card like that through Status, you can transfer your credit card debt and pay less while you are paying it off.

It’s best to only use this credit card to pay down your existing debt rather than adding new debt to your portfolio. But if you search through the deals Status offers, you might find the perfect card to help you save money on your existing debt.

You won’t get investment tracking as you would with some others too (Personal Capital shines in this area) nor bill payment functionality (where Mint is best). However, what Status does better than its rivals is provide data insights relative to people like you so you can better assess how you are doing relative to peers who are the same age, earning a similar income, and living in the same area as you.

As a free tool that doesn’t ding your credit score when you sign up, Status is well worth checking out.

GET STARTED WITH STATUS MONEY FREE

The article Status Money Review – Compare Your Wealth! was originally posted on Investormint

Moneydance is a budgeting tool that helps you track spending and income across numerous financial accounts, including bank, credit card, investment and loan accounts.

Whether you are sitting at your desk or on-the-go with an iPhone or Android device, Moneydance lets you view balances, enter and edit transactions, and generally stay on top of your finances.

If you struggle to stay within budget from week to week when spending on utilities, groceries, rent, food, and other day-to-day items, Moneydance provides the notifications and reminders needed to keep you on track financially.

With so many budgeting apps on the market, it may be hard to know whether you are selecting the right one for your needs, so Moneydance earns brownie points for providing a free trial that lets you get started at no risk and a 90-day money back guarantee.

Moneydance Spotlight

Why Choose Moneydance?

Before getting to the many ways in which Moneydance shines, let’s first start with the gorilla in the room, where it falls short.

If you visited the Moneydance website, which is now operated by The Infinite Kind company, you would be forgiven for thinking the website lacks polish.

In a world where Apple-like simplicity and design is the norm, Moneydance has the feel of a cluttered website. But if you can get past the so-so first impression, you will find much to like.

AUTOMATIC BANK SYNCHRONIZATION

If the thought of manually typing into a spreadsheet every financial transaction you have made over the past 12 months seems daunting, then Moneydance can save you time and hassle.

You can automatically download financial transactions and send payments online from hundreds of financial institutions.

Plus, Moneydance learns how to automatically categorize and clean up financial transactions.

DASHBOARD VIEW

If you are like most people, you probably have a bunch of accounts that you log on to regularly, including bank accounts, credit card accounts, and loan accounts.

Wouldn’t it be nice to view all your financial accounts in one place on a single dashboard?

Moneydance provides an overview of your finances so you can get a holistic view of your financial situation at a glance, including:

• Account balances
• Upcoming and overdue transactions and reminders
• Exchange rate information

By keeping all your accounts in one place, you can spot whether any transactions have been processed in error and any fraud has taken place on any account.

You can also reconcile any accounts against financial statements as well as enter new transaction details.

VISUAL REPORTING

Spending can creep up on you and leave you short of cash to pay bills if you are not keeping a close eye on where your money is going.

Moneydance makes it easy to visualize how much money is being spent on what areas over a particular time period.

In its Graphs & Reports section, you can view income and spending quickly for any time period.

And you can display the finer details about your spending habits by hovering your mouse over expense items.

Plus, if you want to save or print files, it’s quick and easy.

MANAGE TRANSACTIONS

If you spot something out of whack in any financial account, you can make changes or enter new data altogether if necessary.

You can think of it as a digital representation of balancing an offline checkbook, except that balances and sorting of transactions is done automatically for you.

ALERT NOTIFICATIONS

Late fees are more than a pesky nuisance. At the end of each year, if you were to add up how much you pay in penalties by not making timely bill payments you might be surprised how much it costs you.

The idea behind Moneydance Reminders is to set notifications to remind you when a bill payment is due.

You can schedule reminders for both single and recurring transactions.

MOBILE ACCESS

Whether you are an Apple or Android user, Moneydance syncs your financials across devices to allow you to view your accounts on your desktop at home or when you are on-the-go.

Changes are synced right away and securely with your desktop to ensure you don’t experience any version control issues with out of date data.

INVESTMENT TRACKING

While budgeting apps are common, few provide investment account support.

Moneydance stands apart from many of its rivals by making it easy to track stocks, bonds, CDs, and mutual funds.

You can see your overall account values as well as the performance of individual securities.

Plus, data that can ordinarily be difficult to keep track of, such as stock splits and cost basis computations, are tracked automatically.

Moneydance Bonus Features

Over and above the standard features, Moneydance has some perks for Quicken users and subscribers with financial accounts in multiple countries.

MULTIPLE CURRENCY SUPPORT

Moneydance can support multiple currencies so if you have accounts in different currency regions, you can convert them to a single currency.

IMPORT & EXPORT DATA

Budgeting apps are designed to save you the time and the hassle of manually importing transaction data. At Moneydance, you can import multiple file formats from other budgeting tools, including OFX, QFX, and QIF.

How Moneydance Works

Whether you are a Mac, Windows, or Linux user, Moneydance caters to all formats.

MAC

Download the app and click the zip file. Drag Moneydance from your Downloads folder to your Applications folder and double-click it, and then you are good to go!

WINDOWS

You can choose to download the Windows Installer 32-bit or 64-bit. Once downloaded, simply double-click the file and the app will install on your desktop.

LINUX

After downloading, simply double-click the moneydance_linux_x86.deb file to install.

The installer usually places the file in /opt/Moneydance but the GUI-based installers will prompt you for the location to install Moneydance.

Moneydance Review: Pros and Cons

Moneydance wins points for connecting more than bank accounts, credit cards, and loan accounts – it also supports investment accounts. Plus, it acts as a very good substitute for Quicken for Mac. Plus, Moneydance is supported on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

The Benefits of Using Moneydance

Moneydance’s flexibility makes it a great option for people interested in:

• Creating household budgets
• Getting bill-payment reminders
• Tracking investments

Moneydance conveniently gathers into one place your financial information relating to bank accounts, credit cards, and investment portfolios.

Having so much information in one location makes it easier for people without accounting experience to monitor their finances.

Moneydance also uses color-coding and graphs to make financial information more digestible for consumers.

What You Need To Know

While Moneydance cooperates with most financial and investment accounts, it has trouble importing data from other financial apps. For example, many customers find it difficult to import information from Quicken.

If you currently use software like Quicken, then you will need to take a close look at Moneydance’s imported data to find duplicate and missing items.

The wealth of information that Moneydance gives you can also make it difficult to find the items that you want.

The graphs certainly help when reviewing investments and spending habits. But if you want to find a specific bill payment, you may have to wade through a lot of entries before you find the right one.

Moneydance Review Summary

Moneydance is an accounting and budgeting app that helps people take control of their finances.

It competes with similar accounting software options like Quicken, You Need a Budget, and Mint.

Is Moneydance a Good Value for the Price?

Moneydance charges $49.99 per year. A free trial limited is available up to 100 manually entered transactions, so you can give it a test drive to decide whether you want to buy the app.

Compared to Quicken and similar apps, $49.99 is a fair price considering that you get tools for budgeting, investing, and paying bills on time. Quicken charges about the same price for these services.

You can, however, find free apps like Mint and Personal Capital that work equally well.

You may not get as many features from the free apps, but that may not matter much depending on your needs.

Regardless, you should explore your options and take advantage of Moneydance’s free trial before you pay for the software.

Open a Moneydance Account

The article Moneydance Review 2020 – A Quicken Alternative was originally posted on Investormint

If you’re a small business owner, mobile apps can streamline your financial management processes, simplify taxation, and optimize payroll.

The best financial apps will also help you make smarter decisions in a quicker timeframe. Here are four apps that you need to know about in 2019.

1. QuickBooks

Available for iPhone and Android devices, QuickBooks has a financial management app that makes accounting a breeze.

Whether you are preparing for tax day, tracking income and expenditure, or sorting out payroll, QuickBooks will help you manage your business from your smartphone or tablet.

Need to track your finances on the move? QuickBooks lets you monitor customer information, taxes, and expenditure from your device wherever you are in the world.

Plus, you can send professional invoices to customers and clients with a swipe of a finger. Other features include receipt capture, profit and loss reports, and balance sheet reports.

The QuickBooks mobile app is free with your QuickBooks online subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, you can try out the platform for free for 30 days.

>> Check Out Spent App

2. Xero

Xero, one of the world’s largest accounting platforms, has a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices. Bursting with features, this app lets you send invoices to customers, create receipts, and run your business from a remote location.

The Xero app also makes locating customer information easy. You can find addresses, phone numbers, and other contact details quickly and even customize your contacts. Unlike some other accounting apps, you can control who accesses financial information in your organization. This way, only approved members of your team can read your personal data.

You can also track income and expenditure from the Xero app. As a result, you will be able to budget more effectively and control how much you spend in your business.

>> Do You Need A Budget?

3. Zoho Books

With the Zoho Books accounting app, you can manage your finances from your iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone. Track mileage and expenses, monitor income, and view transactions in real time.

If you want greater financial insights into your business, the Zoho Books accounting app provides you with all the information you need.

Unlike some apps, Zoho Books has a simple interface that makes it easy to streamline your financial information. You can also use the app across multiple devices.

If you have an account with Zoho Books, you can download their mobile app for free.

>> Budget Smarter With The Personal Capital Mobile App

4. TurboTax

When tax day is looming, you need an app that you can rely on. This is where TurboTax comes in. Now you can sort out your taxes on your smartphone or tablet without any of the fuss.

With the TurboTax app, you can take a photo of your W-2 form and let the app place your information into the correct tax documents. You can also claim tax refunds, review your returns, and communicate with tax experts in your industry.

There’s no need to worry about your security, either. TurboTax protects your data so you can submit your financial information securely.

These four financial management apps for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone will revolutionize the way you run your small business.

Now, you can track income, spending, and customer information on the go and facilitate payroll and tax from your smartphone or tablet.

The article 4 of the Best Financial Management Apps for 2020 was originally posted on Investormint

While Quicken is a top-rated personal financial management system that tracks your income and spending activities, and monitors your financial well being, it is best for Microsoft Windows users.

Banktivity is a robust financial tool that aims to win over Mac users with daily updates on everything from your net worth to property value, but is it the right option for you?

In this Banktivity review you’ll discover everything you need to know to make the right decision.

Banktivity Spotlight

What Is Banktivity?

Banktivity is a viable alternative to Quicken 2018 for Mac owners who want to get a better grip on their finances.

The Banktivity software makes bill paying, expense tracking, and budgeting easy for individuals.

If you ever used Quicken on Windows and switched to a Mac, chances are Banktivity will be more user-friendly because it is exclusively designed for Mac OS.

Banktivity simplifies data imports from Quicken so that you can bypass some of those time sinks associated with other budgeting apps.

However, once you import your financial data to your Mac, you must take additional steps to enter it into the appropriate categories on Banktivity.

You can then sync your PC to your iPhone or iPad with a free app so that you don’t have to enter everything more than once.

How Banktivity Works

Unlike Quicken, which is a subscription-based service, Banktivity charges a one-time fee – though you must purchase software upgrades too. Some additional optional functions also have associated fees.

To get started with Banktivity, you must enter financial data from your records or from the program you were previously using. Banktivity can then get started managing your money.

It will track your investments, sync to your mobile devices, can handle multiple currencies and also export reports easily.

Banktivity Features

Banktivity offers a full menu of features that will likely cover most, if not all, of your financial management needs.

Do you Struggle To Keep Track Of Expenses?

The calendar shows you all of your real-time data at a glance, including your current account balances, your transactions as they post, your scheduled payments, and your investments’ latest figures.

The calendar feature is customizable according to which accounts you would like to post and which you want to exclude.

Start Budgeting Today >>

Automatic Bill Payment

This feature lets you submit your payments electronically once you set it up for your accounts with your banks.

In case of money emergencies, it is simple to cancel a pending payment.

Set Budgeting Goals

At the heart of your Banktivity budget are those predictable events such as payday and bill pay.

When you enter other income and expenses, it’s a cinch to display graphs and charts that offer a full view of your financial situation.

The Category Budgeting feature helps you plan up to a year in advance, setting goals for big purchases or savings.

With the popular Envelope Budgets option, you can create a virtual envelope for each recurring payment, for your various income streams, and for each expense, such as groceries or eating out.

Import Financial Data Easily

When you import transactions, Banktivity notifies you when transactions match others already in the system, helping you to avoid duplicates that can affect the accuracy of your balances.

For banking data imports, Banktivity uses the common Open Financial Exchange file format that is compatible with many online banking sites.

You can use your Banktivity browser to import your account information from Quicken, Microsoft Money, or other financial software, and you can use the “Update Everything” function to make your information current.

Investment Tracking

Banktivity is great for organizing and tracking your investments, including individual stocks and bonds, mutual funds and ETFs, certificates of deposit and money market accounts, and commodities and options.

You can even create a watchlist for those securities you want to keep an eye on.

Plus, Banktivity’s investment feature will download quotes, generate status reports, and gather information you need for the IRS.

>> Compare with Personal Capital

Get The Big Picture

Make sense of your financial profile with a number of report types to choose from, including a net worth summary.

The dashboard displays quick stats like bank balances, outstanding bills, deposits, investment growth, and savings rate.

More details are visible by visiting a specific account page.

A new feature in Banktivity 7 is a tool for comparing a specific set of financials two years in a row.

For instance, you can see if you really did spend more on holiday gifts this year over the previous year.

With a few clicks, a report and corresponding visuals like graphs appear.

Banktivity lets you export select data to a spreadsheet or, alternatively, organize reports into folders for future reference.

Access Banktivity On The Go

Separately available apps enable you to sync Banktivity with your other Apple devices, such as your Apple watch, iPhone, or iPad.

This feature makes it more convenient to check your budget when considering a big-ticket purchase and enter purchases mid-spree.

Other Perks

The Banktivity Workspace displays multiple screens on a single page, so it’s easy to compare various data side by side rather than toggling back and forth.

The app’s Real Estate feature provides the latest market value of the property you own.

The software makes finding particular entries less time-consuming, too, by tagging each one as it comes in.

You can customize and cross-reference with these tags when entries overlap. For example, those dozen roses you purchased for Valentine’s Day could be tagged both as a gift and as a grocery purchase.

Also, as a Mac user, certain features are designed to take advantage of your hardware. For example, Banktivity works optimally on a 64-bit framework, and it sources your Mac’s retina display to deliver enhanced graphics.

Start Budgeting Today >>

Banktivity Pricing

Although you can get the basic download for under $70, chances are you will need a couple of add-ons to get the most from the software.

If you already own a previous version of the personal finance manager, you can upgrade to the latest version for about $35.

If you want current info on your bank balances, loans, and investments at a glance, you need to purchase Direct Access, which is a tool that synchronizes your Banktivity platform with your financial institutions, investment brokerages, and other pertinent accounts.

The cost for Direct Access is around $50 in addition to the initial download.

Sync your Apple devices at no cost with the Banktivity mobile app.

The comprehensive iPad app will set you back about $20.

Banktivity Pros and Cons

Banktivity Alternatives

Quicken

Even though the annual subscription fee for a premium Quicken account is roughly equivalent to the initial purchase cost for Banktivity, Quicken provides free periodic upgrades while Banktivity does not.

The Quicken app is free to subscribers.

Besides Quicken, several other financial apps compete with Banktivity.

Which one works the best for you depends on what you want to spend, the complexity of your finances, and how much time you have invest in setting up your account.

Mint

Mint is a top-rated, comprehensive financial tracking app from Intuit that is free to use.

The trade-off is that advertising peppers dashboard screens.

Mint no longer offers bill pay or account reconciliation, but it does provide credit score monitoring and budget utilities.

You Need A Budget

YNAB, which stands for You Need a Budget, is another top financial management app designed to help you make the most of your income and live within your budget.

It features an accountability partner that keeps you within your budgetary parameters. It also offers online classes that teach the basics of budgeting.

Acorns

Acorns is a user-friendly personal finance manager that squirrels away a little savings at a time.

It skims pennies from your purchases and payments by rounding them up to the nearest dollar, and it then harvests the difference and puts it to work for you.

Acorns is free if you are a college student or around $12 per year if you are not.

Personal Capital

Personal Capital is an excellent Banktivity alternative.

It is both a budgeting app and a robo-advisor, so if you also want your money invested automatically it’s probably your best bet.

Banktivity Review Summary

Whether you are just getting started with personal finance management or you are ready to upgrade your current platform, Banktivity is definitely worth exploring.

Designed for Apple users, it is an excellent alternative to Quicken users who switched from Windows to Macs.

It is free to try and comes with a 90 day risk-free guarantee so there is no reason not to give it a whirl and test drive it.

Once you’ve synced your accounts, you’ll receive a holistic view of your finances alongside top notch reporting, goal setting features, and even investment tracking.

Start Budgeting Today >>

The article Banktivity Review – Budgeting For Mac Users was originally posted on Investormint

SPENT Money is an app designed for freelancers and business owners to manage business and personal expenses easily.

Just as Tinder popularized the idea of swiping left or right in its mobile dating app, SPENT uses swipes to categorize personal and business expenses: left for personal, right for business.

Where the app deserves your close attention is its cash back program. Each time you make a personal or business purchase at any one of over one million places, you qualify for cash back over and above what you earn with an existing credit card.

Earning an extra few percentage points of cash back on each purchase might not seem like a lot but combine it with an existing credit card cash back program and it could quickly add up to some serious money.

Plus, SPENT Money has tons of budgeting tools to help keep your finances on track, including receipt capture, expense categorizations, analytics, as well as business deduction tracking.

The bottom line is if you struggle as a business owner or freelancer to keep track of your organizational and personal expenses, SPENT Money simplifies your budgeting and earns you surplus cash back for the cost of a cup of coffee per user monthly.

SPENT Money Spotlight

What Is SPENT Money?

SPENT Money is a budgeting and rewards tool available both online and via mobile devices. It is designed to help business owners, freelancers, and employees in three primary ways:

• Track purchases
• Manage expenses
• Earn cash back

The idea is to use the simplicity of swiping left or right to categorize expenses and earn rewards over and above what may be available through existing credit cards.

Whether you use an iPhone, Android phone, or prefer online access, SPENT is accessibile.

SPENT Money incorporates Empyr technology to track cash back rewards when you spend at any one of over 1,000,000 eligible merchants, so you can potentially earn surplus cash rewards over and above what your credit card already provides.

How SPENT Money Works

Getting started with the SPENT app is very straightforward. Start by selecting whether you are a business owner, employee, or freelancer.

To verify your email address, you will be sent a verification code.

If you are a business owner, you will be prompted next to connect your business accounts.

If you signed up online, you will need to visit the App Store as an iPhone user or Google Play store if you are an Android user in order to download the SPENT app to connect your credit cards.

However, you can add employees online in a web-based browser, as well as track spending in various categories, such as auto & transport, bills & utilities, business services, education, entertainment, fees & charges, financial, food & dining, gifts & donations, health & fitness, home, income, investments, kids, personal care, pets, shopping, taxes, transfer, travel and uncategorized expenses.

SPENT alerts you when you have new expenses that need to be categorized. All you need to do is swipe left for a personal expense and right for a business expense.

You will be prompted to create folders to organize expenses and scan receipts. Unlike Personal Capital, which is designed primarily for personal use and automatically categorizes expenses for you, SPENT requires some manual input. However, there is no easy way around this drawback because on a business trip you or your employees may be spending money on both business and personal items.

When you are logged in, you can easily explore the partner cash back rewards offers to help save you money.

Partners include well-known brand name retailers, such as Walmart, Gap, and Best Buy, as well as Staples, Office Depot, Groupon, Target, Macy’s and one million other merchants.

How Much Is Spent Money?

SPENT Money offers two pricing packages depending on the level of service you need.

The Basic package offers a ton of service at no cost but if you want integration with Quickbooks as well as reimbursement functionality, it will cost $4 per user monthly as part of the Pro version.

Integration with Xero and Freshbooks is on the roadmap but not yet available.

SPENT Money Pros and Cons

SPENT Money is a budgeting tool with a twist – it caters to both business and personal expenses. It is free to use unless you want advanced functionality and has the added bonus of connecting users to over one million merchants to earn additional cash back rewards. However, it is not compatible with most bookkeeping software – Quickbooks is the exception.

>> Related: Check Out Mint For Budgeting

How Secure Is SPENT Money?

To ensure your information remains secure and private, SPENT provides bank-level security with passcodes and TouchID (iOS) protected logins.

HTTPS 256-bit encryption is used to ensure secure and private communications.

And any transaction information linked to imported transactions that SPENT receives is in read-only form.

SPENT Money Review Summary

SPENT Money is a budgeting tool with a twist. While most budgeting apps serve individuals or businesses exclusively, SPENT caters to both.

If you are a business owner, freelancer, or employee who has ever been frustrated with expense management tracking and receipt capture, SPENT is designed for you. Plus, the basic package is 100% free and the Pro version of the tool is just $4 per user monthly.

Although the app lacks integration more broadly with Xero, Freshbooks, and other bookkeeping tools, the cash back rewards network more than makes up for the shortfall.

Categorizing expenses as business or personal is easy too, though manually creating folders is a bit more cumbersome. Still, the overall experience is sufficiently compelling to earn your attention and explore how it can streamline your financial budgeting.

Open a Spent Account

The article SPENT App Review 2020 – Swipe Right On Business Expenses was originally posted on Investormint

It’s almost impossible not to fall in love with the budgeting tool called You Need A Budget, or YNAB for short. A quick bounce around the YNAB website will be enough to give you positive vibes that this is a company that knows how to make budgeting fun.

YNAB is an online budgeting software with humble roots that has grown into one of the most popular destinations online to plan your monthly finances.

It’s free to give it a shot (for 34 days) and YNAB claims the average user saves about $600 by month two and $6,000 per year using the tool – a handsome return on investment considering the monthly cost works out to be just $4.17 after the free trial.

More than tools, you get daily workshops which span a range of helpful topics to improve your finances; everything from mastering credit cards to paying down debt is covered.

Plus, as a community member, you receive extensive support and resources, including a weekly newsletter, 250+ podcasts about budgeting smarter, and weekly videos.

As budgeting tools go, it’s hard to find a whole lot not to like about YNAB, so if you struggle to allocate your paycheck well, or ever found yourself short of money to pay bills, you won’t go far wrong by checking it out.

YNAB Spotlight

What Is YNAB?

YNAB is a budgeting software designed to help you save more and pay down debt.

The company started out more humbly as a project for husband and wife team, Jesse and Julie, to pay for food, shelter, and books while in college.

Jesse developed a four-point system to help the couple manage their finances:

1. Decide what to do with money before spending it
2. Break up large, infrequent expenses into monthly bills
3. Modify the budget as needed
4. Spend only money that is thirty days “old”

The simple rules worked so well for the couple that they decided to share their budgeting approach with others, who also found it helpful in paying off debt and spending smarter. And from there the rest is history as they say: YouNeedABudget launched formally as a company in 2004!

Since it began, YNAB has grown to a 50+ employee business that serves clients in the U.S. and internationally, and proudly claims that almost 4 out of every 5 employees started out as YNAB customers.

>> Related: Check Out Power Wallet Budgeting Tool

How YNAB Works

Connect your bank accounts to YNAB, which syncs all your financial information across devices, automatically categorizes your spending, and tracks your progress towards financial goals.

The first step in getting started with YNAB is to connect your bank accounts.

Whether you use Chase, Bank of America, PNC, Wells Fargo, or any one of over 12,000 other banks, YNAB syncs with them all, so all your accounts are visible in one easy-to-view dashboard.

Whether you are online or on-the-go, YNAB syncs all your financial information across devices, so you can share easily with a partner or simply check online or via your iPhone or Android device without worrying about version control issues.

Once you have your account set up, you can set financial goals, such as to pay down debt or save a specific amount. For example, you can set a goal to pay down $3,000 worth of debt over the next 3 months.

You will also be alerted when you have spent more than you allocated to a particular category.

Where YNAB shines is in goal-setting. It turns your financial budgeting into a virtual game where you can track your progress against specific achievable outcomes.

The idea is to allocate money towards regular bills, such as auto insurance, rent or mortgage, internet, cell phone, gas & electric, and so on. Then YNAB helps you to track your progress in percentage terms compared to each goal.

As you continually make progress, you can view on pie-charts and graphs how you are doing, as well as how you are allocating money to one category compared to others.

For example, you can see how much of your income is being spent on home & utilities, as well as your total spending for the current month and average monthly spending.

What Are YNAB Rules?

YNAB has created four rules designed to help you spend less than you earn, so when unexpected expenses crop up, you won’t have the same financial concerns or stresses.

To make sure you stay on track with your budgeting, YNAB specifies rules that re-shape your spending habits and probably how you think about money.

It starts by deciding what you want to do with money when you get it. As simple as that seems, most people get money and, as spending opportunities crop up, they fritter it away haphazardly.

YNAB encourages you to essentially put a boundary around your money. So, if you had $3,000, maybe $100 is allocated to your phone bill, $1,400 to a mortgage payment, and $180 to utilities, and so on.

When you pre-assign your dollars to known payments, you know precisely how much you have available to treat yourself to new purchases, entertainment, or dining out.

So, Rule One boils down to:

1. Get some dollars
2. Prioritize those dollars
3. Follow the plan

The big idea behind Rule One is that if you get a work bonus say of $1,000, you don’t rush out to buy a luxurious watch and a new pair of shoes only to get hit with a bill you can’t afford a week later, but instead you should first check the amount you had put aside to spoil yourself and forego the watch purchase in order to be stress-free when the bill comes in.

With Rule One successfully navigated, you can move on to Rule Two, which is summarized as: Embrace Your True Expenses.

The idea is to plan for the unexpected, and true cost of living. From time to time, your car may break down, or you will take a vacation, or buy presents for loved ones, and yet none of these feature in regular monthly expenses – instead they crop up from time to time and can come as a financial shock, which may require you to resort to a credit card.

To escape the financial roller-coaster, YNAB helps you think about these predictable and large, yet infrequent, expenses as “monthly bills” similar to regular expenditures.

If you did not pay attention to Rule Two, you might think you are doing really well by paying your cable bill, car payment, and food expenses but when an auto insurance payment bill arrives you are stuck for money.

By putting aside an extra $100 every month or so in anticipation of the insurance bill, when it arrives it won’t come as a shock.

Rule Three is labeled Roll With The Punches, and it draws its inspiration from the world of boxing. Professional boxers move their bodies in the direction of oncoming punches, and the idea is to apply the same rules when budgeting: be flexible and address overspending as it happens.

Let’s say you budgeted $80 to spend on gas for the month and you also budgeted $80 to spend on buying a new pair of sneakers. It turns out that oil prices shot up and you spent $100 on gas, so you overspent by $20, what should you do?

Simple! Take $20 from your sneakers budget and apply it to the amount spent on gas.

Now you only have $60 to spend on sneakers but overall your budget is balanced, even though you overspent in one category.

The final rule, Rule Four, is titled: Age Your Money.

The big idea is to spend money you earned last month so you don’t have to stress about payments this month.

The goal is to spend money that is at least 30 days old so you use last month’s pay on this month’s expenses.

The other three rules are designed to help you spend less than you earn. In this final rule, you can get to the point of paying May’s rent with April’s dollars.

Without Rule Four, you risk always paying bills that are due this month with the pay you earn in the current month.

It means timing bills to paychecks every period, and risks becomes stressful because unexpected expenses can force you to rely on expensive financing options, such as personal loans or credit card debt.

By using Rule Four, the idea is to be stress free because paying bills that are due causes no concern because you have money to spare this month.

YNAB Pros and Cons

YNAB is a low-cost budgeting tool that provides you a free trial for 34 days and syncs with approximately 12,000 banks, though it doesn’t track investments.

YNAB FAQ

When you get started with YNAB, you receive a complimentary 30-day guarantee.

You can find tutorials on their Contact Us page that feature answers to common questions at the outset, including:

• How exactly do I get started?
• Help! I can’t connect my bank account
• How do I import a file from my bank?

• How do I make a credit card payment?
• I need help reconciling my accounts
• Should I put my savings in my budget?

YNAB is compatible on both MAC and PC computers as well as on iPhones (iOS) and Android phones.

YNAB Summary

If you struggle to budget and find yourself strapped for cash to pay bills regularly, YNAB is a software tool designed to help you be more systematic about your spending.

The idea is to allocate all your money ahead of time so you know precisely how much you can spend on each billing category over the course of the month, and to plan ahead for infrequent, yet large and predictable bills, such as vacations, presents, and repairs on a car or home.

For the cost of a cup of coffee each month, YNAB claims it can save the average customer as much as $600 by month two and $6,000 over the course of a year, and ultimately help you to spend less than you earn so you are stress-free.

As one of the most popular software budgeting tools online, YNAB has a robust platform that includes daily workshops on budgeting smarter, podcasts, a weekly newsletter, and lots of financial tips on its blog.

Plus, you get access to live customer support and real people who teach online workshops and who can help answer any questions you may have.

The only reason the tool doesn’t get top marks is it doesn’t account for investments, though it is primarily designed for those who struggle with monthly budgets more so than for investors.

Open a YNAB Account

The article YNAB Review 2020 – Yes, You Need A Budget! was originally posted on Investormint

Mint was founded by a Duke University Electrical Engineer, Aaron Patzer, who was frustrated by how difficult it was to use Quicken. He decided to build a free, web-based personal financial management platform that allows users to track bank, investment, and credit card transactions, as well as loan balances in a single dashboard.

Within a couple of years of launch, Patzer had raised venture funding for Mint, been featured on Inc. magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 list, and year later in 2009 sold Mint to Intuit for $170 million.

These days Mint has over 20 million users who track their personal finances online in both the U.S. and Canada. But before signing up, what do you need to know about Mint and how it compares to other budgeting tools?

Mint Spotlight

MINT SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4.5 out of 5 stars	Pricing: Free Credit Score: Free Get Started via Mint secure site

Mint Review:
Free Personal Finance Tool

View your overall finances and track your money easily at Mint.com, plus find out where you can save money by paying lower interest rates.

If you could dream up the perfect personal finance tool, it would probably have a dashboard so you could view all your important financial information in one place yet be versatile enough to allow you to drill down to see each transaction from every one of your financial accounts.

Mint has the capability to display your net worth and how you are allocating your money to groceries, bills, loans and so on, plus it displays your day-to-day bank and credit card transactions.

But Mint goes a step further than simply budgeting and reporting financial information. It is smart enough to compare the interest rates you are paying on your credit card and check whether lower rates exist elsewhere. After identifying better deals for you, Mint will notify you of better rates to help save you money.

Although Personal Capital, YNAB, and LearnVest are serious rivals, Mint regularly tops the list of best personal finance tools.

Is Mint.com Right For You?

Mint automatically syncs with your financial accounts to keep track of your income and spending habits, and can even pay bills on your behalf.

If you struggle to budget and keep track of your financial accounts, Mint is an excellent solution.

The competition among budgeting apps is intense but Mint still stands head and shoulders above most of its rivals.

Some budgeting tools will charge you an annual fee while others don’t track your investment accounts, which means you don’t have a fully holistic view of all your assets, including your retirement accounts. And annoyingly, some offer free versions that require you to manually enter transactions.

However, Mint remains 100% free to users, syncs with your financial accounts, and automatically tracks your bank, credit card, and investment accounts, plus it features excellent bill payment functionality.

You can even put your bill payments on auto-pilot because Mint will not only notify you of an upcoming bill but it will also pay your bills on your behalf.

Mint Login: How It Works

After you connect your financial accounts to Mint, you can view historical spending patterns instantly and view your credit score free.

If you use Turbotax, Quickbooks, or Mint, you will be pleased to know that you only need to sign up in one place with one account.

Once you log in, you will be invited to select your banking institution to list any checking, savings, credit card or loan accounts.

From day-to-day transactions to larger liabilities, such as your mortgage and personal or student loans, Mint displays everything in one place.

Once your accounts are connected, you will be able to view your spending habits immediately because Mint analyzes your personal finances over prior months to provide you with an instant snapshot view of where your money is allocated.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Mint is how it is fully automated. If you previously tracked transactions manually on a spreadsheet, you can say goodbye to those days and reclaim your Sunday afternoons.

Even users who trade bitcoins or exchange money via Venmo will be delighted at how Mint stays current with the latest technologies to allow you track your true net worth.

Mint Security: Is Mint Safe?

Mint does not have any access to make changes in any of your financial accounts other than make bill payments, which are optional.

You don’t have to worry about somebody getting access to your account and transferring money out. In fact, even as the account owner you don’t have the ability to move money from your accounts within Mint.

Intuit, which owns Mint.com, is also the maker of TurboTax, which is trusted by millions each year to file taxes, so as you would expect, bank level security is employed: 256-bit encryption is used for your data and Mint is encrypted with 128-bit SSL.

And while security is prioritized, it doesn’t come at the cost of slow updates. Mint updates your transactions in real time, so almost as soon as your credit card is swiped, transactions will display in Mint.

Mint Credit Score

After signing up to Mint, you can view your credit score by entering your birth date, address and your social security number.

If you want to see your credit score you can check it at no cost on Mint, which invites you to enter your personal details and enquires why you want to know your credit score, so it can better serve you.

The six primary factors affecting the credit score shown on Mint are:

• Your on-time payments
• Your credit usage
• Average age of your credit
• Total accounts
• Credit inquiries
• Derogatory remarks

Creditors like to see that you have both loans and credit cards, and that you have a good track record of paying your bills on time. Plus, they like to see that you are using your credit responsibly.

If you find that you are scoring poorly in one category, you can dive into each of the six categories to learn more.

Mint.com Alternatives

Personal Capital, LearnVest and You Need A Budget, or YNAB, are all worthy Mint alternatives that specialize in different areas from investment management to financial planning.

Other budgeting tools, such as YNAB are laser-focused on budgeting alone to the exclusion of investment accounts, and will give you more control over reconciling accounts if you prefer a more hands-on approach.

LearnVest is another Mint alternative and, because it started out as a financial education portal, features a wealth of knowledge plus a paid financial planning service.

Personal Capital has a world class mobile app that rivals Mint when it comes to displaying investment account information as well as a holistic overview of all your financial accounts in one place. The robo-advisor makes money by pitching clients on investment management services, but it is free to anyone to download the app.

Get Started With The Mint App

The Mint app is available to iOS and Android users via mobile phone, iPad, and even iWatch.

When you are on the go, the Mint.com app makes it easy to stay on top of your personal finances.

It caters to both iPhone and Android users. In fact, you can even access the Mint app from your iWatch to keep track of your spending habits, receive notifications, and billing alerts.

If you prefer to receive notifications by email instead of on your mobile devices that’s easy too.

Set Budgeting Goals With Mint

Creating budgets in Mint is simple for each category of spending, and is visually simple to interpret plus you can receive alerts when you are running over budget or large expenses hit one of your accounts.

To help you track your money responsibly, you can set budgeting goals easily in Mint by simply clicking a few arrows to increase or decrease the amount you are willing to spend for a particular category.

You can specify the maximum amount that you want to spend for a particular month in a wide range of categories, including food, clothing, transport, health & fitness, travel, and entertainment.

It’s instantly apparent whether you are within your budget or over budget for the month with red warnings displaying when you exceed maximum thresholds.

Mint will evaluate where you stand overall and report to you how much you have left over for the month to spend in each category or if you need to dial back your spending because you are already in the red.

The notification system is especially valuable because you can customize alerts based on your own preferences. For example, you may wish to be alerted every time an expense exceeding $500 posts in your account.

Keep in mind that you can exclude any category you wish to remain hidden. For example, if you want to exclude mortgage payments or even the value of your home from your net worth that is easy to do.

Create Financial Goals With Mint

Mint provides built-in calculators to help you pay off debt, save for a home purchase or create a custom financial goal.

It’s just as easy to create financial goals in Mint as it is to set budgeting goals.

Whether you are looking to pay off credit card debt, pay off loans, save for an emergency or retirement, buy a home or car, save for college tuition, or take a trip, Mint provides a helpful widget for each category that guides you step-by-step how to achieve your financial goals.

You can even create custom goals, such as saving for a wedding or building a nest-egg to prepare for the arrival of a new baby.

Does Mint Help You To Invest?

Mint can advise you on ways to save across a range of categories but it won’t help you to invest your money or leftover cash balances.

Unlike Personal Capital, Mint is primarily a reporting tool to help you track how much you are spending and where your money is being spent.

Mint won’t advise you on whether you have an excess of cash that should be invested in the stock market, though it will track your investments.

If you want advice on how best to invest savings, Personal Capital or LearnVest will be better suited to advise you.

However, Mint does provide a dedicated tab called Ways To Save, which will walk you through ways to keep more money in your pocket across a range of categories, including:

• Credit Cards
• Checking accounts
• Savings accounts
• Brokerage accounts
• Rollover 401K
• IRA retirement accounts
• Insurance accounts
• Loans

You can filter credit card offers based on your credit score and reward preferences, whether Cash Back, Air Miles, or Points.

And if you are with a brokerage firm that charges you when you buy or sell mutual funds, Mint will display brokers that have a wide range of no-transaction-fee, or NTF, mutual funds, such as Fidelity.

One of the best categories in this section is the loans section because Mint helps you to find the best personal loan or best student loan for your own individual circumstances.

Simply select from a dropdown menu the amount you want, the purpose of your loan, your credit score, and the state you live in, and Mint will display relevant offers, such as Prosper, SoFi, and LendKey.

Mint Pros and Cons

Mint is 100% free to use, connects with all major banking institutions, and makes it easy to create budgets and set financial goals as well as track investment accounts and access on-the-go, but it is only available within the U.S. and Canada.

Mint Review Summary

Mint is an outstanding tool for tracking personal finances. The dashboard is polished and it’s as easy to track your overall net worth as it is to view individual credit card transactions.

If you struggle to budget, Mint makes it easy to set budget targets and alerts you when you spend above your goal.

Plus, it’s straightforward to target financial goals, whether buying a home or car, saving for a wedding, or looking to lower your debt burden.

An especially nice feature is the Ways To Save tab which displays relevant offers to you based on your credit score – which is free to access on Mint – location, and other personal factors.

Mint is smart enough to recognize how much you are paying on current credit cards or loans, and displays better offers that can help you to save money.

The primary reason Mint doesn’t get the full 5-stars is that it comes up short against Personal Capital when it comes to investment advice. Mint won’t recommend ways for you to invest your cash or optimize your allocation. However, as a budgeting app that reports your overall finances, including your investment accounts, Mint is excellent and well worth checking out.

Get Started With Mint

The article Mint Review 2020 – 100% Free Budgeting Tool was originally posted on Investormint

Tiller Money (TillerHQ) is a budgeting tool designed to help you keep better track of your personal finances.

It’s the first budgeting app to automatically connect your financial information to Google Spreadsheets.

Whether you are looking to track your net worth, debt levels, or spending, Tiller Money is a one-stop solution provided that you have a Gmail account (to which Tiller is linked).

When you are catching up on unread messages in your inbox, it’s easy to quickly switch over to your Drive folder, view your Tiller-created Spreadsheets, and get a bird’s eye view of your finances without needing to log into a separate budgeting app.

Plus, it won’t set you back more than the cost of a fews cups of coffee per month to stay better informed about your financial situation.

But these days you have lots of choices when it comes to budgeting tools so what else do you need to know before getting started?

Tiller Money Spotlight

TILLER MONEY SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4 out of 5 stars	Pricing: $5 monthly Promo: 30-day Free Trial Requirements: GMail Account Get Started via Tiller Money secure site

Is Tiller Money Right For You?

When it comes to choosing a budgeting app, Tiller Money deserves your attention.

The team at Tiller Money figured out that a “one-size fits all” solution doesn’t apply to financial budgeting, which is unique to each person.

Some users will lean towards frugal spending while others will have a financial goal to pay down debt.

Still others will hone in on growing their net worth while their neighbors may be concentrated on tracking day-to-day expenses.

No matter which category you fall into, Tiller Money has got you covered, especially if you want more control to customize your dashboard view.

But you will need to have access to Google Spreadsheets.

With a Gmail account you can instantly click the Drive button after login and view your budgeting Spreadsheets.

If you don’t like the idea of importing your finances to Google Spreadsheets then Personal Capital or YNAB may be a better fit.

But before you consider other options, it’s worth looking under the hood so-to-speak to see what else Tiller Money offers you.

Start Your Free Tiller Money Trial

How Tiller Money Works:
Lauren Greutman Budget Planner

TillerHQ has partnered with many leading financial professionals and websites to bring you a selection of budget planning templates.

For example, the Lauren Greutman Budget Planner spreadsheet template is designed for the frugal family who keeps an eagle-eye on expenses.

After you sign up to Tiller and connect your checking and savings bank accounts and credit cards, as well other financial accounts related to mortgages and car loans, your financial transactions are pulled in each day to a template spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet is interactive so it’s easy to get started with the built-in template. If you wish, you can build upon the existing reports and transaction data.

Some of the functionality available to you at your fingertips includes:

• Establishing income and spending categories
• Building your current month’s budget
• Categorizing transactions
• Tracking your progress in a dashboard
• Building alternate scenarios

Tiller intentionally leaves it to you to specify categories because it believes the simple act of choosing buckets creates greater financial awareness.

For hands-on users, the high degree of customization and manual control is a big win over some other apps. However, if you like all the work done for you then Mint or Personal Capital may be more to your liking.

We especially like the dashboard which keeps track of your progress throughout the month so you can easily spot when your spending is going off course.

Start Your Free Tiller Money Trial

Google Spreadsheet Templates:
Debt Snowball Method

If you are struggling to pay off debt, the Debt Snowball method created by Dave Ramsey is a popular debt reduction process.

In a nutshell, the way it works is:

1. List your debts from smallest to largest
2. Make minimum payments on all your debts except the smallest one
3. Pay as much of your smallest debt off as you can afford
4. Repeat the process until all your debts have been paid off

Seems simple enough right? But it gets easier when you use the Debt Snowball Method spreadsheet template that Tiller Money provides.

The Debt Snowball Spreadsheet template is designed to help you track your debt and pay it off systematically.

Whether you are looking to pay off student loans, credit card balances, a mortgage, or medical bills, you can quickly and easily configure the template to keep track of your progress and reach debt freedom!

Google Sheets Budget Template:
Net Worth Tracker

Businesses tally up their assets, liabilities, and cash flow to track their net worth so why shouldn’t you?

As part of your monthly subscription to Tiller, you receive access to the Net Worth Tracker, which is a Google Sheets budget template.

Tiller Money will keep track of assets and liabilities in linked financial accounts each day. And you can also manually enter assets and liabilities not connected to Tiller if you wish.

Like the other spreadsheets, you can easily customize the template to suit your own preferences and financial situation.

Start Your Free Tiller Money Trial

Best Budget Software:
Raw Data Template

One of the reasons Tiller Money is a contender for the prize of best budget software is the high degree of control it provides to users. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the Raw Data template, which strips out formulas for maximum customization.

You can build and experiment in the Raw Data template.

Let’s say, for example, that you want to build your own template and create your own reports, you can quickly set up your own categories, pull in your latest balances, and create a custom financial worksheet.

Start Your Free Tiller Money Trial

Budget Templates:
Values-Driven Budgeting

Tiller has partnered with Carl Richards who pioneered values-driven budgeting, which means asking yourself the question:

The idea is that each dollar you spend is a vote, and each vote should align with your values.

The Values Driven Budgeting Template is designed to help you better align your spending with your core values.

In some ways it’s similar to robo-advisors like Betterment and Personal Capital creating socially responsible investing portfolios to align investments with values.

To get most use out of the spreadsheet, Carl suggests that you first write out your values.

Then you can mark each expense with a simple yes or no to determine whether it aligns with your values.

If values driven budgeting resonates with you then Carl’s New York Times bestselling book: The One Page Financial Plan is well worth reading.

Easy Budget Template:
How Do I Budget

Derek Olson from How Do I Money partnered with Tiller to create the How Do I Budget template, which features:

• Monthly budget sheet
• Debt snowball calculator
• Goal tracker

The idea is to help you both pay off your debt and save for big purchases.

And like other easy budget templates from Tiller, you get an automatic daily feed of your bank information into your Transactions sheet.

Start Your Free Tiller Money Trial

Basic Budget Template:
Stacking Benjamins Save 50

Another partnership Tiller has made is with Stacking Benjamins, who offer an online self-paced course to help you keep track of your spending and set the financial goal to save half of your income this year.

Stacking Benjamins offers other financial classes like:

• How to (legally) cheat on your taxes
• The millionaire’s money management system
• How to save half your income

And with Tiller, you get to put the education into practice using the Stacking Benjamins Save 50 spreadsheet template:

Tiller Money Review:
Pros and Cons

Start Your Free Tiller Money Trial

Tiller Money Review Summary

When choosing among budgeting apps, you can select free tools that are supported by ads or paid tools that don’t come much cheaper than Tiller. At just $5 per month, it even beats YNAB, which offers highly competitive pricing.

You will need to be fairly comfortable with spreadsheets to get full value from Tiller but, once you get up and running, the highly customizable budget templates can be tailored easily to your personal financial situation.

Whether your goal is to boost your net worth, save more money, or keep track of daily expenses, Tiller Money has a financial spreadsheet to meet your needs.

We found the tool checks a lot of key boxes like industry-grade security protocols and encryption, daily automatic updates, top notch customer support, and easy financial goal tracking.

Plus, you get to test drive the software risk-free for 30 days during the free trial period. As budgeting apps go, Tiller ranks among the best.

Start Your Free Tiller Money Trial

The article Get 30 Days Free At Tiller Money (Review) & Budget Smarter! was originally posted on Investormint

Personal Capital, Mint, and YNAB provide excellent budgeting tools to monitor your expenses. But if you want to track monthly costs by yourself, you will need your own budget checklist.

Some expenses are predictable even if infrequent. For example, birthday presents are a predictable cost but because they come around only once per year so they are often missed on a monthly budget worksheet PDF.

Other items on a monthly budget template may be “nice-to-haves” as opposed to necessities. When you build your monthly budget list, it is a good idea to separate Necessities and Nice-to-haves.

Personal Budget Checklist

>> Pro Tip: How To Create A Budget

Monthly Budget Example

The best way to build a budget checklist is to tally up your monthly expenses in each category:

• Necessities
• Nice-to-haves
• Rainy Day

It might seem like a daunting task to sum up the numbers by hand so a budgeting tool like the ones Personal Capital or Tiller Money provide could save you a lot of time.

If you discover that you are off track, keep tabs on your spending habits. Squirreling away a little extra could get you back on the straight and narrow in no time.

Or you might find that using Acorns or Stash can help you save a bit more by pocketing loose change each time you transact at a grocery store, gas station, or anywhere else.

A good rule of thumb is to limit spending on necessities to $0.50 on each post-tax dollar you earn and spread the rest evenly between nice-to-haves and rainy day funds.

You will quickly build a nest-egg by saving at least 25% of your after-tax income. And worst case if you fall short, you’ll still be in good shape if you pocket 20%.

The article Your Complete Monthly Budget Checklist was originally posted on Investormint

Whether you work in economics, finance, accounting, or statistics, or even if you are a business student or MBA looking for the best financial calculator, this guide will help you to compare the leading brands and pick the best one.

Financial calculators are so smart these days that even the cheaper selections usually suffice for most general purpose use. However, if you are a statistics whiz or an actuary looking to perform complex mathematics, some of the higher cost calculators will have more built-in functions needed.

Beyond choosing a calculator based on its functionality and price, add other considerations into your decision-making, such as its ease of use and versatility.

Above all, make sure it does what you need it to do. If you work in the investing space, discounted cash flow calculations may be a priority.

If you are looking for a financial calculator for MBA classes then NPV, DCF, and interest rate calculations may be most important.

As a real estate investor, you may need to focus on depreciation and amortization calculations.

The bottom line is you should pick the calculator that solves the problems you will face while factoring in cost and ease-of-use too.

Texas Instruments TI BA II Plus
Professional Financial Calculator

The Texas Instruments TI BA II Plus Professional Financial Calculator is designed to save you time when performing complex equations.

If you are an undergraduate or MBA business student or you work in investments, accounting, finance, or as an actuary, the TI BA II Plus has all the functionality you will probably ever need.

For students who need math functions, the TI calculator performs trigonometric calculations, natural logarithms, and powers.

It is a good fit for investors who need to perform cash flow analysis. And it can perform as many as 32 uneven cash flows with up to four-digit frequencies.

Professionals working in finance, accounting, and economics can use it to calculate the time-value of money, depreciation, accrued interest, and cost-sell margins.

Other features of the calculator include functions like Modified Internal Rate of Return (MIRR), Net Future Value (NFV), Discount Payback, and Modified Duration.

Texas Instruments TI BA II Plus Battery: Lithium 2032 Battery

Texas Instruments TI BA II Plus Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.8 x 0.1 inches

The only drawbacks of the calculator are stiff keys, though arguably it is constructed this way in order to avoid inadvertently pressing on keys and making mistakes.

Some users may find it less intuitive than HP models to arrive at answers.

HP 17BII+ Financial Calculator

The HP-17-B-II+ may well be the best virtual calculator pocket PC.

It is designed for business and finance professionals, and will serve the needs of real-estate professionals well too.

The 17bII+ can help finance professionals to calculate bond price and yield calculations, currency conversions, and perform cash-flow analysis and interest rate conversions.

Real estate professionals may find the depreciation and percentage calculations especially useful.

And accounting and economics professionals along with students will find the HP 17bII+ calculator flexible enough to meet their needs too, including TVM and amortization features as well as algebraic data-entry modes and 250 easy-to-use functions.

Highlights of the HP 17bII+ calculator include:

• Alpha and numeric keyboard
• List-based cash flow analysis
• 250 built-in functions
• 2-line 22 character LCD display
• HP Solve customizing method

HP 10B Financial Calculator

If you don’t need all the bells and whistles of the HP-17-B-II+ calculator, the HP 10B is a solid alternative.

Where the HP-17-B-II+ features 250 built-in functions, the HP 10B includes approximately 100 built-in functions.

The HP 10B calculator can be used for mathematics, business, finance, and statistics.

It is ideal for business students attending fast-paced courses who need to calculate loan payments, discounted cash flow analysis, time value of money for loans, leasing and savings, amortization, and interest rates.

The keyboard is laid out intuitively and the labels are easy to read plus the HP 10B calculator features an algebraic entry system and an LCD screen with up to 12 characters on one line of text.

It’s a compact calculator so it can fit easily into your briefcase, school bag, or backpack. Plus it comes with a 1-year warranty.

HP 10B Financial Calculator Battery: 3 x LR44 batteries required.

HP 12c Platinum Financial Calculator

The HP 12c Platinum Financial Calculator lies somewhere between the HP 10B and HP-17-B-II+ calculators in terms of functionality and price.

With over 130 functions, it has fewer functions than the HP-17-B-II+, which has around 250+ functions, but it has more than the 100 functions built into the HP 10B.

If you are looking for a great mix of statistical, business, and math functions, the HP 12c delivers.

It’s a cinch to calculate interest rates, loan payments, and conversions.

Plus, it has an intuitive layout that makes it easy to operate.

Whether you are in economics, finance, accounting, or real estate, the HP 12c Platinum Financial Calculator should suffice.

HP 12c Platinum Financial Calculator Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.6 x 1.7 inches

HP 12CP Platinum Financial Calculator

The HP 12CP Platinum Financial Calculator is known for its high quality, durable design and long battery life.

But beyond its robustness and versatility, the HP 12CP is a great solution for use in business, mathematics, finance, and statistics with over 120 built-in functions.

It is compact and can be transported anywhere easily. In fact, this might well be the ultimate pocket calculator having proven itself popular for over a quarter of a century.

The HP 12c Platinum is the enhanced version of the industry-leading HP 12c calculator, and it features time-saving functionality like keystroke programming with 4x more memory for up to 400 steps.

Both RPN and algebraic modes of data entry are supported as well as “undo” and “backspace” buttons.

Plus, the HP 12c Platinum has memory for up to 80 cash flows, which makes it ideal for finance, accounting, business, economics, and real estate.

It is also permitted for use in CFA and CFP Certification Exams, as well as GARP FRM Exam.

A nice bonus is that if you run into any issues, you can access HP support around the clock every day of the week thanks to downloads, tutorials, and educational resources.

HP 10BII+ Financial Calculator

Like the HP 12c Platinum calculator, the HP-10-B-II+ is permitted for use during the CFP Certification Exam.

Whether you need it for business or finance, it is a smart choice because of its extensive functionality.

With the HP 10bII Plus financial calculator, you can calculate:

• Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
• Net Present Value (NPV)
• Time Value of Money (TVM)
• Standard deviation
• Loan payments
• Interest rates

Beyond use in business studies and finance, the HP 10bII Plus can be used in accounting, general math, real estate, science, statistics, pre-algebra/algebra, and banking.

One of the reasons it can be used in so many fields is its laundry list of built-in functions, which number over 170.

Some of the functions include:

The HP 10bII features an LCD display and a battery life projection of approximately one year.

To save on battery use, an auto power-off button will turn the device off after 5 minutes.

HP 10BII+ Financial Calculator Battery: 2 x CR2032 batteries required

HP 10BII+ Financial Calculator Dimensions: 5.7 x 3.2 x 0.6 inches

>> What Is A Firm’s Market To Book Ratio?

>> What Are The Different Types Of Stocks?

>> What Does YoY Mean?

The article What Is The Best Financial Calculator? was originally posted on Investormint

If you struggle to keep track of your personal finances, Personal Capital and Mint can help you. Both are free so when comparing Personal Capital vs Mint, which should you choose?

Mint is primarily designed as a budgeting tool that can help you to monitor your income and expenses, set spending goals, and pay off debt.

Personal Capital can also help you to track where you money is going each month, whether to groceries, gas, rent, or entertainment. But where it shines brightest is in tracking your investments.

Both the Personal Capital app and Mint are free, so when comparing Personal Capital vs Mint on security, synchronization, budgeting, investment analysis, and more, which is the best personal finance tool?

Personal Capital vs Mint

• InvestorMint Rating

  • 1
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  • 5
• Best for
  Investments
• Pricing
  FREE
• Standout Feature
  Investment Tracking
• Open an Account

• InvestorMint Rating

  • 1
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• Best for
  Personal Finance Monitoring
• Pricing
  FREE
• Standout Feature
  Free Credit Score Monitoring
• Open an Account

Whether you have bank or investment accounts, credit cards, or loans, Mint and Personal Capital can help keep track of your transactions.

You can easily track your overall net worth and where your money is being spent, so you can quickly spot when you spend more than normal in a particular category..

But how are Personal Capital and Mint different from each other?

Is Personal Capital or Mint Better?

One way Personal Capital and Mint diverge is how they make money.

Personal Capital earns revenues when you invest money in its robo-advisor service that includes access to a dedicated financial advisor. Mint, on the other hand, makes money from serving you ads to relevant financial services.

If you simply want to keep track of transactions in your bank and loan accounts, as well as on your credit cards, Mint provides you both a snapshot view of your overall financial situation and allows you to delve deep into each specific payment and income item.

Mint is smart enough to know when you are paying more in interest than you could pay elsewhere, and will display offers to nudge you towards another financial product that may be a better fit to help you to save money.

If the nitty gritty of every transaction isn’t as important to you as tracking your investment accounts and receiving financial guidance from a real person then Personal Capital is a better bet.

In a nutshell, Mint wins more brownie points for budgeting while Personal Capital wins more for investment monitoring.

MINT VS PERSONAL CAPITAL

Mint has the edge over Personal Capital when it comes to perks like seeing your credit score, monitoring your credit report, and setting financial goals and budgets.

It also has an enhanced security protocol. Although Personal Capital does restrict access to its app when it doesn’t recognize the device you are signing in from, Mint provides superior security via two-factor authentication.

Some users find it annoying that Mint displays ads. But the financial ads are intended to be relevant and helpful finding ways to save you money.

For example, if you are paying a high interest rate on your credit card and Mint knows another credit card will save you money, it will let you know.

But Mint won’t do as good a job for you with investment analysis as it will with budget analysis.

Unlike Mint, Personal Capital can inform you when you have allocated more money to a particular category than might be appropriate. For example, you may have too much allocated to equities or too few bonds for your risk category, age, and investment outlook.

Or you might have a good balance of stocks and bonds but you may not be optimized for tax efficiency.

Smart investing means allocating tax-efficient investments to tax inefficient accounts and tax-inefficient investments to tax-efficient accounts.

Dedicated financial advisors at Personal Capital can help you to navigate tax-advantaged strategies and portfolio selections and weightings, whereas Mint will simply provide an overview of investment account balances and weightings.

Mint: Spotlight

MINT SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4.5 out of 5 stars	Pricing: Free Credit Score: Free Get Started via Mint secure site

Personal Capital vs Mint: Features

Personal Capital and Mint both have excellent user experiences. It’s simple to sign up to each personal finance app whether on the web or on mobile devices, both Android and iOS.

Mint has a slightly broader geographic reach by supporting U.S. and Canadian financial institutions compared to Personal Capital that supports U.S. based ones only.

One thing you should note before signing up to either service is how often each will contact you.

From our research, Personal Capital tends to contact clients every few months to pitch investment management services, and more frequently to provide financial reports.

It’s not particularly intrusive in our view, especially because it is the primary way the company makes money.

Mint contacts users more frequently to notify when account thresholds have been breached, unusual spending patterns have been detected, and to serve ads from time to time – but they do so also with the intention to add value by helping you to save money or lower your interest rate payments.

From our research, Personal Capital synchronizes better with financial accounts compared to Mint.

Personal Capital relies on the industry standard Yodlee to perform account synchronization whereas Mint uses its parent company’s (Intuit) synchronization service.

Personal Capital: Spotlight

Personal Capital vs Mint:
What You Need To Know

If you want a personal finance tool that anticipates upcoming expenses and flags unusual activity on your accounts, Mint is your best bet.

BILL PAYMENTS & NOTIFICATIONS

A standout feature that distinguishes Mint from Personal Capital is bill pay functionality.

If you ever were frustrated by having to log into various different accounts to pay utility bills, make loan payments, and pay monthly credit card bills then Mint will seem like bill pay nirvana.

It’s easy to log in to Mint and manage all your payments from one location.

Personal Capital will notify you when payments are due but it does not support bill payments that allow you to avoid logging in to multiple accounts.

GOAL SETTING

If you wish to set financial goals such as buying a home, saving for college, or building a nest-egg for retirement, Personal Capital is the ideal choice.

The Retirement Planner tool from Personal Capital helps you to answer the question: “can I retire yet?”

By projecting your portfolio value into the future, it can assess your readiness to retire using financial accounts you have linked.

The Personal Capital Retirement Planner tool can factor in earnings from savings and investments as well as social security and annuity income.

Plus, your expected costs in retirement are calculated so an overall estimate is calculated.

FINANCIAL TAX PLANNING

When it comes to long-term financial planning, Personal Capital does a better job because the focus is on tax-advantaged investing.

At the end of the day, what matters is how much money ends up in your pocket after taxes.

And at Personal Capital, you can see in a heartbeat whether you are on track to meet your retirement goals.

Mint pays more attention to day-to-day financial optimizations versus long-term retirement planning.

HUMAN ADVICE

If you have complicated financial circumstances, Personal Capital is the best solution to receive guidance from a real financial expert.

Although its financial app is a great budgeting tool, Personal Capital is primarily an investment management service.

The app is free but the management service comes at a cost of an annual management fee.

Depending on how much you invest, you will receive either one or two dedicated financial advisors.

So, if you feel like your financial accounts are a spaghetti mess of IRAs, 401(k)s, 529 Plans, plus a joint account and a trust alongside a taxable account, Personal Capital is well worth checking out.

DEBT & BUDGETING FOCUS

The combined student debt and credit card debt in the U.S. stretches into the trillions of dollars, so it’s no surprise that Mint has a heavy focus on paying off debt.

Mint will help you keep better track of budgeting also by allowing you to specify spending limits, which will trigger notifications if you exceed them.

For example, if you allocated $700 to groceries this month but ended up spending $1,000, you will receive a notification from Mint informing you of the overage.

Personal Capital features elegant charts that provide instant insight into where your biggest costs are but you don’t have the same control over setting spending limits for each category.

Personal Capital vs Mint:
Summary

Personal Capital and Mint are among the best personal finance apps available to web-based and mobile users.

They both cater to a U.S. audience though Mint also synchronizes with Canadian financial institutions.

When you compare Personal Capital vs Mint on budget overviews, they are hard to separate but Mint shines brightest when it comes to tracking individual expenses and setting limits that trigger notifications if exceeded while Personal Capital is a better bet for investment account monitoring.

Personal Capital also wins more brownie points for tax-advantaged investing and linking to dedicated financial advisors.

You will also receive red carpet service at Personal Capital in terms of customer care and access to dedicated financial advisors if you choose the paid investment service. The free service provides you access to top tier customer support staff.

Where Mint has the edge is in providing a two-factor authentication security protocol and flagging unusual account activity. But its synchronization doesn’t quite match that at Personal Capital.

The bottom line is Mint wins the battle of best budgeting tool, Personal Capital wins the head-to-head for best investment analysis tool.

While both apps earn high marks, Personal Capital edges out Mint because of its more complete service, catering to both users who want to budget smarter and manage investments better.

Open Personal Capital Account Open Mint Account

The article Personal Capital vs Mint: What Is The Best Personal Finance Tool? was originally posted on Investormint

If you find it a hassle to keep track of your personal finances, Mint and YNAB (You Need A Budget) are personal finance apps that can help you budget smarter and get a better handle on your income and spending habits.

You can think of YNAB as a personal finance app that specializes in budgeting whereas Mint has a broader suite of tools that include budgeting, bill payments, tax reporting, and investment tracking.

Both applications are accessible via the web and on mobile devices, but YNAB will set you back a small monthly fee whereas Mint is 100% free.

But when you compare Mint vs YNAB across all the dimensions of tax reporting, credit score monitoring, and transaction reconciliation which is best?

YNAB vs Mint

• InvestorMint Rating

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• Best for
  Budgeting
• Pricing
  $6.99/month
• Standout Feature
  Transaction Reconciliation
• Open an Account

• InvestorMint Rating

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  Free Credit Score Monitoring
• Open an Account

Mint and YNAB both synchronize with your financial institutions so your income and spending are tracked and easily accessible on each of the platforms. You can view all your accounts in one place so it is easy to stay on top of your finances.

And it is intuitive to navigate around each of the dashboards, link to your credit card and bank accounts, as well as any loans you may have so you can stay on top of your liabilities too.

Plus, both budgeting apps do an excellent job when it comes to goal tracking so you can set, track, and target your financial goals.

YNAB is like a budgeting tool that stretches a mile deep while Mint is a personal finance tool that incorporates budgeting but is a mile wide featuring other financial tools too.

Where Mint shines is not only in providing a budgeting tool but also in offering a host of peripheral services from tax reporting to bill payments and from investment tracking to credit score monitoring.

So should you choose the specialist budgeting tool, YNAB, or Mint, the budgeting app with extra trappings?

Open YNAB Account Open Mint Account

Mint Vs YNAB:
Which Is Right For You?

While Mint and YNAB both do an excellent job when it comes to budgeting, they differ in many other ways.

YNAB VS MINT: PRICING

If you are price-sensitive, Mint is your best bet. It’s not that YNAB is particularly expensive. In fact, it is priced similarly to a Netflix subscription but you still pay a $6.99 monthly fee compared to Mint which is 100% free.

YNAB does offer a 34-day free trial so you can check it out 100% risk-free.

But if Mint is free and YNAB costs you a monthly fee, you might be wondering how does Mint makes money?

Unlike YNAB, Mint will serve you advertising offers. But before you shudder at the thought of yet another financial offer hitting your email inbox, it is worth understanding how Mint can actually save you money with these offers.

Mint is smart enough to know when other products and services can possibly save you money.

Mint has a Ways to Save section which features financial service providers who pay Mint a referral commission when you sign up.

These offers can be quite useful. For example, you may be paying a high interest rate on a credit card and discover a credit card offer which enables you to transfer your balance at no cost and pay no interest for a period of time.

You also have the option to pay Mint for premium access to your credit report. And Mint also makes money from the display ads featured on its site.

Lastly, Mint sells aggregate consumer data that provides insight into spending, bank fees, and saving habits. You don’t have to worry that your individual data is being sold. Mint bundles users into cohorts and sells collective data so your privacy is maintained.

MINT VS YNAB: INVESTMENT TRACKING

Mint has the edge over YNAB when it comes to tracking your 401(k), IRA, or other retirement and taxable accounts.

Whereas Mint will give you insights into your account balances and holdings, YNAB does not feature any investment tracking. Instead, it sticks with its bread and butter focus on budgeting.

Although Mint fares well compared to YNAB in terms of investment tracking, Personal Capital is best for serious investors.

YNAB OR MINT: RECONCILING TRANSACTIONS

Unlike Mint, YNAB makes it possible to reconcile transactions. The idea is that the transactions listed in your YNAB account match the transactions that your bank has in its records.

Transactions are considered to be “cleared” when the transaction recorded in YNAB appears in your bank’s records too. When all transactions match, your account is deemed to be reconciled.

For detail-oriented users who like to comb through spending habits with a fine-tooth comb, transaction reconciliation is a valuable feature.

If you tend to be more of a high level person who wants the ability to view your overall financial situation and see details of transactions but not reconcile them, Mint is more than sufficient.

Open YNAB Account Open Mint Account

MINT OR YNAB: BILL PAYMENTS

If you find it a hassle to log into multiple accounts each month to pay your bills, Mint has a bill payment function that you will love.

Instead of logging into your Comcast account to pay your cable bill and your PG&E account to pay your electricity bill, Mint makes it easy to pay all your bills from within your Mint account.

YNAB does not feature a bill payment solution so if you care about having all your bills tracked in one place and receiving notifications when bills are due then Mint is your only choice between the two personal finance apps.

MINT VS YNAB REVIEW AT A GLANCE

You can get a snapshot view of how Mint and YNAB compare below. Beyond the headline differences, Mint and YNAB also differ when it comes to credit report monitoring and security.

Mint will give you access to your credit score and monitor your credit too. It also provides two-factor security authentication – neither of which YNAB provides.

You can however set budget goals in each budgeting app and receive alerts. So when you exceed your budget in one category, you can be notified quickly to nudge you to reduce your spending in another category so your overall budget tracking remains on target.

Mint: Spotlight

MINT SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4.5 out of 5 stars	Pricing: Free Credit Score: Free Get Started via Mint secure site

YNAB Vs Mint: Features

Mint caters to both U.S. and Canadian financial institutions whereas YNAB supports only U.S. based companies.

Both have excellent user experiences. It’s easy to get started with both budgeting apps whether on mobile devices or on the web. And both support iOS and Android operating systems. Mint even goes so far as to support the iWatch.

Historically, Mint has not shined as brightly when it comes to account synchronization compared to YNAB, which is stellar in this area.

While Mint overshadows YNAB in a host of areas, you should think twice about it if you are bothered by ads.

Mint is designed to serve you value-added financial ads that help you to save money but if you don’t like being interrupted with offers you might prefer to pay YNAB a small monthly fee to avoid them.

YNAB: Spotlight

Open YNAB Account Open Mint Account

YNAB Vs Mint:
What You Need To Know

What makes budgeting hard is not so much the predictable expenses from one month to another as much as it is the unexpected costs that crop up every once in a while.

Mint and YNAB can help you to anticipate bills that can otherwise fly under the radar. For example, a car insurance bill that hits your account every six months or an annual bill that may otherwise be forgotten until the debit hits your bank account when it’s too late.

Mint will also flag to you when unusual spending activity is observed in your account. You can customize your notification settings for easier management.

Mint lets you know when you are charged late fees as well as when interest rate changes affect your bill payments.

BUDGETING STRATEGY

YNAB has a very specific budgeting strategy that is premised on three rules:

1. Each dollar has a job to do
2. Plan monthly for infrequent expenditures
3. Modify and adjust when overspending

The idea behind the three-step process is to think about each dollar as having a specific role. Instead of all your money being pooled, you view each dollar as segregated from the next and playing a specific role in paying your bills.

Another important aspect of the budgeting strategy is that you anticipate larger expenses that hit your bank balance infrequently and budget them into your monthly costs.

For example, vacations and gifts may be predictable each year so it is best to incorporate them into your monthly budget plan.

And if you do overspend one month in a single category then you can try to spend less in another category so your overall budget stays on track.

DEBT & BUDGETING FOCUS

Credit card and student debt levels in the U.S. have spiralled into the trillions of dollars, so Mint wins high marks for emphasizing debt payoff on its platform.

YNAB also has a keen eye on liabilities, which for many users is a key monthly cost that limits the ability to save.

YNAB vs Mint
Review Summary

YNAB and Mint are among the best personal finance apps available to users across all devices, whether web-based, iOS or Android.

If you are looking to keep track of every penny and be granular about your budgeting strategy, YNAB does an excellent job helping you to keep track of your income and spending habits, and debt levels. Above all, it helps you to reconcile transactions to you match your bank account transactions with your YNAB ledger.

Where YNAB goes a mile deep on budgeting, Mint goes a mile wide with helpful personal finance tools. For example, you can track and manage your bills, pay them from one account, monitor your investments and your credit score, receive free access to a single credit score, and feature tax reporting.

YNAB does a better job than Mint when it comes to account synchronization whereas Mint does a better job on security by providing two-factor authentication.

The bottom line is if you want a fine-tooth comb approach to budget tracking and are willing to pay a small monthly fee YNAB is your best bet.

However, if budgeting without the need to reconcile transactions is sufficient, and peripheral features, such as bill pay, tax reporting, and investment tracking are valuable to you then Mint will most likely be the better choice, and as an added bonus it’s free.

Open YNAB Account Open Mint Account

The article YNAB vs Mint: Which Is The Best Budgeting App? was originally posted on Investormint

Updated May 8, 2018: LearnVest to shut down following decision by parent company, Northwestern Mutual.

LearnVest was founded in 2009 by Alexa Von Tobel, a Harvard graduate and former Morgan Stanley trader, who figured that if she struggled to understand personal finances in spite of her top notch credentials then probably millions of others were in the same boat.

The original idea Alexa had was to create an online education site for women. When you visit LearnVest, you can still discover oodles of educational content. But over time, LearnVest evolved from a purely educational website to a personal finance tool, similar to Mint, YNAB, and Qapital.

Unlike Mint, its primary competitor, LearnVest goes beyond providing a budgeting tool and will also connect you to financial planners, albeit for a fee. Mint provides more features than LearnVest but serves you ads regularly so the choice between the two depends a lot on your own personal preferences.

LearnVest Spotlight

LEARNVEST SPOTLIGHT
InvestorMint Rating 1 2 3 4 5 4.5 out of 5 stars	Personal Finance Tool Pricing: Free Financial Planner Pricing: $19 per month + $299 one-time setup fee

LearnVest Review:
Free Budgeting Tool

View your overall financial situation using the LearnVest free budgeting tool, including income, expenses, assets, liabilities, and net worth.

LearnVest provides a free budgeting tool that helps you to keep track of your expenses and income, budget smarter, and improve your financial IQ too.

Although the company began with a clear focus on women, it caters to men and women equally well these days.

The free tool is extensive. After you link to your financial accounts, you can quickly track:

• Income
• Expenses
• Assets
• Liabilities

You can also track your net worth and spending priorities each month.

If you want manual control over certain items, such as spending priorities, you may end up frustrated, but if you are using LearnVest it’s probably because you want to escape from budget tracking on a spreadsheet and prefer a more automated approach anyway.

LearnVest Premium:
Financial Planning 24/7

The premium service offered by LearnVest provides you a summary financial plan so you can get back on track to hit your financial goals.

Since it was acquired by Northwestern Mutual in 2015, LearnVest has increasingly helped customers to define financial goals and develop strategies to achieve them.

The idea is to help you get a strategy for your everyday spending as well as your overall financial planning so you hit your savings and retirement goals.

The foundation of the process starts with 3 goals:

• Credit card debt
• Emergency savings
• Retirement planning

Then LearnVest makes it personal to you by adding financial goals that matter to you.

You pick a budgeting strategy that helps you work on needs and wants and get step-by-step guidance to help you realize your objectives.

As part of the paid service, LearnVest Premium, you get access to a dedicated financial planner 24/7, a fully customizable financial plan, and online tools, classes and articles to help you turn financial advice into actionable tasks.

Paying members also receive a personalized LearnVest Plan document to help stay on track.

Why Choose LearnVest

LearnVest won’t serve you ads or pitch you on investment management services as some other budgeting tools will but instead offers you fee-based financial planning services when you use the free budgeting tool.

The competition among budgeting apps is fierce. Personal Capital has one of the best free budgeting apps and Mint, an industry pioneer, remains 100% free.

Mint has a few more bells and whistles and is a bit more polished but it makes money by displaying ads, which some users find a nuisance.

The ads are intended to be relevant and helpful. For example, if you are paying a high interest rate on your credit card and Mint knows that a lower rate card would result in lower monthly payments, it will display the better credit card offers to you.

The Personal Capital budgeting app is also free to use. However, you will be pitched on its robo-advisor service if you meet certain minimum account balances.

So, why choose LearnVest?

Like Mint and Personal Capital, LearnVest is free to use but makes money from financial planning services.

If you like the idea of more features, Mint may be a better bet. But if you need a little help meeting your financial goals and could benefit from the guidance of a financial planner then LearnVest is well worth considering.

Once you connect your financial accounts, LearnVest tracks all your transactions and account balances, provides a breakdown of how your money is allocated, and displays your net worth.

Unlike desktop tools, LearnVest gives you a holistic picture of your overall financial situation, as well as a history of your spending and saving tendencies right after you connect your accounts.

Get Started With
The LearnVest App

The LearnVest app is available free to both iPhone and Android users.

The simplest way to get started with LearnVest is to download the LearnVest iOS mobile app from the AppStore if you are an iPhone or iPad user or from the Google Play store if you are an Android user.

From there you can quickly view your overall financial situation and track your finances.

The first thing you will spot is how you are spending money because LearnVest categorizes your expenses, such as groceries, travel, restaurants, gas, insurance, clothing/shoes, automotive, online services, and so on.

If LearnVest doesn’t recognize a transaction, you will see it fall under the Uncategorized section, allowing you to label the items more descriptively.

Where Mint shines compared to LearnVest is that when you make updates, Mint learns from them but LearnVest does not. For example, if you wanted to change a default transaction label, which we’ll call S*bucks, to Starbucks, LearnVest doesn’t update that modification each month thereafter.

However, LearnVest will allow you to split expenses into categories. For example, if you took a vacation and you wanted to break out your ride-sharing costs to a category called Uber, you could do that easily.

Plus, when you make cash purchases, you can update the transaction in LearnVest so a more complete picture of your spending is captured.

Set Budgeting Goals
With LearnVest Free

With the simple modification of a slider, you can see how your debt levels are affected by paying off more of your loan balances each month.

If you want to set budgeting goals to help you manage your spending and saving, it’s easy to do so with LearnVest.

LearnVest will guide you each step of the way to enter:

• Income
• Fixed costs
• Priority goals
• Flexible spending

LearnVest is smart enough to figure out how much you are spending on credit card debt but leaves it to you to input your minimum payment each month.

A simple slider can be manipulated to display the time it will take to pay off your balance and how your debt level will be affected if you pay off more each month.

Where YNAB has the edge over LearnVest is that it can understand how spending in one category can affect another category while keeping your monthly budget on track. For example, if you spend $500 on groceries but had allocated $600, then you have an extra $100 leftover to spend on entertainment and still remain on track.

LearnVest Reviews: Pros and Cons

LearnVest has a free budgeting tool, a paid financial planning service, and extensive education but only supports U.S. banks and does not cater to investment accounts.

LearnVest Summary

If you are looking for a budgeting tool and financial planning help, LearnVest is the place to go.

While other budgeting tools, such as Mint and Personal Capital, also provide free budgeting analysis, only LearnVest connects you to financial planners 24/7.

It’s free to use the LearnVest mobile app, so before signing up to the paid service, you can play around with the budgeting tool without risking a penny.

And what about Learnvest vs Mint? The bottom line is if you are looking for an alternative to Mint, LearnVest is a serious rival. It may lack some of the features Mint offers but on the other hand you won’t be served constantly with ads.

The article LearnVest Review 2020 – Free Budgeting Plus Financial Planning was originally posted on Investormint

PocketSmith is not your average budgeting tool. While most budgeting apps synchronize with your bank accounts, credit cards, and loans, and display them all in one place, PocketSmith goes a step further and gives you insights into what your cash flows might looks like far into the future.

Think of PocketSmith as a virtual time capsule that lets you see previous financial transactions easily in an online dashboard, view present spending in order to see where your money is going and get better control over it, and visualize what future balances may look like with the PocketSmith calendar.

You can create “what-if” scenarios too so if you were to save more you can see how much more money would be in your nest-egg, and how much extra you could spend during your retirement years.

PocketSmith has three subscription tiers, ranging from free to $19.95 per month, but realistically only the two paid options will save you time and make it easy to budget effortlessly.

PocketSmith Review: Spotlight

Why Choose PocketSmith?

PocketSmith started out in New Zealand, but it serves clients globally so no matter what country you are based in the chances are PocketSmith can serve you equally well.

If you subscribe to either the Premium or Super plan, you can import all your accounts automatically and view all your accounts in one place.

SEARCH ENGINE

A search engine is provided by PocketSmith to help you find transactions that you previously organized, tagged, annotated or categorized.

GLOBAL SUPPORT

As a global budgeting tool provider, PocketSmith shines when it comes to global currency conversions.

You can track bank accounts, assets and liabilities in different countries and automatically convert to a single currency based on current forex rates.

COMPATIBLE WITH ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE

PocketSmith is compatible with leading accounting software, such as Xero, so you can connect and send expenses from your Xero account to your PocketSmith account in a few clicks without needing to resort to manual entries.

FINANCIAL FORECASTING

Perhaps the best part of PocketSmith is its financial forecast visualizations that let you virtually peer into the future by creating cash flow projections based on current balances and anticipated growth rates.

BUDGET CALENDAR

The calendar feature is intuitive, and it can be used to help you schedule upcoming bills also.

An especially nice feature is called Scenarios, which help you to project ‘what-if’ situations.

For example, what if you reduced your grocery bill by a certain amount each month? Or what if your income or savings rates went up? How will these changes affect your monthly expenses? PocketSmith does a good job visually depicting the effects of these changes.

MONITOR SPENDING

You can easily break down your budgets into manageable chunks. For example, you might decide to set a weekly grocery budget, and PocketSmith will tell you if you come in over or under budget, and when the next period begins so you know how much you have available to spend.

DASHBOARD VIEW

To view your net worth and forecast what the future looks like all in one place, view the Dashboard, which displays in an intuitive pie chart the percentage of your spending that is allocated to mortgage or rent, groceries, auto payments, food and dining, fuel, insurance, utilities, and so on.

If you are close to a budget limit or run over budget, you can set up notification alerts so you can take action before it’s too late.

And by knowing that you are at risk of running over budget, it might nudge you to hold off on making an impulse purchase.

NET WORTH SNAPSHOT

A real challenge of having a bunch of bank accounts, credit cards, and loan accounts is knowing precisely what you own and owe.

PocketSmith categorizes your assets and liabilities in one easy-to-read section called Net Worth, so you know precisely how much money you have to your name and how much you need to pay off to become debt free.

You can just as easily view your personal Income & Expense statement to spot when you have exceeded a budget as well as to see earning and spending totals.

Plus, PocketSmith shows you your very your own personal Income and Expense statement as well as Net Worth and Cash Flow statements, just like a business can keep track of its finances with these three key financial statements.

PocketSmith Bonus Features

If you already have a financial advisor or you simply want a spouse, partner, or family member to access and manage your account, you can invite them to the app and you can revoke their access at any time if you wish.

You can also view an audit log that keeps track of who has logged in and when.

This permission is especially valuable for financial advisors who can gather information more easily and save you time and hassle when it comes time to share financial details.

How PocketSmith Works

Like most other budgeting apps, PocketSmith saves you the hassle of importing your financial transactions by connecting to over 10,000 institutions worldwide as part of its paid subscription plans, Premium and Super.

When you log on to PocketSmith, you will be looking at live bank feeds, not outdated transaction histories.

If you already use Mint.com, you can take advantage of the “express migration” tool to import all transactions and categories easily from Mint.

PocketSmith Fees

The main difference between the free and paid plans is that you must import transactions manually using the free plan but all the hassle is avoided with paid plans.

Between the Premium and Super plans, the main difference is you receive unlimited accounts and get 30 years (versus 10 years) of financial projections with the higher tier plan.

How Secure Is PocketSmith?

PocketSmith uses two factor authentication which means that you can secure your account by requiring a code sent to your mobile phone each time you login.

PocketSmith Review: Pros and Cons

PocketSmith lets you view your finances holistically in one dashboard, sync all your accounts automatically, and predict future cash flows as far as 30 years into the future. Only the paid options cater to automatic imports from Xero or Mint, otherwise manual entry is required for free subscribers.

PocketSmith Review: Summary

Imagine if you could look into the future and see how much money you will have and how much cash flow you will generate ten years from now or even thirty years from now?

PocketSmith separates itself from most other budgeting tools by estimating what your finances will look like far into the future based on your current income and spending patterns.

But that is just one of the useful features to help you improve your day-to-day spending habits. The Budget Calendar feature helps you to know when bills are due to be paid, and the Dashboard lets you easily see how much you are spending on groceries, mortgage/rent, utilities, and other categories.

Whether you are in the U.S., Australia, Europe, or just about any country in the world, PocketSmith is compatible, and can easily perform cross-currency conversions.

As budgeting tools go, PocketSmith is among the very best, though its mobile app lacks depth, and you will need to sign up to one of the paid subscriptions, which are fairly priced, in order to automatically import transactions and synchronize with your bank accounts.

The bottom line is if you have struggle to keep track of your finances, and find yourself coming in over budget regularly and leaving you are cash-strapped, PocketSmith is well worth the monthly fee, especially if you pay on an annual basis in which case you can enjoy 25%+ savings on the top tier plan.

Open a PocketSmith Account

The article PocketSmith Review 2020 – Predict Your Financial Future! was originally posted on Investormint

Moneyspire is a budgeting tool designed to synchronize all your financial accounts in one place so you can easily track your income and spending.

The idea behind the personal finance software is to help you set bill reminders, create budgets, connect online bill pay, and even track investment accounts.

If you have ever struggled to stay on top of your bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts, or felt like you were hitting your head against the wall reconciling accounts, splitting payments, or bulk editing transactions, Moneyspire is designed to be the solution to your problems.

Considering how much value is jam-packed into the Moneyspire budgeting software, the one-time price point of $59.99 is fair, and compares well to other budgeting tools.

But with so much competition, is Moneyspire worth it?

Moneyspire Spotlight

Why Choose Moneyspire?

It is hard to stay on top of your day-to-day finances when you have to log in to so many online accounts to keep track of your income and spending, as well loan payments, credit card bills, and investment performance returns.

Moneyspire is designed to provide you a holistic view of all your accounts, so they are all in one place.

TRACK ACCOUNTS

Whether it is your Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card, bank checking account, student loan, Kohl’s card, car loan, or almost any other financial account you may have, Moneyspire connects to them all and displays them in a dashboard for easy viewing.

VIEW SPENDING DETAILS

With an overview of your spending, income, and liabilities, you will have a more detailed view of your accounts. It is straightforward to categorize income and spending and to balance your checkbook.

BILL PAY REMINDERS

One of the standout features is billing and deposit reminders. The calendar view lets you schedule upcoming bills, so you are not penalized by late fees when it slips your mind to send in payment on time.

We found the due date notification system next to the calendar to be an especially nice feature that informs you when the next bill payment is due.

VIEW EXPENSES IN ONE CHART

By aggregating all your accounts into one place, you also get to see a big picture pie chart of how and where you are allocating your money. For example, you will see what percentage of your money is spent on groceries, food, loans, childcare, gifts, and so on.

When you view all your expenses in one chart, you can quickly see which costs have a large impact as well as which ones may be small but could be avoided, and removed in the future.

TRACK BUDGET SPENDING

And while the overall visual interpretation is helpful to spot major spending patterns, you can set a budget to more accurately keep track of spending on utilities, rent or mortgage, healthcare, insurance, and so on. If you overspend or underspend, the difference is easily spotted.

FORECAST HOW MUCH YOU HAVE

A really nice feature to help you avoid unwanted financial surprises is the balance forecast chart.

Instead of getting hit with a surprise bill or even a regular bill that depletes your cash balance when it’s too late, you can virtually peer into the future to see how much you will have over the course of a month and make adjustments ahead of time.

For example, if you know you will be low on cash in 3 weeks when bills are due, you will be more likely to skip an impulse purchase of a new pair of shoes.

RECONCILE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

If you don’t mind getting into the nitty gritty details to make sure every transaction is accounted for then the reconciliation area of Moneyspire will be to your liking.

You can verify that each transaction is correct, and that no errors or fraud has taken place in any of your financial accounts.

Moneyspire Bonus Features

Beyond the popular budgeting features, Moneyspire has a bunch of extra features to simplify your finances too.

DIRECT CONNECT ONLINE

You can connect to your financial accounts directly online and import transactions automatically so you don’t have to get stuck with manual imports.

If for any reason your bank doesn’t support Direct Connect, Moneyspire Connect, an alternative service, can simplify the process for you.

MULTIPLE CURRENCY SUPPORT

Whether you are transferring between accounts located in different currency regions or simply downloading currency exchange rates, Moneyspire can handle currency requests.

IMPORT & EXPORT DATA

The last thing you want to do is import financial transactions manually, and you don’t have to because Moneyspire supports a wide variety of file formats, including: CSV, OFX, QFX, and QIF.

CHECK PRINTING

Moneyspire supports check printing on blank check stock, and caters to easy calibration of different check types.

How Moneyspire Works

The first step in getting started with Moneyspire is to download the application onto your computer – all data is encrypted on the hard disk.

Next, link your bank accounts, investment accounts, and credit cards. You can view your accounts all in one place right away, as well as create budgets and set bill pay reminders.

Moneyspire is accessible on many devices without any license restrictions, so you can add it to your mobile devices as well as move data to the cloud, which makes it accessible anywhere you have an internet connection.

If you run into any issues, Moneyspire has an extensive FAQ section, online video tutorials on YouTube, as well as helpful customer support to get you squared away.

Moneyspire Pros and Cons

Moneyspire provides a free 30-day trial to let you evaluate the software and thereafter charges a one-time fee of $59.99.

Moneyspire Summary

Moneyspire is a budgeting tool designed to help you keep track of your spending and income, as well as to notify you when it is time to pay bills so you can avoid late and penalty fees.

Unlike many budgeting apps, Moneyspire supports investment accounts as well as bank accounts and credit cards. However, it only supports Apple devices when it comes to mobile, so Android users should consider Personal Capital or YouNeedABudget.

All your information is encrypted on your own computer’s hard disk for security but if you want to access your personal finances on-the-go, you can choose the option to transfer data to the Cloud.

The one-time price of $59.99 is slightly higher than the pricing charged by other monthly budgeting apps, though the user interface isn’t quite as polished. Still, Moneyspire has features that many other budgeting tools lack, such as currency support and no license restrictions on device downloads.

All in all, Moneyspire is a solid financial budgeting app that does just about everything you will need it to do once you are up and running, and best of all, you can get started free as part of a 30-day trial to check it out without risking a dime.

Open a Moneyspire Account

The article Moneyspire Review 2020 was originally posted on Investormint

NOTE: On January 15, 2018, Power Wallet shut down its operations and purged all information from its database.

If budgeting is a pain for you, Power Wallet has an online tool to help you track spending, create budgets, specify financial goals, and get bill reminders.

Think of Power Wallet as an online hub or dashboard where you can view all your financial accounts in one place at anytime.

Whether you want to monitor your cash flow, track bills or get due date alerts, Power Wallet gives you the oversight and insights you need to simplify your finances.

Much like Personal Capital, which connects all your financial accounts and displays them in one location on your mobile devices, Power Wallet is a web-based budgeting software that enables you to holistically view all your financial accounts on one dashboard.

Where Power Wallet wins brownie points is on cost – it is free – and ease of use, though you cannot access it on-the-go via mobile phone.

Power Wallet Spotlight

What Is Power Wallet?

Power Wallet simplifies the process of viewing your finances holistically. You can easily track your income and spending, as well as your cash flow.

As a personal finance budgeting tool, Power Wallet connects all your financial accounts in one place, so you are not left wondering how much you are earning or spending overall.

The company was the brainchild of Bob Sullivan, who saw a need for people to take control of their finances beyond credit card debt, student loans, and mortgages.

The idea was to build an easy-to-use platform to manage and track all income, spending, and debt.

The mission behind Power Wallet is to empower individuals and families financially with a personal finance planning tool to rebuild and secure their financial futures.

>> Related: Check Out Personal Capital Mobile Budgeting App

How Power Wallet Works

The first step in getting started with Power Wallet is to connect your online financial accounts.

Next, you can create financial budgets and track spending, as well as set up billing alerts to help you avoid paying late fees.

You can then monitor your cash flow by category and modify your spending habits to make changes needed to achieve your financial goals.

When you log in, you will see an interactive calendar that provides a monthly overview as well as daily activity and billing reminders.

You can easily create alerts when it is time to make a payment, so staying on track is easier than having a fistful of post-it notes scattered around your desk that you might otherwise have relied upon.

Beyond budgeting, saving is a focus at Power Wallet, which helps you spot deals and coupons.

Each discounted opportunity is personalized to your interests and spending patterns, so you don’t receive a haphazard list of offers but rather you get access to discounts on items you might otherwise pay higher prices for elsewhere.

Free financial education is also available at Power Wallet via its PowerBlog.

You will find a wide range of topics discussed beyond budgeting that are designed to help you think about your finances over the short-term and long-term, including:

• The pros and cons of paid subscriptions
• Are all-inclusive vacations a deal or a waste of money?
• Cash vs credit: do you save money by not using a credit card?
• Should you divulge your salary when interviewing?
• Is it smart to quit your job before lining up another one?
• How should you allocate your tax refund?
• What percentage of your salary should be allocated to rent?
• What apps are best to split checks at restaurants?
• Should you haggle when you shop?
• How do you navigate credit card fees?

>> Check Out Financial Goal-Setting At Betterment

Power Wallet Pros and Cons

Power Wallet is a free, easy-to-use personal finance budgeting tool that connects you to personalized deals and discounts, provides billing alerts, and a portal to easily pay bills online, though it is only a web-based interface currently and does not account for tangible assets, such as a home.

How Secure Is Power Wallet?

When you link your financial accounts to one portal or online hub, you want to know that your personal information is kept safe.

To keep your information secure, Power Wallet uses Comodo and Comodo Webinspector.

Each day, the Power Wallet website is tested to provide the highest level of security and protect against online threats, identity theft, spyware, and viruses.

The platform relies on 256-bit SSL encryption and is read-only.

Plus, Power Wallet commits to not selling your personal information to any third parties.

Power Wallet Summary

As budgeting tools go, Power Wallet is hard to beat because not only is it easy to use but it is free.

Where it shines is its dashboard view that lets you holistically view all your financial accounts in one place as well as pay bills easily without having to log into many online portals.

A really nice feature is next to your transactions, you receive alert notifications showing you where you could save money on items you actually spend money on – as opposed to irrelevant coupons on things you don’t want or need.

Plus, Power Wallet has its own PowerCard rewards program to help you save even more on goods and services you want.

If there is a drawback to PowerCard, it is the lack of a mobile offering and lack of integration into some account providers. If a mobile solution is what you want then Personal Capital is a better choice, but it’s hard to beat Power Wallet on value because the entire software budgeting tool is free to use.

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The article Power Wallet Review 2020 – Free Budgeting Tool was originally posted on Investormint