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6 Finance Apps to Help Pad Your Pockets

While we all know how important it is to create and stick to a budget, it’s also not easy to do. If you don’t keep track of your spending habits, small purchases can add up quickly and leave you with nothing for the important bills. If you’re looking for finance apps that can help you create a budget and save some money, the following have what you need.

Mint.com

To go along with their website, Mint.com also offers a free app for Apple and Android devices to help track spending and manage your budget. After you supply your login information for all your bank accounts and credit cards, this secure app puts everything together in a clean and simple format so you can quickly see how much money you’ve spent and how much you have remaining. The app can also send you alerts if you’re about to go over budget.

Expensify

Anyone who does a lot of business traveling knows how difficult it is to track expenses. Expensify, a free app for Android and Apple devices, seeks to make this process a little less time-consuming. You can track expenses, input mileage and time, and import credit card data. Plus, with SmartScan, you can also take a picture of a receipt, and the app will automatically detect and enter the date, merchant, and amount into the expense report.

BillGuard

In the age of credit card fraud, it’s important to always go over every credit card statement to make sure there isn’t any suspicious activity. BillGuard, a free app for iPhone, scans your statements for any unusual activity. Members in the network constantly add companies who use questionable billing practices so that the app has the latest information on what to flag. If it does flag a charge as suspicious, you can either confirm that the purchase is legitimate, or you can ask BillGuard to send an automated message to the merchant for you.

PayPal

If you use PayPal a lot, this free app for Android and Apple devices helps you keep an eye on your account and use it to make purchases. If you’re splitting a dinner check with friends, this app makes it very easy to pay them back for your part of the bill. Plus, you can even use the app to make purchases with any retailer that accepts PayPal. The app even allows you to search for merchants near you that accept it.

Toshl Finance

It doesn’t matter if you’re saving up for a new cell phone or a new car, Toshl Finance can help you reach your savings goal. This free app for Apple and Android devices is a bill organizer, expense tracker, and budget keeper all in one. If you know you want to save money for a specific item, you can import your bills so you know how much you have to spend that month, and find out how much you can save every month. This can give you an idea of how long it will take to reach your savings goal. You can even create daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly budgets to really track your spending habits and see where your money is going.

Check

Late fees are unnecessary expenses and a waste of money. Check, a free app for Apple and Android devices, wants to make sure you never have to pay a late fee again. With this app, you simply enter in the amount and due date of each bill, and it reminds you when the bills are due. Plus, you can even make payments or schedule payments to occur right in the app. If you enter your banking information to this secure app, it will even alert you if your checking account balance is getting low so you can avoid an overdraft fee.

Whether you’re looking to save money, you want to make sure you have enough money to pay your bills, or you want to create a budget you can live with, these finance apps have easy-to-use features that make doing all three simple and effective.

Photo courtesy of Sean MacEntee