While budgeting may get a bad rap for being tedious and time consuming, understanding where and when you are spending, and earning, is key to having control of your finances. Maintaining a budget allows you to gain control of your money and help save for those big milestones, whether that be buying a home, expanding your family, or retiring. There are many budgeting tools that can help ease the budgeting process and assist you in controlling your money and reaching your saving goals. Here’s a look at a few budgeting tool options.
EveryDollar
EveryDollar is an app that was created by Dave Ramsey as a piggyback to his book about financial fitness. You can log in to the app or online to check your budget from anywhere and EveryDollar allows you to create and organize your budget in a way that makes sense to you. Other features include making notes within your budget, setting up an emergency fund through the app, splitting transactions and due dates for your bills and expenses. There is a premium version that includes additional features for a monthly fee.
Intuit Mint
Intuit Mint is a popular online budgeting manager that offers a variety of services through their budgeting platform. Mint allows you to track your cashflow and it gives you insights on where you can save based on your spending. It allows you to have all your accounts from cash to loans to investment, so you have a complete picture of your financials. Mint offers 24/7 access to your credit score and will notify you if there are any changes. They also pride themselves on security, so your information is always protected and multi factor authentication is used. Mint is free to use and does not charge monthly fees.
Personal Finance Money Management Tool
Bankers Trust’s Personal Finance Money Management Tool makes it easy to track saving goals, monitor your investments and develop a budget. You can pull in financial information from your Bankers Trust accounts as well as accounts with other financial institutions, and it is easily accessed through internet and mobile banking. This tool comes with many benefits including:
- Ability to pull in accounts from other financial institutions to get a comprehensive view of your financials.
- Receive alerts when you are close to or exceeding your budget goals.
- Budgeting and spending tools to prepare for upcoming expenses and achieve savings goals.
- Know your spending history by breaking down purchases by category.
Spending Insights
Spending Insights technology is featured in the Personal Finance tools for Bankers Trust Internet and Mobile Banking and provides personalized insights based on your transaction history to give insights with a tailored analysis and recommendations. The Insights will notify you of things such as bill spikes, possible double billing, spending at a new merchant and more. This will give you real-time advice and help you gain control of your spending.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to budgeting, and the many budgeting tools out there can help guide you in creating a system that works for your needs.