4 Awesome Financial Applications That Are Free

There are several free budgeting tool applications that can help everybody keep better track of their finances, and spending habits. These tools allows users to sign into their own personal account and electronically connect through a security portal and have their spending habits broke down to show the consumer an overall picture of their accounts. We are going to take a look at what I feel are the top four money management and budget management tools that are free to consumers to use.

The first one that we are going to look at is BillGuard.

Billguard was rated number one application in 2013 and 2014 by PCMag and TechCrunch magazine and along with being rated number one by CNNMoney for being the best application for money management.

The application is great for tracking your spending habits over time and comparing your habits to months previous in order to show you where you are doing great or where you are doing bad with spending or tracking on your budget. This app will also compare your spending habits and scans the internet for coupons that match your habits in order to save you time and money when you go to the store.

BillGuard sends personalized messages to it members in order to notify users if they've shopped at a merchant who has been breached, this is very helpful especially for the last couple of years where large department stores data has been breached and consumers credit cards has been compromised.

There are three categories to BillGuard, there is the free version that entitles you too: Smart Inbox, Spending Analytic's, Transaction Intelligence, Card Fraud Alerts, Data Breach Alerts, and Card Concierge.

The second version cost $2.99 a month and it entitles you will too: everything the free version offers plus, Live support 24/7, Lost wallet recovery, Credit Monitoring from one bureau, Identity Restoration.

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The third version cost $6.99 a month and entitles you too: everything the first two versions offers plus Credit Monitoring from all three credit bureaus, Full Identity Restoration, Black Market Surveillance, SSN Fraud Alerts and $1 million ID Theft Insurance.

The second service that we will look at is Mint.com

Many of you have heard of this awesome application called Mint.com. This is a free money management tool that is built by Intuit which brought us Quicken. The key features of this application is for you to be able to view all your accounts in one place so you know where you are spending to much money and the areas that you are saving money in.

Mint.com is a great tool to help you build your financial budget, especially for people that have never lived by a budget before. This budget tool comes with all the step by step instructions to help you build your budget, start a savings plan, and helps you pay down your bills.

If you are an investor in the stock or commodities market Mint.com offers a nice tool to help you track your stocks and commodities. There are also some good learning tools to help new investors learn about investment strategies.

Another great feature with Mint is that you can keep track of your credit score at anytime with this program.

When you sign up for Mint you do not have to give them any credit card information. Many people including myself get really skeptical about being charged for something when it is advertised as a free service. But with Mint you do not have to worry about this, they will never ask for your credit card information.

The third app we will look at is called Checkbook.

This application is very similar to the Mint.com application but with Checkbook you can transfer funds from one account to another account. This application is a great tool to manage your personal written checkbook, set up a budget for your home, keep track of spending habits and etc.

This tool is also free and easy to use.

The forth tool we are looking at is Spending Tracker.

Spending Tracker is another easy to use free application for tracking your expenses and helps you setup and run a household budget. Just like the other apps it offers you great looking charts and graphs to help you with all your budget needs.

Help with building a budget

A good budget is the number one tool to helping a person pay off debt, build their retirement accounts, and plan for their financial future. A budget is a road map to help you with your everyday finances. A person should not look at a budget as being a negative item, but a helpful tool. When you take a vacation you use a road map or google maps in order to map your way from point “A” to point “B”, well a budget is the same thing, a map to help you manage your finances.

Many Americans have troubles with their bank accounts and other finances because many of us lack the skills to manage their accounts and their debt. There are many tools out there to help us with skills but most people do not know where to look or what to look for. Many financial tools  are free of charge if you know where to look.

Before putting together a budget the first thing you need to do is track all your expenses for a month. There are mobile apps that can help you record all of your purchases. Every purchase, from small ones to large ones need to be recorded for this month. Even ATM fee’s and bank fees need to be recorded in order to get a good picture of you spending habits.

Take this data after a month of tracking and sit down and you will probably be surprised to see where your money has gone. This is best way to get an overall picture about how you allocate your funds and spend your hard earned money..

When you finally sit down to put together your first month’s budget the number one thing you do not want to do is cut out all the fun things you do. Don’t make this a punishment and take all the fun out of your life. If you are too strict on yourself you will probably fail in a short time period. You will find yourself cheating and eventually you will stop following your budget and you find yourself back in the same boat your are trying to leave. Instead learn to limit yourself. Example would be, “if you stop every morning for a starbucks coffee or eat out for lunch everyday, don’t stop doing these things you enjoy all together. Just set yourself some limits, instead of doing these things daily, cut yourself back to once or twice a week, you will see the benefits add up in your wallet at the end of the month.

Now take your bills for the month and separate them into categories. The first category should be your fixed expenses, such as your mortgage or rent, your utilities, car payment and any sort of membership fees that you pay monthly. Hopefully this does not go over fifty percent of your monthly take home pay.

The next category would be savings. Experts recommend putting away ten to twenty percent of your take home pay into a auto deposit savings account that earns interest. They recommend an auto deposit, this is where the money comes out of your check before you notice it is missing so these funds will not be seen, “out of sight out of mind” kind of thinking.

The third category would be flexible spending. Your monthly budget should not exceed thirty percent of your take home pay for this category. This would consist of eating out, morning Starbucks coffee runs, groceries, gas, entertainment, hobbies, and etc. This category is called flexible because these items can be adjusted. For example, when shopping for groceries, try cutting coupons and look at adds in the paper to save yourself some money. Shopping for clothes, is another area that you can compare prices in order to save money. Filling the car with gas, shop around the area for cheaper prices for fuel. Cut back to once or twice a week for going to Starbucks instead of going daily. These are just a few examples of where you can be flexible and save money.

So if you see, fifty percent of your money goes toward your large ticket items like rent or mortgage, twenty percent goes to savings of some kind, and thirty percent goes toward your more flexible items.

Here is a list of tools to help you build your budget. These tools are online so I have put the links here for you to click on.

Budget Calculator

Mint.com

Budget Worksheet

BudgetPulse