What are the best investment apps to help you stay on top of your personal finances? We researched some of the best personal finance software tools on the market that can help you keep track of your income and spending habits, and keep a pulse on your investments and overall net worth.
Some investment apps for your iPhone or Android devices focus on budgeting and paying off debt while others include investment tracking so you can stay on top of your retirement plans too.
When you are considering an investment app, the best choice will depend on your overall needs. Do you want to granularly track every transaction in your bank account or do you want an app that factors in your assets, liabilities, credit card transactions, loans, and daily spending?
Below are some of the top investment apps to consider when making your selection.
PERSONAL CAPITAL
Personal Capital is one of the very best investment apps because it gives you an overview of your entire financial situation.
With the touch of a button, you can view your entire net worth, all your credit card transactions, your spending on groceries, entertainment, and mortgage or rent, and you can even enter custom categories. For example, you can enter an asset, such as a home, or liability like a loan from a relative that may not be connected to an online financial account.
Personal Capital was designed as a mobile app to help you stay on track with your personal finances but it’s also a robo-advisor that connects you to investment management services.
While the mobile app is free, it will cost you money to sign up to the financial management premium service, and the minimums are quite steep, in the six figures.
Like Personal Capital, Betterment is another leading robo-advisor that has a suite of tools to help you stay on top of your retirement planning and even has a feature whereby you can donate a portion of your investments to charity.
ACORNS
Acorns is another excellent investment app. You can think of Acorns as a microsavings app that rounds up loose change and squirrels it away for a rainy day.
You won’t necessarily get rich with Acorns but it is a valuable way to build a nest-egg in the background without even thinking about it.
Every time you shop somewhere, Acorns will automatically round up your spare change to the nearest dollar and invest the difference on your behalf for a small monthly fee.
Unlike a services like Blooom that specifically target retirement investors by helping to manage 401(k) portfolios, Acorns links your daily transactions to your investment portfolios by sweeping day-to-day ‘rounded up’ savings to a dedicated investment account that Acorns will manage autonomously.
If the idea of handing over control to a “robot’ to manage your money doesn’t entice you then you could look to standard brokers, like tastyworks, thinkorswim, or TradeStation.
YNAB
Another great personal finance app is You Need A Budget, or YNAB, for short. YNAB is a specialist when it comes to budgeting.
Unlike Personal Capital, it does not cater to investment tracking so YNAB is more suitable if your goal is to track each and every transaction, and reconcile your bank account transactions with your YNAB ledger monthly.
YNAB will set you back a monthly fee whereas Personal Capital’s mobile app is 100% free. Still, the cost of the service is about the same as you would pay monthly for a streaming movie or music service.
You Need A Budget also does well synchronizing your accounts so when you log in you see up to-date data. Not all financial apps are as good when it comes to synchronization. For example, Quicken, which has historically been an industry leader, does not win as high marks from customer reviews in this area.
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