Top 3 Personal Finance Sites and Apps

The first step towards financial success is to track your money. You need to know where your money is going before you can make any sound decisions. There are many personal finance websites and apps that can help you do this. They integrate into your bank accounts and have amazing tools to help you manage your finances. Many of them are free so you may have to deal with some advertisements, but other than that, they are strong/powerful tools to aid you with your finances. Here are the top three that I’ve had personal experience with and/or had discussed with others about.

• Mint - I used this for almost a year and I liked it a lot. I was able to integrate all my accounts in it and it helped create good trackers and it let me track some of my personal goals. I had it on my desktop and the iPhone app. The iPhone app had a lot of advertisements, but it’s worth it. I want this blog to become a good source of information and I also rely on advertisements to help earn income. The app is owned by Intuit so if you’ve used Quicken to prepare your taxes, then some of your Mint information can quickly transfer over when filing your taxes.

  
• You Need a Budget (YNAB) – The full service costs money but it offers a social experience to it too. You can go on their forums and talk to others, view their tutorials and lessons and get real advice from professionals. They’ve recently released a free “lite” version of their product and it’s still very powerful. Some of my friends love the feature that gives you tailored advice if it notices you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck. I’ve been helping people with their finances for over a decade now and a lot of people don’t like asking for financial help (especially men). A friend of mine loved getting good advice from the app while retaining his privacy.

  
• Personal Capital – A friend personally recommended I post about this one. This site is less about the budget and more about investing and managing your money. I’ve read a lot of good reviews from users and they are very happy with the reduced amount of advertisements compared to Mint.com. I’ve never personally used it before but I trust the recommendation.

These are very powerful tools that you can use. Working with a Certified Financial Planner can be very costly, so even paying $60 for YNAB will save you money over the long run. Check out each website and let me know which one you prefer or like to use.  What other sites do people use?