If you’ve found yourself burning a hole in your pocket lately, you’re not alone – nearly 69% of Americans indicated they lived paycheck-to-paycheck at the end of 2020. If you want to keep track of where your money is going and set goals to get out of your financial rut, you would likely benefit from making a budget.

However, this is easier said than done. Where does one even start? Thankfully, many helpful budgeting apps can make calculations on your behalf – so you don’t even have to be good at math – and help guide you toward your financial goals. Read on to discover some of the best budgeting apps available for you in 2021.

Personal Capital

One of the things that make Personal Capital so great is that it is completely and totally free. It offers a wide range of features, including the ability to plan for your retirement by using custom scenarios.

You can also access a variety of budgeting tools and financial literacy resources. You can link your bank and investment accounts so that the app can calculate your financial health for you. It is widely considered one of the best apps for tracking your spending and financial health, keeping you on track to reaching your goals, and being one of the best investing advisor apps.

PocketGuard

PocketGuard has both a free version and a version that is $3.99. You can sync all your financial accounts (such as checking and savings accounts and credit cards) to track your expenses and determine a realistic budget. You can customize your budget goals and keep tabs on your entire financial life.

The app itself will offer suggestions by automatically constructing potential budgets based on your income and spending history. It can also help you to identify overspending. It gives you a day-by-day budget by first eliminating all necessities and telling you how much you have available for everyday spending. Finally, the app can help you to negotiate bills so that you’re spending less.

Mint

Mint is one of the most widely-known budgeting apps currently on the market, and for a good reason. First of all, everything is completely free. They offer a host of unique features such as custom budgeting tools and on-demand access to your credit score, all also completely free.

They have a bill payment tracker and can show you data reflecting your spending patterns, including identifying areas of problems pending and alerting you when you go over your budget.

Tiller Money

Tiller Money offers a 30-day free trial and then costs $79 per year. One of the things that makes Tiller Money unique is that it’s spreadsheet-based. Once you’ve linked all your financial accounts, it will automatically file your expenses into customizable, color-coded spreadsheets within 24 hours.

You can share these spreadsheets with your partner if you have a joint bank account with someone, and you can also get e-mail updates on your financial health if you’re too busy to be checking your spreadsheets constantly.

Simplifi

Simplifi offers a 30-day free trial and then is $36 per year, billed annually. With this app, you can view your entire financial history and life all at once and create customizable spending and savings goals.

It can help you to manage your bills by providing notifications when one is about to come due and automatically withdrawing the expense from your budget to show you how much you have left to work with. It will also notify you before you exceed your budget.

YNAB

YNAB – otherwise known as “You Need a Budget” – is also a top-rated budgeting app. It has a weirdly specific 34-day free trial and is then $84 per year. However, many say that the expense is worth it. YNAB follows rigorous budgeting rules based on the zero-based budgeting system, which builds a budget based on your income.

It’s based on four key values: “every dollar gets a job” (i.e., assign every dollar of your income to an expense); break larger annual payments into several smaller monthly savings goals; constantly adjust your spending; and age your money, or try to break out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

They offer joint budgeting for couples and will track your spending. You can also access it on nearly any device, not just your cell phone. Finally, they offer free workshops and budgeting advice.

EveryDollar

EveryDollar follows the same zero-based budgeting system like YNAB, except it has a completely free version. The difference is that you need to manually enter all of your expenses into the budget for it to function the same way. Otherwise, you will need to spend $149 per year on the full-version one.

MoneyPatrol

MoneyPatrol is free for the first 15 days and then is billed annually at $59.99. It shows you an overview of the past year of your financial history and evaluates your income and expenses in detail. You can also access your credit score, as well as an interpretation of it.

You can connect it to each of your financial accounts, and it offers spreadsheets and customizable budgets based on rules and data.

Conclusion

If you want to create a budget but don’t really know where to start, any one of these budgeting apps is a great place to begin. Nearly all of these apps offer customizable budget tools, free budgeting advice, and income and expenses tracking to help you set goals and stick to them.

There’s no such thing as a rut too deep to get out of, and it’s never too late to take control over your financial health.