Of all the incredible things smartphones can help with in your daily life, money management is perhaps the most critical. Thanks to the range of apps available on the Google Play Store, your phone can essentially act as a financial manager, helping you to make wise decisions regarding your budget and steering you correctly when you’ve moved off course. However, you’ve got to know which app to go for, as they’re not all created equal. Here are 10 essential Android apps to help you manage your money.
1. Debt Snowball Calculator (free, in-app purchases)
One of the most difficult things about money management is knowing how and when to pay off loans. Let’s say you’ve acquired an unsecured personal loan from a trustworthy provider. Not only do you want to pay it off promptly, you also don’t want to let the provider down. That’s where Debt Snowball Calculator comes in. Its clean interface will help you manage loan repayments across multiple loans, enter a budget to help figure out how much you have, and more. It’s an indispensable ally when you have loans to pay.
2. Financial Calculators (free, in-app purchases)
Have you ever wanted to keep track of spending by source? With Financial Calculators, you can do just that. It offers a range of different options including a loan calculator, a tip tracker, and an APR calculator, among other things. If you feel like your finances are spiralling out of control and you need to get a handle on what’s being spent and where, Financial Calculators is a great app. It’s also got a very clean user interface that should be easy to operate no matter your level of expertise.
3. Google Sheets (free)
Yes, really. Google’s built-in cloud-based Excel-style spreadsheet app works brilliantly as a budget management app. Since it offers all the same functionality as Microsoft’s iconic spreadsheet program, you can use it to input your income and outgoings, create a budget, add formulae to calculate expenditures, and much, much more. The Android version of Google Sheets is surprisingly powerful, too, so you won’t lose anything by moving to your smartphone. You can even access data between devices!
4. Google Calculator – or your phone’s calculator app (free)
Again, never underestimate the power of Google’s simple built-in calculator app. While this isn’t necessarily a full budget management tool, it’s a great way to augment any budget calculations you’re making. You likely won’t need most of your calculator’s more advanced functions, but it is a fully-fledged scientific calculator with plenty of extra features if you need them. When you’re working money out, don’t do sums in your head – use your phone for what it was designed to do.
5. Mint (free, in-app purchases)
Mint is the premier bill repayment app. While it won’t necessarily help you with your debts in the same in-depth way some of the other apps on this list will, Mint is a great way to remember what bills are due. The app even allows you to pay your bills directly, meaning you can bypass the headache of locking your phone and forgetting to actually pay what’s due. Mint also offers help with budgeting so that you can make sure you’ve got enough money stored away to pay those bills.
6. My Budget Book (£3.59)
There are so many budget management apps out there that asking for payment upfront feels like a rather forward prospect. However, My Budget Book justifies the asking price by being one of the most fully-featured and thorough budgeting apps out there. Its interface might be a little daunting at first, but you’ll quickly get used to it, and the depth of functionality on offer here is dizzying. You can even export your sheets to various file formats, allowing you to use them in other settings.
7. Monefy (free, in-app purchases)
Monefy’s Google Play page describes it as a “budget manager and expense tracker”, and that’s a very accurate description of what it does. The interface is beautiful, and you’ll find pretty much any category you could possibly want in order to help you properly organise your outgoings and income. Several features are restricted to the paid version, but you should be able to get by just fine using Monefy’s basic free functionality.
8. Goodbudget (free, in-app purchases)
Primarily intended to help you track your budget (as the name suggests), Goodbudget is a great app that works brilliantly with a number of other apps including Microsoft Money. It’s also got a clean interface, a number of different options to help you track your money, and cross-platform support in case you want to download it on a device with a different operating system. It’s not quite as fully-formed as some of the other apps here, but it’s an excellent choice.
9. Monny (free, in-app purchases)
Sure, you can build budgets and track expenditure with other apps, but how many of them let you see trends and respond to the overall movement of your finances? That’s exactly what Monny allows you to do. It heavily revolves around analytics, letting you see what kind of trends your spending and income create and allowing you to adjust your behaviour accordingly. If you don’t want to go in-depth, Monny isn’t the app for you, but if you like stats, here’s your stop.
10. PocketGuard (free, in-app purchases)
PocketGuard’s order of the day is simplicity. This app brings a super-clean, super-intuitive user interface, breaking down your spending into easy graphs and charts. It’ll remind you when you need to cancel subscriptions, show you ways to pay less for your bills, and more. You can even quickly display exactly what disposable income you have available through the In My Pocket feature, which shows what you’ll have after bills, food, and other parameters. Not bad, eh?