Take Control of Your Financial Life Personal financial apps are designed to help you make sense of your money. How much do you have? How much do you owe? Are you spending wisely? What do you need to do to get a mortgage or car loan? The best personal finance services help you answer these questions and others. More than anything else, they educate you on money matters. The most popular and well-known personal finance apps work on the premise that better money management comes through centralization and visibility. If you can see all your accounts and spending habits, your credit history, or the billable hours across your business all in one place, you are better equipped to make good decisions about your financial situation. Best Overall Personal Finance Service Mint.com remains PCMag's top pick among personal finance services, because it's useful every day. While some apps specialize in one area, Mint does a little bit of everything. Mint tracks your spending and account balances, helps you pay bills on time, monitors monthly budgets that you establish, encourages you to set financial goals, provides your credit score, and gives you one of your credit reports. The Mint mobile app lets you check your account balances and monthly budgets before making a purchase. If it's the end of the month and you already spent more than you should on expensive coffee, Mint tells you as much, which will hopefully influence your spending decisions going forward. Best for Credit Reports and Scores There are two online services we like for credit reports: Credit Karma and WalletHub. Credit Karma pulls your credit report and score from both Experian and TransUnion, so you can keep an eye on all the information that two of the three credit reporting agencies have on you. Credit Karma updates your credit scores as often as once per week. WalletHub is similar, but with two major differences. First, it updates your score as often as daily. Second, it only tracks your credit reports and scores from one agency, TransUnion. Both WalletHub and Credit Karma alert you when changes occur on your credit report, giving you an opportunity to catch errors early. A unique feature in WalletHub is an excellent graph that charts changes to your credit score over time. Credit Karma, meanwhile, has a handy tool that anticipates how your credit score might change if you take certain actions, such as applying for a new credit card or car loan and whether you are accepted or rejected. Best for Household Management A more unusual personal finance tool, called Doxo, is a digital filing cabinet as well as a bill payment hub. Doxo automatically collects electronic statements from all kinds of providers, from utility companies to banks and other businesses. It saves them in one central account. You can also upload other kinds of family and household documents to your digital filing cabinet, such as medical bills. It certainly is an invaluable tool you'll really appreciate the next time you have to dig up months' worth of statements for a loan or a legal matter. Doxo's real financial feature, however, is bill payment. Doxo lets you schedule bills to be paid to various providers—all from one place. It's often free, but that depends on whether the provider is in Doxo's network and on a few other details, such as whether you use a bank account or a credit card to make the payment. Sometimes the payment comes with a small fee, either around $2.99 or about 3.5 percent of the payment amount if you use a credit card or if the provider is not in Doxo's network. For smaller service providers, such as regional gas and electric companies, I recommend checking directly with the provider first to be sure they can process payments from Doxo. Once it's set up, however, you can manage and pay all your bills from one place, as well as save all your statements. Best for Manual Entry Most personal finance apps have moved away from offline desktop software due to the vast benefits of online connectivity. That said, not everyone wants to connect to their bank accounts directly and manage their finances online. Quicken remains the big name in this space. Quicken is desktop software that gives you an option to manage your finances locally. Quicken has a few versions of its software, including the reasonably priced Quicken Starter Edition ($39.99), which offers income and expense management as well as budgeting tools. There are optional online aspects, too, such as bank transaction import and bill-pay. Another app that has been very popular for its offline service is YNAB (which stands for you need a budget), but even that app has moved online recently. Luckily, the latest version of YNAB still gives you an option to manage your budgets manually instead of automatically. When you choose this option, you never have to connect to any of your bank accounts for the budgeting app to work. While older versions of YNAB are no longer supported, you can still download and install a copy of YNAB 3 and 4 for Mac and Windows if you are a legacy user and want to continue with the older app. Best for Freelancers Although some might assume personal financial software is all about budgeting the money you already have, that's not the whole story. Before you can have any money, you have to get paid, and if you've ever worked as a freelancer you know that the onus is on you to track your time and submit invoices for work you've done. Harvest is an excellent solution for freelancers and small businesses that need to track their time and bill clients for hourly or project-rate work. The app offers both time-tracking tools and complete invoicing software in one package. It's among the best time-tracking apps for its ease of use and ability to integrate with dozens of other online services. Best Mobile Personal Finance Apps All the personal finance software mentioned here consists of apps that run on the desktop or in a web browser. Many of them have companion mobile personal finance apps, but they are not exclusively for mobile. Mobile apps can be an important component, however, because they give you access to your financial situation when you're out in the world and perhaps spending money. That's exactly when you want to be able to see the balances of your bank accounts and credit cards, check where your budget stands, and so forth. Are Personal Finance Apps Secure? One very important concern many people have about personal finance apps is security. Typically, personal finance apps and online services use 128-bit bank level or 256-bit military-level encryption and are verified by TRUSTe, VeriSign, and MacAfee. Apps that pull detailed information from your accounts have read-only access, meaning they can see the information, but they can't change the information or make requests to move money. The exception is for bill-pay services. A few apps, such as Mint and Doxo, include a bill payment service that lets you authorize payments to be made from accounts you authorize to the biller (or sometimes a third party that facilitates the payment). In both Mint and Doxo, this part of the service is optional, so you can skip it if you do not want to give those apps any authority to move money. Is there a risk to using an online personal financial app? Sure. Should it prevent you from actually using these apps? No. Is it possible that the payoff of getting your head around your debt, spending habits, and net worth is greater than the slim risk of fraud? Absolutely. Set a strong and unique password, and put your fears aside. If you're really paranoid, however, there are some financial apps that operate offline, or at least offer that option, such as YNAB. Other Financial Tools The tools in this list of the best personal finance software are designed primarily for individuals and households, although as the name suggests, Quicken Home & Business offers some tools for small businesses as well. For more tools for people who work for themselves, you can read our roundup of the best online accounting tools. While you're thinking about your money, you might also want to read our feature on the best tax preparation software. Mint.com Review MSRP: $0.00 at Bottom Line: Mint is the best personal finance software available. It's free and ad-supported, but even the ads bring value to this fantastic tool for keeping an eye on your money. Read Review Harvest Review MSRP: $12.00 at Bottom Line: Whether you're a freelancer who needs to need to track time and expenses, or you run a small business and need to manage team members and bill clients, Harvest handles it all. Read Review Credit Karma Review MSRP: $0.00 at Bottom Line: Credit Karma lets you see your credit reports and scores, and it provides a good deal of information about how to change them. It's free, though it does serve you some targeted financial ads... Read Review LearnVest Review MSRP: $19.00 at Bottom Line: The online personal finance tool LearnVest provides free tools for tracking your spending habits, determining your financial goals, and budgeting your money. It's a great solution if you als... Read Review WalletHub Review MSRP: $0.00 at Bottom Line: If you want to know your credit score, monitor your credit report, and learn more about personal finance, give WalletHub a try. It's one of the better free credit-reporting apps. Read Review YNAB Review MSRP: $5.00 at Bottom Line: YNAB stands for You Need a Budget, and it's true: You do. Built on a philosophy of financial responsibility, this online app helps you learn about personal finance while getting your spendin... Read Review Doxo Review MSRP: $0.00 at Bottom Line: Doxo is a capable bill payment hub and online filing cabinet for all your household documents. Paying bills is often free, but sometimes can incur a small charge. If you're trying to go pape... Read Review

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