Member Connect7 Secure Apps to Track Your Money
These apps not only help with budget plans and money managing, but offer a peace of mind from knowing your banking and credit information are protected.
There are hundreds of applications available used to track banking accounts, investments, assets and more, but which one best suits your needs? Here are our favorite budget planners and money managers.
1 - Mint
Why We Love it: Mint’s user-friendly interface makes tracking expenses seamless, as it automatically classifies transactions. There are multiple customizable goal templates laced with tips, steps and suggestions to help you with budgeting for a home or saving a little extra cash for a vacation.
What Makes it Secure: Aside from it's multi-factor authentication, Mint has some additional safety measures. Access from devices can be remotely revoked if your phone or computer is ever lost or stolen. Mint also monitors your spending habits and reports any large or unusual transactions immediately to respond to potential identity theft attempts.
2 - You Need a Budget (YNAB)
Why We Love it: You Need a Budget (YNAB) offers free, live online budgeting classes and a library of guides and tips. YNAB uses a personable language that helps keep things simple and easy to understand.
What Makes it Secure: YNAB uses the same infrastructure trusted by the CIA. The application also prevents brute force attacks by not allowing you use the top 2,000 most common passwords, forcing you to create unique credentials that aren't easily guessed.
3 - Personal Capital
Why We Love it: Personal Capital has financial advisors available by phone to discuss your financial goals and offer advice on where you can improve and move forward. It prides itself on having the most sophisticated retirement planning calculator on the market.
What Makes it Secure: Personal Capital encrypts data with military-grade tools to protect your information. Users can also opt-in to monitoring emails with daily transactions to check for suspicious activity or identity theft.
4 - EveryDollar
Why We Love it: EveryDollar was created by Dave Ramsey, author of “7 Baby Steps,” and keeps things simple. It provides a digital copy of The EveryDollar Guide to Budgeting.
What Makes it Secure: EveryDollar uses multi-layer security and highly secure data centers. Additionally, the free version of EveryDollar requires you to input transactions manually, much like balancing a checkbook, which gives you control of what is monitored.
5 - Level Money
Why We Love it: Level Money automatically creates a budget plan that maps out just how much you can safely spend in a day, week or month. And although we hope you’ll never need to use it, the app has a ‘Burn Rate’ mode that allows you to calculate how long you could live off your current accounts.
What Makes it Secure: Level Money has read-only access and uses the same encryption as financial institutions’ websites. Users create both a PIN number and a password for double-layer security at sign-in.
6 - HomeBudget
Why We Love it: HomeBudget uses charts and graphs to quickly understand what money is being spent on. There is an additional feature, Family Sync, that allows multiple users to work together on a single budget.
What Makes it Secure: Transactions are entered manually or imported from downloaded bank statements, another ‘checkbook’ style application that cuts out connecting to a financial institution.
7- Splitwise
Why We Love it: Splitwise focuses on tracking IOUs and shared expenses. The application allows you to import contacts from your phone, track specific receipts and add them for a total owed amount. For added ease, you can make payments directly to your contacts with PayPal.
What Makes it Secure: Since Splitwise is not used for general budgeting, it does not use any live banking information.