Balancing the budget

Not all of us were meant to be accountants. But taking hold of your finances, making a budget and investing wisely is very important to ensuring that you don’t get swallowed up by a mountain of credit card debt and go under.

So if you’re in need of a smart way to keep tabs on your bills, incomes, expenses and investments, these are the apps for you!
Toshl Finance &Expense Tracker
Toshl lets you set a monthly limit for yourself and you can then work within those limits to manage your spending. It notifies you, using friendly Monsters Inc.-esque characters, when you’re nearing your customised budgetary constraints and, best of all, it works cross platform and has a website that works with your phone app to give you better analytics on your spending.
Mvelops
Built around the ‘envelope method’ of budgeting, you basically create custom budgets based on spending and saving goals and allot your money into categories for expenses. The app then automatically captures online transactions with synced bank accounts, or transactions you manually input and you pay out of the virtual envelopes. That way, your savings money is never tapped for expenses!
moBudget
A free Windows Phone 8 app that lets you save expenses to the cloud and features Live Tile support, so you can pin expenses to your start screen. It’s particularly good at keeping track of upcoming and overdue payments, incomes and bills. It has nice customisable colour budget bars for quick visual feedback, supports multiple currencies and you can export data to Excel.
Level Money
This is a no fuss, no frills, easy to use app that looks at how much money you take in each month, how much you spend on rent and bills, how much you want to save, and then gives you an amount you’re allowed to spend each day. Based on your daily expenses, it will plot out how well you stick to the budget and notify you if you’re under or over your weekly or monthly spend limit.
Mint
If you’re looking for a budgeting app with bells and whistles, this is it. Mint is a personal finance app that not only helps you track your income and expenses, but also your financial state as a whole. Besides allowing for in-depth personal budget management and expense logging, you can even track investments, stocks, and get tips and alerts on your investments, spending and savings.
 

• Zapped by Apps