Do you find yourself forgetting when you have to pay your bills or what your balances are? Have you ever decided not to check your account balance because you don’t want to know how much money is actually in there? Do you dread tax season?
You’re not alone. The average American loses $1,500 to $3,000 annually due to avoidable financial problems. In fact, a study found that only 49% of people feel financially confident—and it’s no wonder. It’s easy for finances to become overwhelming, especially when there are so many different tools out there for managing them.
By contrast, apps offer a simple way to keep track of your budget and savings goals. You can even use them for investing, saving for retirement, and debt repayment—all through the convenience of your phone.*
The best part: Most of these apps are free! And if they’re not free themselves, they’ll save you money in the long run by helping you avoid late fees and overdraft charges.
Best Apps For Financial Planners
- CountAbout
CountAbout, like so many other personal finance apps, positions itself as an alternative to heavy hitters like Mint (more on that later). The app allows users to import data from their Mint account with ease, making sure that monitoring your accounts doesn’t suffer any delay. CountAbout’s invoice creator should be attractive to small business owners as well. It isn’t without its shortcomings though. While users can monitor investments, the app doesn’t provide any investment planning tools. And user account syncing requires a premium subscription ($39.99/year). That’s a hefty increase over CountAbout’s $9.99/year basic subscription. - Goodbudget
The envelope system of saving might seem antiquated in the digital age, but the theory behind our grandparents’ tradition still rings true. Goodbudget carries on that tradition, placing rudimentary budgeting practices into the palm of your hand. The app allows users to monitor an account across up to 20 “envelopes” across two devices for free, but a $50/year subscription removes those limitations. Goodbudget’s mission isn’t fully realized yet, however, as the app doesn’t allow users to link their bank accounts to the app. Make sure you have your bank statements handy for upload. - Wally
Much like Goodbudget, Wally’s best use updates a tried and true pen-and-paper financial practice: tracking expenses. The app easily allows users to track expenses by synchronizing users’ bank accounts and letting them enter purchases simply by taking a picture of a receipt. Can’t get much easier than that. Where Wally can lose people is it’s polarizing subscription model. The app breaks individual features out from a blanket subscription, allowing users to customize their toolset at smaller costs. But there are few tools that most users would want to leave out, totaling out at nearly $60/year. It doesn’t help that bank account synchronization is also kept behind a paywall. - EveryDollar
Anyone with a passing interest in personal finance knows the name Dave Ramsey. The financial guru has been doling out tips and tricks for decades. So, it makes too much sense that Ramsey would commission his own app. Enter EveryDollar, an app that focuses on basic budgeting and nothing else. Users can build budgets and track expenses while consulting Ramsey’s famed “Baby Steps” brand of financial planning. The app’s lack of importing tools means that most information must be entered manually. Like anything with name-branding, EveryDollar main detriment is it bloated subscription price, which you’ll have to pay if you want to sync a bank account. At $99/year, EveryDollar isn’t a sound investment unless you specifically prescribe to Ramsey’s brand of guidance. - MoneyDance
MoneyDance is another app that targets Mint and Quicken users, pledging to offer better functionality with comparable tools. Users can import their Mint and Quicken data to the app, though the ease of that transition has been called into question by a number of users. The app itself packs every expected financial tool into an affordable one-time $49.99 purchase, though users’ first 100 transactions are free. MoneyDance also offers something no other app on this list does: personally developed add-ons. Users with knowledge of coding can build their own extensions for use in the app via its extension developer’s kit, making it potentially the most customizable option on the app marketplace. - Acorns
Budgeting and account monitoring aren’t the only valuable personal finance tools. Investing for the future is another key part of preserving one’s financial health. Many view market investments as unattainable, obtuse or simply intimidating. But Acorns’ singular mission is to alleviate those hurdles. It does so by investing the spare change from everyday purchases into low-risk exchange-traded funds. Simply link your account, spend your money and Acorns does the rest starting at $1/month. It’s the perfect tool to babyface investing for all. - Tiller
This one goes out to all the spreadsheet nerds out there. Tiller’s focus is squarely on providing easily digestible information about any of your financial accounts. All of its output is Google Sheets compatible and automatically updating, making it easy to access and analyze reports on the go. Users can even create their own custom spreadsheet templates, making it a great option for small businesses and individuals alike. Tiller’s lack of investment tools is noticeable, but the good far outweighs the bad, especially if segmented and well-organized information is your thing. Especially at $4.92/month. - Mint
Intuit’s financial management suite stands as the standard bearer simply because of its market presence. It packs all of the expected tools alongside simplified credit monitoring at no cost to the user. That’s especially attractive when many other apps gate account synchronization behind a paywall. The app isn’t terribly flexible beyond that. Users will need additional software (Quicken specifically) to tackle issues facing small businesses. Being under the Intuit umbrella is a solid quality-of-life option for users of the company’s other services, but that association is double-edged. Especially after losing some customer faith after its most recent TurboTax controversy. - Personal Capital
One of the major reasons why anyone takes the time to organize their finances is long-term stability. After all, what good is monitoring your money if you aren’t setting yourself up for the future? Personal Capital provides all the tools you’ll need to strengthen your financial standing for both the short and long. And it gets the savings started by offering most of those tools for free. Users only pay for access to the app’s financial advisory suite. - You Need A Budget
Its pleasingly direct name aside, You Need A Budget has built a reputation for providing quality budget management tools while trying to make its users more conscious of where their money is going. That only improved by integrating bank synchronization and more flexible input options for users’ financial information. The app also provides articles and resources that educate users on strategies that further develop their financial management skill set. YNAB doesn’t just want to manage your funds—it wants to turn you into an overall better money manager. And it’s quite the bargain at $6.99/month.
financial advisor tools
- Client Relationship Management Software
Think of client relationship management (CRM) software as the mothership of your business operations. It’s a hub that keeps track of existing client information, leads and prospects. From phone numbers, addresses and personal details about clients to detailed conversation logs, a CRM manages all of the little things — freeing you up to handle the big-picture aspects of growing your business. And at Farm Bureau, Wealth Management Advisors tap into the power of the cloud with Redtail, a cloud-based CRM. - Financial Planning Software
You’re probably already using a financial planning platform, but that doesn’t negate its well-deserved spot on our list. Financial planning software provides you with a dynamic, visual way to show clients a bird’s-eye view of their financial goals and the steps being taken to achieve them. With its ability to project and compare potential scenarios on everything from retirement planning to taxation and the capability to stress test and customize to individual clients, a good financial planning tool helps you guide clients to success. Farm Bureau Wealth Management Advisors have access to Envestnet MoneyGuidePro, one of the best financial planning tools for advisors on the market and voted the No. 1 financial planning software for 14 years in a row. - Risk Assessment Software
Risk, as it pertains to a client’s hard-earned money, is a confusing and often scary concept for them to understand. As their financial advisor, you’re responsible for explaining risk, and you’re entrusted to manage a client’s investments in a way that respects their risk tolerance. Risk assessment software helps you navigate the complex nature of risk so that you can develop portfolios based on realistic expectations of risk exposures. Farm Bureau’s use of Riskalyze means that our Wealth Management Advisors have tools that analyze risk and help them build investment portfolios. - Online Scheduler
There are so many ways to communicate these days, all of which can make scheduling a meeting more complicated than it needs to be. Eliminate the time-consuming back and forth with an online scheduler. Customized scheduling tools set meetings, collate names and contact information, schedule follow-up appointments and adjust to your calendar so you won’t be accidentally double-booked. CircleBack provides Farm Bureau advisors with a tool they can use to streamline the scheduling process with clients, helping them — and their clients — focus on the important stuff. - File Sharing Software
While some clients appreciate hard copies of documentation, it’s important to offer the option of receiving digital files, especially with younger clients. Consider a cloud-based file-sharing software to act as storage space and a transfer system no matter where your client is. - Account Aggregation Tool
In order to keep your client’s best interests at the forefront of everything you do, you need a full and complete picture of where they stand financially. This is where account aggregation software comes in. Account aggregation provides you with a comprehensive tool that compiles information on all of a client’s financial assets — health savings accounts, trusts, self-directed investments — into one place, giving you critical insight into their finances.
Conclusion
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