Money management is one of the most stressful parts and a root cause of disharmony in relationships. While some couples manage money perfectly, money management issues can lead to resentment, lying, and disagreement amongst partners.
So couples must be on the same page when it comes to the issue of finance. Fortunately, technology has provided for this with the advent of budgeting apps that allow couples to work together as a team to meet their financial goals.
These budgeting apps allow you to monitor your monthly expenses from bills to groceries, shopping, and even savings. Below is a review of the best budgeting apps for couples.
1. Homebudget
Homebudget allows you track individual finance and that of your family. It’s an incredibly versatile and flexible money management app that allows you to create budgets and track expenses. It has a family sync feature to manage expenses against the household budget. It also allows you to categorize various expenses and track them separately.
The app requires that you set up several details like expense categories, income, and budgeted amounts. It also allows you to attach images of receipts of purchases for auditing purposes. You will find loads of helpful documents and guides on their website to help you set up everything.
Availability: HomeBudget is available for Android, Windows, iPhone/iPad, and Mac operating systems.
Cost: You will have to make a one-time fee of $4.99-$5.99 for the mobile version, and $14.99-$19.99 per month for the desktop versions.
2. Every Dollar
Dave Ramsey is a legend when it comes to personal finance, and he actually designed this app. Just like his teachings, the app focuses on helping individuals and couples get out of debt to reach their financial goals.
EveryDollar uses a zero budgeting system, which allows you to create a budget from scratch. So you can sit on the couch and discuss every component of the budget with your partner before making a decision.
The app comes with various amazing features like the “local providers,” which allows you to get professional help on tax and insurance services from experts in your locality. It also allows you to customize and group expenses and link up your bank accounts automatically.
Availability: EveryDollar has a web version and is also available for Android, iOS devices.
Cost: the app is free to use; however, to access financial tracking and connect financial accounts, you need to upgrade to the Everydollar Plus at $99 yearly.
3. Honeydue
Honeydue is uniquely designed to ease money management for couples. The app allows you and your spouse to track your income as well as your expenses, whether you have separate or joint accounts.
It has an incredible interface that provides both partners with all the information they need. You can connect your bank accounts, credit cards, and loans to the app to give you a perfect picture of your financial situation. It also has a feature to allow you to hide accounts or information you don’t want your partner to see.
Honeydue is ideal for cohabiting couples who are yet to tie the knot. It provides the ability to split expenses and determine what each partner is spending.
Availability: Honeydue is available for Android and IOS devices.
Cost: It’s free to use on all devices.
4. Mint
Mint is a cloud-based service that allows individuals or couples to create and manage their budget from any browser.
It has several great features to help you better manage your finances. You can set up email alerts for yourself or your spouse, to notify you when a budget category is low or used up. It also allows you to download financial transactions from various accounts linked to the app.
It allows you to categorize transactions and expenses for easy tracking and accessing.
Availability: Mint is available for desktop, Android, iOS, and Windows platforms.
Cost: The app is free to use, and there are no hidden charges.
5. GoodBudget
Remember back in the day when budgeting was done using the envelope system; well, that’s what GoodBudget offers. Formerly called EEBA (Easy Envelope Budget Aid), GoodBudget allows you and your spouse to manage your budget using the envelope approach, which personal finance experts like Dave Ramsey have attested to be very effective.
It involves dividing your expenses into various categories like groceries, Bills, and others for easy tracking and management. Each time you make a purchase or incur any expense, you will have to update your income and balances for that specific expense item/ category.
Availability: GoodBudget is available for both desktop, Android, and iOs devices.
Cost: GoodBudget has two plans; a free plan and then a plus plan that costs $5 monthly or $45 annually.
6. You Need a Budget
YNAB is a popular budgeting app with large followership. The app is built around four principles;
1. Give Every Dollar A Job: It adopts the zero budgeting system where you have to assign every dollar to a specific expense, bill, paying off your debt or savings.
2. Embrace Your True Expenses: We all have to celebrate Thanksgiving, New-year, birthdays, anniversaries, and others. The goal is to keep aside part of your income for these seasonal expenses, even if it’s just $25 monthly.
3. Roll With The Punches: YNAB is all about ensuring that you create a budget that matches your goals. It helps you identify and stick to your priorities, whether it’s to buy a car, house, or save for the kid’s college.
4. Age Your Money: A major attraction of YNAB is that it emphasizes spending your previous earnings on the current month instead of spending in advance. So instead of living off your next paycheck, you will be spending last month earning this month.
Availability: The app is available for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac.
Cost: You Need A Budget has a 34 days free trial; however, it costs $11.99 monthly or $84 yearly.
7. Splitwise
This is another amazing app that can be used for couples, group of friends or family. It’s my favorite app from the entire list and it’s what we are using as a couple. You can create a group, where your partner is invited, then you can start adding expenses. For example, if your partner payed $300 for groceries, then he adds this expense to the list and can split it by amount or by percentage. Let’s say you are splitting that equally, so that’s $150 for each.
The application keeps track of how much money you need to get back in order to make the budget even . The app is really great when you have separate finances or when some shared costs are split by percentages (E.g. you pay 30% & your partner pays 70%)
Availability: Splitwise is available for Android & iOS .
Cost: the app is free to download and use, but if you are willing to invest some money in it, you can also get the Pro Version with some extra features.
Conclusions
There you have it. Using these apps will not only simplify your finances but will also strengthen your relationship. It’s up to you to choose an app that will suit you and your partner needs.
I can only say that as a couple, using a budgeting app saved us lot of time. Also it made us better organize, so we had fewer arguments about finances in general. I hope this was helpful.
