The Best Budgeting Apps To Help Aussies Save Money

The Best Budgeting Apps To Help Aussies Save Money

Sticking to a rigid bugdet, especially in the face of tempting sales, is a tricky business. If you’re anything like me, you’ll give yourself a savings goal, and stick to it for a while – only to eventually forget about it completely and go back to your regular habits. It’s incredibly common, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re all learning, here.

Taking into account the uncertain times we’re in right now and its impact on the Australian economy, we’re going to need to do our bit to cut some corners. However, that’s not easy to do if you’re unsure of how much you’re spending and what you’re spending on, especially if you’re making payments through different credit or debit cards. For that, having an app to help you budget is ever so useful and you can take a pick of your favourite one from our list below.

Pocketbook

This free-to-use Aussie-made budget planner describes itself (and aptly so) as a personal assistant for your money. It tracks, categorises and breaks down your income and spending so you know where you need to trim to increase savings. But its biggest selling point is that it offers you the option to synchronise with Australian banks so you’ll have a 360 degree view of your spending.

You can download it via the Apple Store or Google Play store.

Spendee

Spendee is a great choice for anyone whose lifestyle involves hopping between different countries as it offers multiple currencies. Other top features also include connecting securely to your bank accounts for automatic categorisation, adding manual cash expenses within seconds and being the ultimate bill tracker so you never forget to pay for your utilities. In fact, you can even add a budget goal, either an overall one or one for each category, such as groceries.

You can download it via the Apple Store or Google Play store.

MoneyBrilliant

This all-round genius budget app is not going to disappoint, especially since its machine learning system can predict your future expenses and has a tax deductions function that enables you to find potential tax-deductible expenses based on where you’re working. It’s also got a wide range of banks on its list it can synchronise with and has a free version that can still outdo many of its paid competitors. Besides connecting your credit and debit cards, it’ll let you include your loans, superannuation and investment portfolio. We’d call it a one-stop shop. Although the paid-for version costs $9.99, it’s great for people who’ve got a lot of financial info to keep track of.

You can download it via the Apple Storeor Google Play store.

Goodbudget

If you want budgeting to sound a bit sexier, Goodbudget has worked its way towards that very ideal and calls itself a ‘budget tracker for the modern age’. If you’re not a financial wizard and have a basic expenses situation each month but really want to save, this one’s definitely going to please. It uses an old-fashioned but virtual ‘envelope’ method to sort out your finances and the free version gets you 10 ‘envelopes’. You can use these to set yourself monthly limits for various categories such as groceries or your ever-so-frequent coffee trips to the cafe. It’s also a crowd pleaser for people who have to manage money with others as transactions can easily be synced.

You can download it via the Apple Storeor Google Play store.

Moneytree

It follows a similar pattern to MoneyBrilliant but has a few standout features of its own. Because it connects to 50 financial institutions across Australia, the app can calculate your total net worth by taking into account your debit and credit cards, loans, investments and so on. It also has the option of including your reward points and you’ll be able to receive notifications for when these are about to expire. Alerts are also sent out for both incoming and outgoing payments such as rent and monthly salary.

There’s a paid-for version for $4.49 called Moneytree Grow which allows you to budget by category and lets you export your data.

You can download the free version via the Apple Store or Google Play store.

This article has been updated since its publish date.


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