It’s no secret that many people have a love/hate relationship with the “B” word. It’s hard enough to budget alone, but if you’re part of a couple, things can really get complicated.
Budgeting is something that we all know we need to do but it’s easier said than done. Luckily, you can use a budgeting app to make things easier!
The best budget apps for couples will help you work together with your significant other and become financially successful together!
Why Do Couples Need To Budget?
Money matters are the number one thing that couples fight about! Anyone that’s been part of a couple knows that money can be a very tricky part of a relationship.
Money is really tough for most people to talk about and things often go unsaid. This can lead to resentment and cause problems down the road.
To keep money problems at bay, you need to communicate and have a plan.
For instance, maybe one of you is a spender and one of you is a saver. This is where a budget can help to get you on the same page.
You and your partner can sit down and discuss how you want to manage your money – together!
There’s lots of different ways you can go about it. Some couples have joint accounts for everything.
Some couples keep their finances separate and each pay specific bills each month. Some couples do a combination of joint and individual accounts.
There is no best way to budget. Whatever you do, don’t be intimidated by budgeting.
There’s lots of resources online to get you started and one of the best things to help is a good budgeting app.
The Best Budget Apps For Couples
We’ve done the research and we’ll show you the absolute best budget apps for couples so you both can be involved and make decisions together about your joint financial future!
You Need A Budget (YNAB)
YNAB has the philosophy that every single dollar needs a job. YNAB isn’t free but the $11.99 per month price tag may be worth it for you and your significant other to get on the same page financially.
This is similar to zero-dollar budgeting in which you budget every single dollar of your income, until you’re down to zero.
This includes your big-ticket bills that fluctuate like your annual home insurance bill, your car taxes and your Christmas expenses.
Let’s say your home insurance cost is $1000 per year. You’d break this down into 12 monthly payments of $83.35.
If your car tax bill is $450, this would be $37.50. And if your Christmas budget is $1500, that equates to $125 per month.
YNAB will break out these annual expenses and convert them into monthly amounts for you so that you can save monthly for these annual expenses.
This will make it so much easier to take care of these big-ticket items because you’re saving every month for these.
If you don’t save each month for these types of items, they can become real budget busters.
Another thing I like about YNAB is that it’s very easy to move money around from each category as needed.
So, if you overspend in groceries and underspend in pet bills, you can move the funds around where they’re needed.
Mint
The Mint app is a super easy to use financial management tool that will help you get a handle on your entire financial life.
This free app will keep everything organized within the app. I found it very easy to download Mint and connect it to all my accounts.
Mint will automatically track your income, your expenses and will show you how much you’re spending on your bills each month.
Then, Mint calculates your average spending in each category. For instance, this month I travelled quite a bit.
Mint even sent me notifications that my travel expenses have been unusually high this month!
I think getting the notifications is a super cool feature of this app and something that would really be beneficial to couples so both can be alerted to any unusual financial activity.
I also love that Mint shows me a real time graph of how much I’ve spent in each category like travel, food & dining and auto.
Plus, Mint shows me all my transactions real time. For couples, this is a really good option because both partners can see each other’s transactions so you know what each other is doing.
As much as I love Mint, there is one thing that I’m not crazy about. Since Mint doesn’t charge for their app, they have to pay the bills somehow.
The way they choose to do it is via advertisem*nts on their app. They also suggest credit cards and other offers for you which can feel kind of invasive.
On the other hand, if you’re in the market for a good credit card, you won’t have far to look. All in all, Mint is a great choice for a budgeting app for couples.
You may want to read this post on Mint vs. Quicken for Budgeting.
Personal Capital
The Personal Capital app is a very popular free app that is used by over 2 million people.
Whether you have an Android or an IOS phone, Personal Capital’s app is available for you. The personal capital app focuses on investing and saving.
If you and your partner are looking for an app that will help you reach your future savings goals, Personal Capital could be perfect for you.
Rather than just showing you what you’ve spent in the past, many couples love Personal Capital for what it can show you about your future.
In fact, the investing features with Personal Capital are one reason many regard it as one of the best personal apps for couples.
If you’re wanting to save for specific goals like college savings, retirement or a house down payment, Personal Capital can help you decide if you’re on track.
Personal Capital also quickly links to thousands of financial institutions so you don’t have to worry about whether your bank will be available to link to.
Mvelopes
Mvelopes is one of the best personal finance apps for couples because it’s easy to use and ultra-fast to set up so you’ll both like the ease of use.
In fact, Mvelopes thinks you should be able to create a plan to get rid of debt and control your spending within about 15 minutes.
That’s quick! I love Mvelopes because I’m a huge fan of the cash envelope system for budgeting, and that’s exactly what this is.
Only your envelopes are digital envelopes rather than paper. But the concept is totally the same.
With Mvelopes you’ll set up your envelopes according to spending categories like groceries and utilities.
And, they have envelopes prefilled with popular categories so that will save you time in setting up your personal categories.
Mvelopes isn’t free, but sometimes you get what you pay for.
If you and your partner like the cash envelope system but want to go digital, then give Mvelopes a try as it’s one of the best budgeting apps for couples.
I think it’s well worth the small monthly fee of around $7 per month.
Every Dollar
Every Dollar is very similar to Mvelopes but it’s got one huge thing in its favor.
Every Dollar was created by personal finance guru Dave Ramsey.
I’m a huge Dave Ramsey fan and like pretty much everything he does, including the Every Dollar app. Every Dollar is basically his envelope budgeting system without the envelopes.
If you know Dave Ramsey, then you know he’s a proponent of tracking every dollar, hence the name!
First, you’ll answer some basic questions about your lifestyle like whether or not you have kids, whether you own a home and whether you own a car.
You’ll also be asked to decide what your money goals are. You can select everything from saving for a house to saving for retirement to my favorite, travel!
Then, you’ll set up your budget categories and track expenses from there.
Of course, since this is Dave Ramsey’s app, you will hear everything about his famous baby steps (that actually work, by the way).
Every Dollar has both a free version and a paid version.
Free is always awesome, but the free app does require you to input each transaction manually rather than automatically grabbing each transaction and putting it into the correct category for you.
Depending on your personality and also how many transactions you make each month, this may or may not be a big deal for you.
I found it pretty easy to manually enter my transactions, but I could see where it might get old.
If you’d rather have your transactions automatically funneled to the correct categories, the paid version will do that for you, and more.
With the paid version in Ramsey+, you’ll also get access to a wealth of resources from Dave Ramsey and team, including all his courses, access to money experts, and the paid version of Every Dollar.
For around $130 per year, this is a great value. While there are a lot of good budgeting apps, I think this is my personal favorite budget app for couples to use.
It’s simple to use, it’s backed by Dave Ramsey and with Ramsey+ you get so many other perks that you both can use to expand your financial knowledge.
Are Budgeting Apps Safe?
Overall, the top budgeting apps, like the ones we’ve reviewed above, are as safe as an app from your financial institution.
All the apps above use a high level of encryption and some have two-factor authentication as well.
Some use monitoring through 3rd party sites for extra security as well.
In Conclusion
Budgeting is incredibly important, especially if you’re part of a couple. Getting on the same page and creating your financial plan for the future is absolutely necessary for couples.
There are a lot of apps that can help with budgeting, and make it ultra easy, and even fun.
Comment below and let me know how you handle budgeting as a couple!
Ana
Hi I’m Ana. I’m all about trying to live the best life you can. This blog is all about working to become physically healthy, mentally healthy and financially free! There lots of DIY tips, personal finance tips and just general tips on how to live the best life.
