Try the best rated Mac personal finance software free for 30 days + get the free iPhone App! Your finances at your fingertips including budgets and real time expense tracking, you'll be a personal finance rock star in no time! Quicken was once the most popular and powerful personal finance management software out there. But Quicken isn't what it used to be. It's hard to innovate a platform built in 1983. Back then, cell phones were bricks (if you could afford one) and apps were what you ordered at a restaurant. 13 rows We spent over 60 hours testing 20 personal finance apps and programs to find the best budgeting and money management tools. Our choice for the best personal finance software is Quicken Premier. It combines the best budgeting tools with easy-to-use tax reporting.

Accounting software companies, recognizing that many of their users are small business owners who don't have an accounting background, continue to make their products easier to use. They're using technology like AI and machine learning to automate repetitive tasks and reduce the need for manual data entry. When you're categorizing transactions, for example, the software learns to recognize how you categorize things so it can do it for you automatically (and if it gets something wrong, you can easily fix it by categorizing it manually).

Also in 2019, more accounting software companies will offer cloud-based solutions for a monthly subscription. Researchers at Gartner Inc. predict that by 2020, 80 percent of all software vendors – both new and legacy – will offer subscription-based services. The advantages of cloud-based accounting software are better security, regular updates and web-based accounts that you can access anywhere using any device with a browser.

Integration continues to be an important consideration for small business owners, and the best accounting software applications offer add-ons or integrations with multiple third-party business programs and services. Being able to sync sales data from your POS system to your accounting software, or your customer list from your accounting software to your email marketing service, for instance, eliminates time-consuming data entry or the frustration of downloading and uploading files from one application to another.

Long gone are the days of grabbing a legal pad, a calculator, and a pen to handle big personal finance tasks.

You can now manage your budget, monitor your investments, execute your debt payoff plan, and build for a better future with technology.

We’re highlighting some of the best personal finance software available whether you need to manage your money on your smartphone or at a computer.

Most of these personal software options are free (yeah baby!) and are compatible for most Mac’s and PC’s.

Are you ready to get your personal finance swag on?

Let’s take a look at some of the best (and mostly free) personal finance software to help manage your money.

Great Personal Finance Software

There are five major areas of personal finance software to help you manage your money. Everyone needs to have a budget, a way to manage their investments, a plan to eliminate their debt, the ability to keep tabs on their credit score, and the option to handle their taxes without help from an expensive accountant. Here are some of the best of the best software tools to help you do just that.

Budgeting Software Tools

Call it a budget, a spending plan, or just spending less than you earn. No matter the name, managing your day-to-day finances well will enable the rest of your financial plans to come to fruition. You can’t pay down debt or save for retirement if you can’t stop spending more than you earn. Start here and get this step right before moving on.

Mint

The standard bearer for budgeting software, Mint has outlasted the likes of Wesabe and Microsoft Money (both defunct) and surged in popularity among users.

The company was purchased by Intuit and has pumped out high quality apps for both the iOS and Android platforms.

You can manage your money at mint.com directly or on any device that lets you run smartphone apps from Apple and Google like the iPad, iPhone, and their Android equivalents.

One of the biggest features of Mint is you get a snapshot of what your spending looks like. It’s common to think “There’s no way I spend $75 per month on lattes and mochas!”, but then the analysis pops up and shows how much your spending at coffee shops. With Mint you track not only your spending, but what your goals are. The software then helps you manage your life toward those goals and keeping your spending on plan with your budget.

The best part? It’s free! Category leading software to help manage your life for free?

Manilla

Handling your monthly bills is a hassle. Normally you’re getting 4-8 different bills mailed to you at different times of the month. They have different due dates.

Some of them let you pay them online for free, others charge for using a credit card to pay off the balance (this makes my airline miles credit card strategy useless).

Managing this process each month isn’t easy. You’ve got to go to the post office to keep a supply of stamps and find that old dusty checkbook that you only use for writing checks for bills. Isn’t it time for a more modern approach to paying your bills?

That’s where Manilla comes in. Pure and simple, Manilla lets you import all of your bills to their web, smartphone, or tablet interface. You can login and see all of your bills, the amounts due, and the due date in one location. No more having to open up envelope after envelope. Plus, you’ll get handy features like email and text message reminders about due dates to help you completely avoid late fees.

Note: Manilla has announced that they are closing down. The best and free replacement that I have found is Finovera.com

You Need a Budget

Everyone hates budgeting including our very own Jeff Rose. (What’s up with that, Jeff?)

Thankfully, there’s a tool that aims to make the often complicated process of budgeting both simple and fun. That tool is You Need a Budget or YNAB. The software has a humble beginning: it was something that founder of the company developed for his own personal use, then realized there was huge swath of people that hated the task of budgeting. He’s developed it into something useful and profitable; a great entrepreneurship story.

YNAB takes budgeting and breaks into down into four manageable steps. The slick software has iOS and Android apps, and even has a 34 day free trial to try it out. (Why 34 days? So you can install it, implement it for a full month, and see results at the end of the month.) The software costs $60, but if you sign up with our link you’ll get $6 off the cost. Some may balk at the service, but if paying $54 gives you a tool that you will help you save more money, pay off debt, and avoid late fees… I think it is worth it.

Take your 34 day test run of YNAB and save $6 with our link.

Investment Management Software Tools

Now that you’re managing your monthly finances well you might set up some money to be automatically invested for your retirement. Here are some tools to help you manage your investment accounts.

Personal Capital

Some of the other tools mentioned in this post have an investment section to let you look at your investments. Unfortunately those tools aren’t built solely for investment management, so the look you get is just surface level.

When you’re talking about as something as important as your investments for the future and retirement, a specific tool is needed to keep you on track.

We just did an in-depth review of Personal Capital, but here’s a snapshot.

Personal Capital is an online tool (with iPhone and iPad apps) that runs an initial analysis on your investment accounts to look for flaws in your plan or costs that could be trimmed from expensive investments. After the initial check in, you can monitor all of your investments in real time and get unbiased advice for your future. If you are somewhat confused about how this differs from a budgeting software like Mint, check our comparison of Personal Capital vs Mint to get a full understanding on the strengths ans weaknesses of each free service.

Personal Capital also believes they have a fiduciary duty to their users. Check our review for more on why those two words are so important.

Quicken

Microsoft Money fought an epic war with Intuit’s Quicken, and Quicken won. The software has been around for a long time, developed quite the following, and drastically changed over the years. You are no longer forced to just use a PC as options for Apple and Android devices now exist.

Quicken comes in several varieties that do everything from helping your budget your

Best Personal Finance Software For Mac 2018