Best Personal Finance Software 2019 - Programs for Mac, Windows PCs

Best Personal Finance Software of 2018. Eli McCormick Finance Senior Writer. Updated Aug 1, 2018. Buxfer is the best mobile app we reviewed. It’s incredibly easy to keep track of your spending and set up alerts for when you deviate from your budget. Mac users need to purchase Quicken for Mac. $47.99 Amazon. Read the full review. The Mac is still the best device for serious photo editing, so you need some serious photo editing apps to make an impact. The built-in Photos app on Mac offers several useful photo editing tools. You can crop, adjust lighting and color, set the white balance, add filters, remove unwanted blemishes, and a few more things.

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. It can track your investments by letting you compare your portfolios with the market, as well as allowing you to track fund fees and set retirement goals. Quicken Premier is the most complete program we reviewed and a good choice for anyone looking to get a better handle on their finances.

Quicken Premier

Quicken Premier connects quickly to your bank accounts and easily tracks your spending and your investments. It offers useful budgeting tools like online bill pay and budgeting alerts.

Quicken Starter

When looking at the number of features available versus the cost, we found the Quicken Starter hits the sweet spot. It has the same budgeting tools as Quicken Premier but doesn’t track investments.

Buxfer

Buxfer is the best mobile app we reviewed. It’s incredibly easy to keep track of your spending and set up alerts for when you deviate from your budget. It is one of the easiest programs to use that we reviewed.

Best Overall

Quicken Premier

Our pick for the best personal finance software is Quicken Premier. Quicken is one of the most well-known names in personal finance, and it is constantly updating its software with new features.

The version of Quicken Premier we tested was incredibly easy to connect to any bank to track finances.
When you connect the program to your account, it will import your transactions and categorize them automatically. If something is incorrect, you can edit it. The categories are used to help you organize your budget. Quicken color-codes your budget, green for within budget and red for over budget. The program sends alerts when you approach or exceed your budget. Quicken gives you multiple options for setting up your budget. You can keep the same limit each month, or direct any unused amount to roll over into the next month.
Where Quicken Premier stands out is in its tools for managing investments. If you own stocks or other securities, this is the best choice for you. Its tools analyze your portfolio and compare its performance with the market. You can also create retirement goals and use the calculator to evaluate your finances and determine what you need to save toward your retirement goals.

Best Value

Quicken Starter

Quicken Starter is a scaled-down version of Quicken’s personal finance software. With a cost of $39.99, this is among the lowest-cost programs we reviewed.

This is our best value option because it gives you the same useful budgeting tools as Quicken Premier.
Quicken Starter connects directly to your accounts and imports your balances and transactions, automatically categorizing them. You can manually adjust the categories if default tags don’t match your budget.
Budgets are easy to create and can be divided into categories to track how much you spend on groceries, rent and other items. You can set up email or text alerts for when you approach or exceed your budget limit in a certain category. The Quicken mobile app also lets you check on your budget from your phone. You can also use the app to take pictures of receipts and add those to your records.
Quicken Starter has no tools for monitoring or tracking your investments. You can’t import information about your investments or use any of the tools for tracking fees or creating retirement savings goals. If you just want a personal finance program to track your spending and manage a budget, not having those investment tracking features shouldn’t be a deal breaker.

Best Mobile App

Buxfer

Having a mobile, web-based personal finance program makes it easy to track your spending and expenses from anywhere.

Once you create an account with Buxfer and download the app, you can connect it your bank and credit card accounts. Once connected, your balances and transactions are added to Buxfer and automatically categorized. You can also edit the information if the automatic categorization isn’t accurate.
Creating a budget with Buxfer is easy. You set an overall spending limit for each week, month and year you intend to budget. You can use the categories to further refine your budgeting. The budgets are color-coded. One advantage of being primarily app-based is that you can always have your budget available and reference it when you’re out shopping. Buxfer also has shared-expense tracking, which lets you send money to others, especially useful if you split rent or utilities with roommates.
Buxfer offers simple reports that help you visualize your spending. You can use the pie charts to determine what percent of your income you spend on various categories. Line graphs give you a quick view of your income versus your expenses. One drawback of Buxfer is that you can’t set up savings or retirement goals.

Best for Investors

Moneydance

If you have investments and brokerage accounts, Moneydance is one of the best options for you.

This program has tools to help you track your investments and monitor the progress of your portfolio. It syncs to your brokerage account and shows your balances and trades. In addition, it has reports that let you track your transactions and the performance of your investments. Moneydance is an easy-to-use program that lets you categorize your spending so you can see how much you spend and what you spend it on. You can also sync to your bank and P2P lending accounts to directly import your transactions.

Best for Envelope Budgeting

Mvelopes

Mvelopes is one of the best programs if you practice envelope budgeting.

With this method, you split your budget into envelopes marked with categories such as groceries, bills or entertainment. You then purchase items with money from the envelope category they fall under. Mvelopes lets you track your expenditures by assigning them to digital envelopes. When you exceed a spending limit, the envelope balance changes to red, and the program prompts you to address the situation by adding funds or letting it stay negative. This is a good way to visualize your spending and track where your money goes. One drawback is it doesn’t send you an alert when you go past a limit.

Why Trust Us?

We’ve reviewed personal finance software for 12 years. For this most recent update, we spent 60 hours using 20 programs before settling on the best 10. You may notice that some newer apps don’t appear in our reviews. We chose not to include free services like Mint or Personal Capital, though we may reconsider in future updates.

We did look at both of these programs. Mint is one of the most popular personal finance apps. It also offers a free credit score and has a wide range of alert options. Personal Capital doesn’t have budgeting tools, but it lets you track all your accounts and is very well-suited to people with investments they want to track.

How We Tested

To test these programs, we purchased or downloaded complete trials and used them to create budgets, connect to a bank account and monitor how well each program performs. We found that setting up your budgeting software can take some time, so be sure to give yourself an hour or possibly more. The best programs connect automatically to your bank, credit card or investment accounts directly. A few require you to import through Dropbox or another intermediary. Our Options & Functionality Score reflects this; anything with an 80 percent or above is easy to connect.

Once our transactions were imported, we let the program categorize them for us and began creating budgets. We noted the tools each program has to simplify the budgeting process, and whether you can copy the budget from month to month and set up recurring payments.

To make sure we tested these programs for all manner of financial scenarios, we also looked at the tools for monitoring investments. Many of the programs at least give you an overview of your portfolios and track their performance. The more extensive personal finance programs allow you to compare your portfolio to the rest of the market.

How Much Does Personal Finance Software Cost?

Personal finance software can cost as little as nothing or as much as $130 – much depends on what you want your software to do and if you prefer using an app, an online portal or a program downloaded to your computer. There are free apps like Mint and more robust apps like You Need A Budget, which costs $6.99 a month. If you have investments or need more complicated budgeting and accounting tools, a program you download may be your best choice. These usually cost around $50 to $130.

How to Choose a Personal Finance Software

Costco. Before settling on a personal finance program, take stock of what you need it for and how you’ll use it. Everyone’s financial situation is different, and some of these programs may not suit all your needs.

Basic Budgeting
If you need to get a handle on your finances and track your spending, each of these programs offer something for you. A budget can be as simple or complex as you need. You may want to simply track your total spending, or you may want to divide it into a range of categories. Some people like the envelope budgeting method, which allows you to set aside money each month for specific items or goals. Mvelopes is a good program that utilizes this method.

Goal-oriented Budgeting
If you’re budgeting because you want to save toward a goal, say a down payment on a home or for retirement, many of the programs offer tracking tools that let you set aside an amount each month and track your progress. Using personal finance programs to manage your budget can help you find areas you’re overspending in or ways you can cut back your spending to make your goals.

Tracking Investments
Not everyone invests money in the stock market, but if you do, you’ll need a program that can cover the full breadth of your financial picture. Many of the programs we tested integrate with your financial firm and can at least give you a top-level look at your portfolio. The best let you track your performance and compare your portfolio with the market. If investment tracking isn’t what you need, you can find a lower-cost program with the budgeting features you’re looking for.

Best Free Personal Finance Apps

Most of the personal finance programs we reviewed cost money to download or sign up for, and a few have monthly subscriptions. If you’re just starting to budget and track your finances, take a look at some of these free apps:

Mint: This is a free budgeting app developed by Intuit, the same company responsible for Quicken. Mint is free to download and use. Once you install it, you sync it to your bank and credit card accounts, and it pulls all that information into one main dashboard. Mint categorizes your transactions, so you can check your bank and credit card balances at a glance. It even goes a step beyond and lets you check your credit score and investment performances as well as your home’s value.

Mint automatically creates a budget for you, though you can adjust it depending on your needs. You can also set up alerts to tell you if you’ve gone beyond your budget or have a bill coming up. One drawback of using a free app like Mint is you get ads and promotional offers.

Clarity Money: This is a relatively new app, owned by Goldman Sachs. It's very similar to Mint in that it syncs to your bank accounts, tracks spending and sends alerts when you have a bill due. However, it stands out by monitoring your subscriptions to services and websites, and it can cancel them for you. Clarity Money gives you a good picture of your finances, but if you need more in-depth budgeting tools, it may not be as useful.

PocketGuard: This is a basic app that tracks your spending. It doesn’t have many additional features and may not be good for reconfiguring your entire budget, but it’s a useful way to see how much money you have on hand.

Related Product Reviews

We’re aware of a recent scrutiny of some of our Mac App Store apps and wanted to address it: https://blog.trendmicro.com/answers-to-your-questions-on-our-mac-apps-store/

“Why choose Dr. Cleaner?” This is a common question that many people want to ask as there were too many cleanup apps for the Mac and many don’t know which one is the best one or safe to use. However, do not simply believe that there are no viruses or adware found on the macOS. Once you download apps from unknown websites or unidentified developers outside the App Store, there is a big risk that these apps may carry Trojan, viruses, or adware. Also, apps outside the App Store cannot provide a quick update when a new macOS is released. After you upgrade your system, these apps may fail to start or even make the entire system crash.

To free up disk space, use Dr. Cleaner as it’s the best Mac Memory and Disk Space Cleaner in the App Store. The App Store is the official digital distribution platform provided by Apple to allow users to search and download apps safely. Apple has an official authorization procedure to review every app’s functions and code before the app can be launched in the App Store. Apps will only run in a sandbox. For example, deleting certain files or scanning user content requires permissions from users.

What is Dr. Cleaner?

Dr. Cleaner is a cleanup app that offers Memory Optimization, Disk Cleaning and System Monitoring to keep your Mac optimized for its performance. Dr. Cleaner is designed to clean unnecessary files on a Mac with only a few clicks.

The latest Dr. Cleaner is equipped with several features such as Junk Files Cleaner, Big Files Scanner, Duplicate Files Finder, Intelligent App Manager and File Shredder.

Trend Micro has a wealth of experience in this field for more than 30 years, and has received recognition and praise from millions of users all over the world. We have been selling Dr. Cleaner in the App Store for quite some time and it has been downloaded millions of times since its introduction. Therefore, you can feel safe to download and use Dr. Cleaner.

Dr. Cleaner Guideline

To give you a clear picture, we’ll walk you through Dr. Cleaner from four aspects: Menu Window, Main Console, Preferences, and Technical Support.

Menu Window

We’ve designed an attractive user interface both in Dr. Cleaner’s menu window and on the main console. The menu window displays the usage of CPU, network, and memory, as well as the size of junk files on your Mac.

Memory Optimizer

Perhaps you didn’t know that there are applications running in the background of your Mac, which take up physical memory and affect its performance. When installed, Dr. Cleaner will automatically calculate and display memory usage and then free up your Mac’s memory in seconds with just one click. If you want to see which apps take up significant memory, you can click the three-dot icon next to “Memory Usage.” It will show you details about the app that uses the most memory on your Mac.

Junk Files Cleaner

Junk files, temporary files, system files and other items that you don’t need will accumulate on your Mac over time. These useless files take up precious hard disk space and degrade the performance of your Mac. With Dr. Cleaner, these unnecessary files can be cleaned up to make your Mac run much faster.

We know how much you are concerned about junk files on your Mac, so we collect as many application caches, logs and useless files as possible for you. Click “Clean” to clean up junk files quickly. You can also see the details by clicking the three-dot icon next to “Junk Files.”

CPU Usage Monitor

Some of you might ask, “Why is CPU usage included?” If you have a friend who loves playing online games, you will know the importance of monitoring CPU usage. With this feature, the apps that use significant CPU resources will be displayed. It also lets you know how much the CPU has been used and how long your computer battery can last at the same time.

Network Usage Monitor

If you are paying to get an unlimited data usage plan or even a plan with limited data usage, you are probably concerned about the speed of your internet connection most.

We think it is useful to let you know the real-time download and upload speeds of your Mac, so we added this feature. You can also view more network related information such as your Wi-Fi signal quality.

Main Console

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Besides the menu window illustrated above, the main console is another important part of Dr. Cleaner. It has six sub-features: Junk Files, Big Files, Disk Map, Duplicate Files, App Manager, and File Shredder.

Junk Files

“Junk files” on the main console is a little different from that in the menu window. We provide a lot of options that allow you to clean up more unnecessary files.

The Mac hard disk is the storage device that holds the entire Mac operating system and all of the important files and data. Through normal use of your Mac, the hard disk will become cluttered with hundreds or even thousands of junk files. These junk files are created by the system and other programs. They write temporary files to the hard disk during installation or running processes so that they can work more quickly. We equipped Dr. Cleaner with advanced efficient algorithms that make it scan and remove junk files within seconds.

Big Files

“Your hard disk is almost full!” You might have seen this alert message on your Mac screen. Take it easy. We know you have a lot of videos or other big files on your Mac and they occupy a lot of hard disk space. With our Big Files scanner, you can easily spot them and remove them if you don’t need them anymore. Is that all? No! If you hover your mouse on a file, you will see a magnifier and a lock icon. Once you click the magnifier icon, you will locate the file. If you click the lock icon, the file will be added to the whitelist which will be locked.

Disk Map

The “Disk Map” option is a significant function that helps you manage all the files on your hard disk using a visual map.

It quickly scans your drive and builds an amazing visualization of all the files and folders on your computer, allowing you to easily navigate the system and find the content that takes up the most space.

All folders and files under the home folder are listed out by size. As for some system-required critical-files, deleting them would provide a prompt that those are important and are not allowed to be removed. With “Disk Map”, you can also find out when this file/folder was created, modified and last opened. Furthermore, hovering your mouse on a folder then clicking the magnifier icon will direct you to the file location.

Duplicate Files

It is common that sometimes we create duplicate files such as pictures, videos or even apps without realizing it. Worse still, they occupy so much memory and affect the performance of your Mac. Whether they are self-generated or accidentally duplicated, you probably will want to remove these duplicate files. With “Duplicate Files”, it’s not a problem anymore. Let’s say you love photography and you have saved a lot of duplicate photos on your Mac. Just open Dr. Cleaner, click “Duplicate Files”, and then choose your photo library to start scanning photos on your Mac.

In the scan results, we provide an option called “Auto Select” to help you automatically select duplicate files. The information provided by “Auto Select” is listed below:

1. Folder where duplicate files are located
2. Dates modified
3. Similar file names
4. Other qualifications

You can choose “Remove to Trash” or “Delete Permanently” on the confirmation page. It’s really easy and effective to delete duplicate photos.

App Manager

According to our investigation, most users normally open an app once and never use it again. Therefore, in many cases, they may want to remove these apps. For most people, they will delete these unwanted apps by dragging them into the trash, assuming that doing so will free up hard disk space. But this isn’t enough.

When you attempt to uninstall an app, there are often invisible or hidden parts left on your Mac – even after you have emptied the trash. They are known as leftovers.

Leftovers are an app’s associated files and folders that can include different languages, log files, agents, or processes that might try to start an application. This is a natural part of how the macOS is built.

To solve this problem, we developed this App Manager to help you remove apps completely. This manager helps you detect all app leftovers automatically so you can remove them with just one click.

Is it only an app uninstaller? No! It is also an app updater. We know there are hundreds of Mac apps updating every day. For App Store apps, update is just one click away. But if you want to update the apps that are available outside the App Store, you need our App Manager. We review recently-updated non-App Store apps every day to ensure that your apps are up to date.

File Shredder

Data security is very important for everybody. Technically, to permanently remove a file from your system, you must use a program that can overwrite the file with random series of binary data multiple times. This process is often referred to as shredding. In this way, the actual content of the file is being overwritten. The possibility of recovering this fragmented file is almost impossible. With “File Shredder”, you can remove files from your hard disk without worrying that they will be recovered. If you want to delete some files permanently, you can try this feature. We use a special algorithm that can effectively prevent files from being regenerated.

Besides the features in the menu window and on the main console, “Preferences” is also a powerful tool.

Preferences

“Preferences” is the soul of a product. In Dr. Cleaner’s Preferences, you will see “General”, “Notifications”, “Memory”, “Duplicates”, “Whitelists” and “Auto Select.”

On the “General” tab, you can choose “Auto start at login” and other options according to what you prefer.

On the “Notifications” tab, you can disable the notification about smart memory optimization.

Furthermore, Dr. Cleaner is also equipped with the Smart Memory Optimization feature on the “Memory” tab. This feature uses artificial intelligence. You can set auto clean when your available memory is low or when apps close. We believe it’s very helpful when you use your Mac.

The “Duplicates,” “Whitelists” and “Auto Select” tabs work when you use the “Duplicate Files” feature on the main console. When there are too many duplicate files on your Mac, you can set the rules on the minimum file size and files to exempt and to prioritize during deletion.

Macbook Apps 2018

Support

If you need technical support, click the robot icon either in the menu window or on the main console. Here comes our technical support! We provide two ways to contact us if you have suggestions or troubles when using Dr. Cleaner. You can contact us via email or online chat.

If you choose “Feedback,” you will get our response via email. Make sure to provide a correct email address.

If you choose “Online Chat”, we will provide online support for you. No matter what issues you encounter, we have a lot of Apple Certified Support engineers waiting to help you with your problems.

More Tools

Besides the features designed in Dr. Cleaner, one of the best helpers for the Mac, we have developed some other optional tools to make your Mac perform better.

Dr. Battery

As an amazing tool, it helps you easily access and monitor detailed battery information from the menu bar, such as the current charging level, battery capacity, power usage, number of times it has been charged, and many more. With Dr. Battery, you can extend your battery life and enjoy a more reassuring internet surfing.

Dr. Antivirus

To keep your Mac safe, we developed Dr. Antivirus to prevent viruses from infecting your Mac. We have the world’s largest antivirus and spyware active-monitoring laboratory that would safeguard your Mac all the time.

Dr. Unarchiver

We have also developed a powerful decompression tool called Dr. Unarchiver. It is different from other decompression apps because it not only supports almost all archive formats but also has a secure check procedure before you extract a file. The best part is, we provide this app completely for free.

FAQs

Q: What does Dr. Cleaner scan on my Mac?

A: Currently, Dr. Cleaner scans only the User Home Folder that is located in /Users/[your user name]. As Dr. Cleaner is a sandbox app in the App Store, it accesses your User Home Folder under your authorization.

Q: What is the basic system requirements for Dr. Cleaner?

A: For security, we only support Dr. Cleaner on macOS 10.10 or later. And yes, we are already compatible with the latest macOS High Sierra.

Q: What languages does Dr. Cleaner support?

Free App For Mac

A: Dr. Cleaner supports the following languages:

1. English

2. French

3. Italian

4. Korean

5. German

6. Simplified Chinese

7. Spanish

8. Traditional Chinese

The Trend Micro Dr. Cleaner team has officially launched a voluntary program of multi-language translation. Many thanks to the following volunteers who have helped to translate Dr. Cleaner into non-English languages:

1. Gérard Alunni, who helped on the translation to French.

2. Peter B., who helped on the translation to German.

Best App For Mac

You are welcome to join our program. Your help is highly appreciated. Your name will be included on the Dr. Cleaner designer list in the App Store.

You can also leave us a comment if you would like us to add other languages.

Q: What is the smart uninstaller in Dr. Cleaner?

Best Mac Cleaning App 2018

A: Dr. Cleaner has a smart uninstaller that allows you to delete leftovers of an app more thoroughly right after you move it to Trash, which is also an AI feature.

To use this function, you should follow the steps below:

1. Move an app to Trash.

2. Dr. Cleaner will scan the leftover files of this app automatically and prompt the user to delete these files in a popup window. Click “Deeply Uninstall” to remove these leftovers.

Best Macbook Apps 2018

3. Dr. Cleaner will indicate how much disk space it has freed up for you.

To Wrap Up

Is Dr. Cleaner worth trying? The answer is absolutely yes! Don’t hesitate. It can clean up your disk space, help improve performance, and solve other Mac issues you might be having. What’s more, it is the cheapest cleanup app for the macOS. Whether you are new to the Mac or an advanced user, Dr. Cleaner is a good choice for you. It’s also important to note that although Dr. Cleaner can help you free up a lot of space, don’t forget to back up your important files in case of an unexpected event, for example, your hard disk malfunctions. We regard customers’ data security as the most important thing. We hope you will have fun using Dr. Cleaner!

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Always Here for You

Thank you for reading this article. How do you like Dr. Cleaner? If you have any questions or suggestions, please write them here. We are trying our best to meet your needs and we are always here for you.