The Best Finance Apps for Couples: Manage Your Money Together
Finance App for Couples: A Necessity in Modern Relationships
Money is one of the leading causes of stress in relationships. In fact, a study conducted by SunTrust Bank found that managing money together is the number one topic couples argue about. If you're looking for ways to reduce stress and arguments in your relationship, one solution might be to start managing track spending your money together.
There are a number of great finance apps out there that can help you manage money and make this process easier. In this blog post, we will discuss some of the best finance and budget apps made for couples and how they can help you both save money and better manage your finances!
Budgeting Apps: How They Can Streamline Your Finances
Although it can be helpful to manage your money together using a finance app, it's important to make sure you're aligned on your financial goals shared expenses, and priorities before doing so. Sit down with your partner and discuss what you both hope to achieve financially. Are you looking to save for a down payment on a home? Or maybe you're aiming for retirement? Whatever your goals may be, make sure you as partners are both on the same page before you even start looking at budget apps.
In addition to personal capital, some transparency around savings rates and risk tolerance will allow you both to plan ahead and sleep more comfortably at night. You don't necessarily need to agree on everything, but it's important that you're both aware of where the other person stands. If one partner is a saver and the other likes living in the moment, there may be conflict. But if you understand each other's priorities and work together as allies instead of adversaries, you'll both know more clearly where to focus. If this is too difficult or becomes a sensitive topic, it might be worth booking a one-time session with a financial consultant.
The Role of Finance Apps in Money Management
"Out of sight, out of mind," as the adage goes. Except that isn't really what you want when it comes to personal finance, arguably the most important piece of life admin you'll encounter as a couple. The number one thing a unified platform will do is give you a holistic picture across financial institutions so you know what exactly is going on your joint bank account. What's your savings rate as a % of your income? How are you tracking towards that new house or retirement? Is your portfolio allocated correctly to match your risk preferences savings goals as a couple?
It's also much easier to track and hold each other accountable with a finance app. If you're trying to save for something specific, like that long-awaited honeymoon, the app can automatically set aside funds from your paycheck without you having to think about it. You'll be less likely to overspend and you'll be able to sync up to review progress together in real time.
Budgeting App Examples for Couples
These other apps are the top-rated financial management apps which cater for couples:
- Snoop:Offers spending analytics and helps find the best deals, including impressive discount codes. It's beneficial for those with multiple bank accounts, providing a comprehensive view of all bank details in one place.
- Pocketsmith: Known for its finance forecasting feature, Pocketsmith allows users to visualize their financial situation up to 10 years in advance, making it easier to plan for the future.
- Plum: An automatic budgeting app that tracks spending habits and can move idle money into an interest-bearing savings account. It's designed to help users manage household bills and expenses efficiently.
- If you're looking for an app specifically designed to help couples manage their finances together, then check out CoupleMoney. This app offers budgeting tools together, goal setting and tracking tools to help partners stay on track with their finances. It also lets users store photos of receipts in case they ever need them later on down the road - perfect if one person does all shopping for both people, or vice versa! This app is free to download and use for up to two accounts per couple.
- Qube Money offers budgeting and goal setting features to help couples manage their money better. Budget categories include food, household expenses, transportation costs and more! The app also includes an option called "Goals" where you can set up specific targets to work towards as a couple. Qube Money budget app is free to download and use, with no hidden fees or charges.
- MoneyWise is another one of the best finance apps for couples, in fact designed specifically for this purpose. The first app for couples offers budgeting, goal setting and tracking features, as well as the ability to connect directly with a financial advisor. This can be extremely helpful if you're not sure where to start when it comes to managing your money as a couple! MoneyWise is free to download and use, with no hidden fees or charges.
If you and your partner are looking for the best finance apps for couples, consider looking into one of the above.
Why These Apps Stand Out
The personal finance market is incredibly crowded and there are a whole variety of different options to choose from when it comes to a unified family platform. The ones that rise to the top do so as a result of a superior customer experience and widespread adoption in their given market. In fact, often the features sets and prices are so similar to other budgeting apps that it can come down to personal preference as to which one you end up using.
You should also check what permissions these apps have: most provide read-only access to your data through Open Banking or similar, but when dealing with sensitive financial information it's important to make sure that the platform you choose has robust security and data encryption protocols in place. The best finance apps for couples, or anyone for that matter will publish these on their site and make them available for users to read through.
Potential Limitations of Finance Apps
Firstly, be wary of any platform that offers a service for free. Read closely into the T&Cs and be aware that such free version of companies often monetise by offering your data to up sell you targeted additional products and services. If this is a concern, you might be better off investing in a more premium service. They are also often limited in their account coverage, both by country and asset class. This is worth bearing in mind because your experience will be diminished by limiting the extent to which you can upload your accounts. The best finance apps for couples will have some strong combination of features, coverage, price and security in the allocation that works for you.
Couples on the same page: Embracing Financial Apps in Relationships
These platforms are for the most part, pretty good. They're great for aligning with your partner, budgeting apps setting a budget and taking control of your daily spending. They also might spark some important conversations shared budget app that hopefully you've had before but if not, need some forethought.
However, they're largely focused towards management of day to day spending. What's wrong with that? Well, it largely ignores the macro view that you'll want to take when planning your family's finances for the longer term.
We realised that pretty early on - and that's why we built Strabo. All the ease of a personal finance platform and the simplicity of a budgeting app, while dealing with the more complex and far reaching aspects of finance. We want people to be able to manage their bank accounts, investments, pensions, property and even alternatives investments like cryptocurrency in one place, in the click of a button. And if you do want to engage your financial advisor, they can also have access to the platform with restricted access so that everyone knows exactly what's going on the same account, all the time.
Go ahead and try all the options above! Sign up, see if you can choose from the best finance best budgeting apps for couples and if there's features that you and your partner are missing, we'd love to hear from you so we can build them ourselves!
This article provides tips and tricks to help couples manage their finances together. Learn about the best finance apps for couples, how to do financial accounts and budget effectively, about savings accounts and more! Please do reach out with comments and tell us how you manage your budget and finances as a couple.