Top 7 Personal Finance Apps You Should Install In Canada (2024)

Money management has never been easier thanks to the personal finance apps at our disposal today.

There are personal finance apps to help you budget, apps to help you save, and apps to help you invest. What’s more, there are even apps that pay you to walk! The problem with this is that there are so many different apps on the market, it can be hard to know which ones are good to use!

To help you out, I’ve managed to curate a list of what I think are the 7 best personal finance apps of 2023. Each of the personal finance apps on this list provides a set of unique features and value for money. Let’s get started.

Quick Peek At The Top 7 Personal Finance Apps

Here’s a quick peek at the Top 7 personal finance apps we’ll be talking about today:

1. You Need A Budget (YNAB)

2. Mint

3. Personal Capital

4. Good Budget

5. Trim

6. Acorns

7. Mylo

1. You Need A Budget (YNAB)

You Need A Budget (YNAB) is by far the best budget personal finance apps around.

Here’s a quick reference to the tagline of YNAB – “Gain Total Control Of Your Money. Stop living paycheck-to-paycheck, get out of debt, and save more money.”

YNAB app does, however, require a subscription of $7 a month. While this may seem like a lot for a budgeting app, the average YNAB user saves $6,000+ in their first year! At least that’s what the users and stats say.

Also, YNAB is so confident about saving money that they are currently offering a “No Risk, 100% Money-Back Guarantee”. No questions asked for a complete refund.

So that pretty much makes it FREE for the first 34 days, you’ll end up having more than a month to test the program and see if it lives up to your expectations.

What’s more, You Need A Budget is also an award-winning software and a proven platform that works.

What Makes YNAB The Best Money Management App?

• Syncs with your bank

• Supports multiple devices

• Helps you pay off debt

• Let’s you set and track financial goals

• Gives you detailed spending reports

• Offers email support and live workshops

YNAB vs. Other Budgeting Personal Finance Apps

Learn more about YNAB’s money management systemhere.

2. Mint

Mint is by far the most well-known and definitely one of the best free-budget personal finance apps around.

If you’re looking for a way to link and view all your bank accounts in one place and take a closer look at your spending and saving habits, then this is the app for you. The fact that it’s free is a bonus!

Mint works by connecting to your bank (currently only works with U.S. and Canadian banks).By connecting to your bank, you’re allowing Mint to view and gather data so that it can categorize your spending and help you see where all your money is going.

Mint Is Personalized For Your Needs

• Create budgets that make sense today and set you up for success tomorrow.

• See bills and money together, so you know what’s due, when it’s due and what you can pay.

• Receive alerts for unusual account charges, and get custom tips for reducing fees and saving money.

• Get your free credit score and learn how you can improve it now to get the things you want later.

You can track almost anything with Mint: bills, debt, investments, credit score, and more. When you sign up for Mint, you’ll get a guided tour so don’t worry if this all sounds a bit much.

Mint is available for both iPhone and Android operating systems.

3. Personal Capital

First of all, Personal Capital App is an award-winning personal finance app tool available only in the US.

Most of you might already that I’m from Canada, so I don’t have access to the personal capital app.

That means I use Mint to track my net worth. I’m planning to switch to YNAB shortly to try out their promotional offer for a month and see if it is really better than Mint as the website says.

However, I knew I needed to include it on the list. Every other finance blogger that I read always recommends Personal Capital as the best net worth tracker around, so it must be good!

With Personal Capital, you can link all your bank accounts for free to see a clear real-time view of your entire financial life.

• See your net worth

• Analyze your investments and spot hidden fees

• Set spending and saving goals

Also, it’s completely free.

I’ll also be writing an in-depth review of the Personal Capital App so do look out for it in the coming days.

You can sign up for free here (PS – I won’t get any referral commission if you do sign-up, just sharing the link so that it’s easier and helpful for you)

4. GoodBudget

GoodBudgetis the best solution for those who want tokeep their budgeting simpleandtrack their expenses easily.

How does it do this?

It uses the tried and testedenvelope system.

How this system works is you take your income for the month and divide it into envelopes for all your expenses.

For example, you might have an envelope for your car payments, mortgage, groceries, and rent. You then take money from the envelopes when you need it.

If you need to buy groceries, you do so with money from the grocery envelope andonlythe grocery envelope! This way you’re planning out your spending in advance making itimpossibleto overspend.

There is, however, one problem with this system: you’d have to carry around cash all the time and use physical envelopes. What is this the 1900’s?

How Does The GoodBudget App Work?

A budget tracker for the modern age. Say no more to carrying paper envelopes. This virtual budget program keeps you on track with family and friends with the time tested envelope budgeting method.

What Makes GoodBudget A Great Budget Software?

A proven budgeting system with powerful software tools you’ll love. Track Envelope and Account balances on the go and seamlessly sync your spending with multiple devices and to the Goodbudget website.

Budget Software Built For Daily Life

Over the years, Goodbudget and EEBA, the Easy Envelope Budget Aid, help thousands of people stick to a budget.

You’ll save for big expenses, share budgets with the people who matter most—with cloud sync-enabled apps—and create a budget that actually works.

With the foundation of the time-tested envelope budgeting system, the Goodbudget personal finance apps for Android and iPhone is chock full of powerful features without compromising simplicity.

That’s where GoodBudget comes in: it’s envelope budgeting for the 21st century.

You’ll be able to follow the envelope budgeting system through the GoodBudgetsoftware without having to keep cash in physical envelopes.

Best of all it’s available on the web, and for iPhone and Android, so you’ll have access almost everywhere you go.

5. Trim

Trim isn’t a personal finance app but I wanted to include it on this list because it does some things that the other apps on this list don’t.

Saving money should be easy. Automate it with Trim.

One of the features I love about Trim is that it can track your recurring subscriptions. When I signed up I found a couple of recurring subscriptions that I wasn’t using anymore, so I promptly canceled them and saved myself some money.

How Trim Automates Ways To Save Your Money

1. Securely Connect Accounts

Trim uses bank-level security with 256-bit SSL encryption, two-factor authentication, and read-only access.

2. Trim Analyzes Spending

Trim will analyze your accounts to find recurring subscriptions and determine where you can save more money.

3. Automate Ways to Save

Trim cancels subscriptions, negotiates your Comcast bill, finds you better car insurance, and more.

Trim can doa lotmore than just track subscriptions though, so I recommendsigning up for free here.

6. Acorns

The next best personal finance app on this list is Acorns. Acorns if only available to US residents at the moment, so Canadian’s will have to wait a bit here.

But nothing to worry about here, we have Wealthsimple and Mylo which are two of the best auto-pilot investment programs, which are in fact on par or even better than Acorns. Wealthsimple especially is one of the best innovative fintech companies out there. It makes saving and investing so much simpler.

I’ve reviewed Mylo, Wealthsimple, Wealthsimple trade ($0 to buy/sell stocks), and Questrade in detail on this blog. Don’t forget to check it out!

Acorn is an app that rounds up your purchases and invests the spare change automatically. Simply link up your bank account and your credit/debit cards, and the app will start doing its magic for you.

1. Invest Automatically

Set aside spare change or extra cash as you go about your day with Round-Ups and Recurring Investments.

2. Save For Later

Get the easiest IRA, Acorns Later, and save for retirement without thinking about it.

3. Stick With It

Sit back and let your money grow over time in diversified portfolios constructed by experts.

This system works so well because it’s hands-off and you won’t even notice the money leaving your account. After a while, all of these little round-ups add up to huge savings!

Many users set up their Acorns account, forget about it for a few months and come back to hundreds of dollars in their account.

If you want to add money to your Acorns account without using round-ups, you can do so manually. You have the option to set up recurring daily, weekly, or monthly investments, or you can do one-time investments of $5 – $50,000.

After you get some money into your account, Acorns will start building an investment portfolio for you based on your financial situation and goals. Your answers will affect the investment recommendations Acorns gives you.

Oh yeah, and it only costs you $1/month for all of this. Sign up here for free. (As I said before I don’t get any referral commissions if you do sign-up, it’s just to help and get you started)

Also Read – Top 9 Reasons You Should Transfer Money Using Remitly

7. Mylo

Mylo is the last app on today’s list and is definitely one of the best personal finance apps in Canada.

It is pretty much the Canadian version of Acorns.

I’m from Canada and when I heard about Mylo for the first time, I immediately signed up instantly to test it out.

To be honest, I like Wealthsimple more.

It’s definitely better and the features are so much better. Also, Wealthsimple creates a platform whereby once you sign-up for Wealthsimple, you pretty much get to trade using Wealthsimple Trade which is a 0$ commission-free trading platform. That’s Savings + Investments in one go!

Like Acorns, Mylo rounds up your transactions and invests the spare change. Mylo also gives you the option to add extra money manually so that youdon’t have to spend to invest, I use this feature all the time.

Read my complete review on Mylo here

In order for Mylo to invest your money properly, they ask you to fill out a five-question investor profile. This helps them decide what to invest in (safer or riskier).

Once you’re all set up, just forget about it, and you’ll be saving money effortlessly.

How Does Mylo Work?

1. Connect

Create a Mylo account and link your bank to the app.

2. Spend

Use your debit and credit cards to make purchases as usual.

3. Invest

We round your purchases up to the nearest dollar and invest the spare change.

That’s it! Watch your savings and investments grow.

The one thing I wish I had done when signing up was to use someone’sreferral link because when you sign up as someone’s referral, you get$5 for free, and the person who referred you gets $5 as well.

Mylo also only costs$1/month.

Final Words

There you have it, that’s seven of the best personal finance apps I am aware of. I’ve personally been using a couple of them and have seen the changes in my finances and daily life.

Mint, Wealthsimple and Mylo are my personal favourites which I end up using all the time. However, all the apps on this list are equally good for different purposes.

I hope this list helped you find an app that truly fulfills your needs.

Please let me know your thoughts and comments below, also do share the article on social media if you feel the content is good enough.

Thanks for reading! Please let me know your thoughts and comments below.