3 apps to help you manage holiday spending

During the year it’s easy to spend a little money here or there and lose track of the big picture. If you’re trying to save money on gifts, or just recuperating from holiday season spending, you may want to start tracking your finances a bit more closely. To do this, why not use the help of a mobile app that keeps track of your money, and lets you add the smaller purchases in on your own?

This selection of apps includes choices for users who want to automate their financial tracking, enter transactions manually, or just keep track of details for work. Sarah Mitroff
took an in-depth look at others
to help you keep up good spending habits all year.

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Level Money

Free, iOS andAndroid

If you want to know how much money you can spend right now, Level Money is the app for you. This app lets you skip manually entering each debit and credit by connecting with your bank accounts and credit cards. When setting up Level Money, you’ll be asked to credit a PIN to keep your information safe if you misplace your phone. Once you provide a bit of information, you can track your bills, income, and even pick out a savings plan if needed. All of these transactions are graphed out for you, so it’s easy to see where your money is going each month.

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Spendee

$1.99, £1.49, AU$2.49 on iOS; Free on Android

Not interested in connecting your bank accounts and credit cards to a mobile app? Spendee lets you enter all of your credits and debits manually, and offers a host of categories that you can assign to each. To add more categories to select from when entering a transaction, head to Settings > Categories, where you can place a check next to the ones you’d like to use. In this menu you can even adjust the category colors, which makes it even easier to organize your transactions. This app also offers support for recurring transactions, as well as reminders, which are great for paying rent, car insurance, or your wireless bill. And thankfully, all of your data can be locked behind a four-digit PIN.

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Expensify

Free, iOS and Android

Do you travel for work, or run your own business? Expensify is geared toward those who have to detail all of their work-related expenses each month. The app supports mileage costs, hourly payment rates, receipt scanning, and also lets you share reports via email. While manual entry is available, the app includes the ability to scan bank or credit card accounts. When you’re offline, the app can save your entries until you have a connection again, and once you do, you can back up expenses to a number of cloud storage providers.

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Honorable mention goes to Dollarbird (Free on Android, iOS). This app lets you add transactions similar to Spendee, but displays your monthly activity on a calendar. This is a good option if you share a bank account, or just part of the expenses, with another individual. The app lets you share the calendar, and also offers a PIN option to protect your information.

While each app has its strong point, they all serve to help you keep tabs on where you’re spending or making the majority of your money each month. For an in-depth look at even more options, check out Sarah Mitroff’s
list of money-manager apps
. And let us know which app is your favorite below.