Eight Great iPhone Apps for Managing Your Money
As most of you know, I got an iPhone back in July. Since it arrived, I’ve had a blast digging through the App Store looking for life-changing apps. While I’ve found some real gems, I’m sure that I’ve missed out on some great ones. What follows is a rundown of the eight money-related iPhone apps that I use most heavily.
Money apps for the iPhone
Mobile Banking – A number of banks offer iPhone apps for managing your accounts. The only one I’ve used has been the Bank of America app, simply because that’s where we have accounts. This app replicates all of the critical online functionality in an easy-to-use interface. (free; link)
SplashID – This is my password-keeper of choice going back to my days with a Palm Treo/Centro. There are cheaper solutions out there, but I already had all my data in SplashID, so I just stuck with it. There is also a Mac (or Windows) client, and it supports wireless synchronization. ($9.99; link)
Evernote – This is the iPhone client for the popular note-taking, web-clipping, document-storing Evernote service. This isn’t specifically designed for financial tasks, but I use it for a bunch of money-related stuff — storing receipts, keeping notes on tax-related transactions, etc. (free; link)
JotNot – This is a fantastic little app that essentially turns your iPhone camera into a scanner. Take a picture of a receipt, document, etc. and easily crop it, square it up, and otherwise clean it up into a tidy pdf (or other image file) that you can e-mail from within the app. Yes, it costs $4.99, but it’s been totally worth it. ($4.99; link)
Fuelly – This one isn’t really an app… Rather, it’s a mobile web interface that I’ve bookmarked on my home screen such that it’s accessible from alongside all my other apps. I’ve mentioned Fuelly in the past — it’s a great little site for tracking your mileage. (free; link)
CardStar – Are you sick and tired of carrying around a pocketful of grocery store affinity cards, reward cards, and membership cards? Then you’d better check out CardStar. Simply enter the number from each of your cards and CardStar will provide you with a scannable, on-screen bar code. Very cool. (free; link)
Amazon Mobile – I use this app all the time when I’m out shopping. Amazon is an incredibly handy resource for checking “typical” online prices, reading customer reviews, etc. This app gives you a great front-end to all of that Amazon goodness. (free; link)
SnapTell – This is a fantastic app that runs “visual product searches” on books, CDs, DVDs, and video games. Simply snap a picture of the cover and SnapTell will pull up descriptions, ratings, prices, etc. from Amazon, Google, eBay, and more. This app could completely replace the Amazon app (above) except it only covers specific product types. (free; link)
One big category that I’ve skipped entirely is stock market tickers. While the iPhone comes with a very serviceable “Stocks” app, and there are many more out there, I don’t pay much attention to the daily fluctuations of the stock market. Thus, I haven’t spent much time playing with them.
What did I miss?
The list above is a good start but, as noted above, I’ve almost certainly missed some great apps. After all, there well over 50k iPhone apps out there, including 55 pages of financial apps. Who has time to test them all? Not me.
So… If you have any favorites, please share them in the comments.
Filed under: Miscellany
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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16 Responses to “Eight Great iPhone Apps for Managing Your Money”
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August 24th, 2009 at 8:07 am
If you are self-employed or can write off car expenses I suggest:
MileBug it’s a great tool keeps track of your mileage even in different cars, keeps all the required information and you can email it to yourself in spreadsheet.
If you want to keep a close tab on your budgeting:
Spend: is a great tool as well very easy to use
August 24th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I use the Mint.com app all the time. Plus various Craigslist ones.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:18 am
I tried that cardstar program, in theory it is cool, but I could not get it to scan at the self scanner at the grocery store, need to try it at a counter where they use a hand scanner or something to see if it actually works.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I too think any list of financial tools should have the Mint.com app. Mint.com is the easiest tool for managing you finances. The financial planning portion far surpasses many paid budgeting tools. The interface is simple yet includes many powerful features. My small credit union is even supported. No iPhone should be without it.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Thanks for this. I just upgraded to an iphone a couple of weeks ago and I’m mind-boggled by the apps out there.
August 24th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I’m not sure why you’d need JotNot with Evernote, since Evernote takes picture notes. It may not make PDFs out of them, but it saves them as JPGs which it then performs OCR on, so it’s even better.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Big fan of Splash ID too
And the USAA App – makes online banking SOOOO much easier, esp with the “deposit via taking picture” feature! holler.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
I agree with Kate. I just use Evernote to snap pictures of my receipts and store them in an expense notebook.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Nickel – What if I don’t have an iPhone?
Do you think I’ll save more money by not buying and paying the monthly usage fee?
I must say though, when a buddy whipped out his iPhone on the golf course to calculate the distance to the hole, and then use another ap to cheat on the greens, I thought that was so cool!
Best, RB
August 24th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Just to clarify, I don’t *need* JotNot for use with Evernote, but I really like the added functionality, and I also use it as a standalone app when I need to send someone a document.
Snap a picture (or select one from your camera roll) and up comes a frame. Simply drag the corners of the frame to the corners of the document and click process. JotNot crops out the background, removes the “keystoning” that results from taking a picture at an angle (i.e., it “squares up” the image), and it also cleans up the image to remove shadows, etc. and results in a document that looks like a photocopy/scan (color or b&w, your choice). You can then save in one of multiple file formats. I typically use pdf, but you can use an image format if you wish.
Like I said, this essentially turns your phone into a document scanner. Very nice if you need that sort of functionality, esp for the price ($4.99 is way cheaper than a portable doc scanner, and it’s also way more portable).
August 24th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Kate: If you’re a premium subscriber, Evernote will auto-OCR your pdfs. It also retains the OCR data (and searchability) even if you later downgrade to the free version. Also, like I said in my comment above, you can save the cleaned up image as a jpg or whatever, so you can still make use of the free OCR.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Re: Mint.com — I agree that this would be a very useful app, but I don’t use Mint, so I’ve never used the Mint app. Since it gets such rave reviews, maybe I should check it out…
August 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I also have Cardstar and have had no luck actually getting handheld scanners to recognize it. I do have a protective film on my screen, so I wonder if that’s the problem. The CVS and Kroger clerks really thought it was cool, though.
August 26th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
ageekymom: What sort of screen protector do you have? I’ve heard that the glossy protectors can be problematic, though the screen itself is quite glossy.
August 27th, 2009 at 7:35 am
I really like Loan Shark from FoggyNoggin. It’s not free (something like six bucks), but for those of us who are sometimes a bit, er, impulsive when spending (guilty), the reality check it provides can quickly pay for itself. Basically, the thing calculates how long it will take you to pay off a credit card purchase or some other financed item. That new Playstation 3 seems a whole lot less of a good idea once you realize it’ll take you a decade to pay it off…
August 27th, 2009 at 8:46 am
I use Pocket Money to track cash & credit card transactions. It interfaces with MS Money, so I can download the transactions onto my PC.
Pocket Money is very simple to use, and was well worth the $3 price tag.