Guest Post: The 4 Best Personal Finance Apps For New Parents

Learn how you can keep track of your current spending habits and plan for your financial future using these helpful applications

If you are a new parent, then you’ve likely already worried about managing a family budget. While you may have kept a budget for yourself in the past, keeping the family finance in order is a brand new challenge. However, keeping track of your spending habits and plans for the future doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

These days, it is easier than ever to keep track of your finances using your smartphone. You can use different apps to track your spending, check your savings, pay your bills, and even manage your term life insurance policy. We’ll be getting to all of these features and more as we discuss the best personal finance applications for new parents. If you are a new parent interested in help managing your finances—you are not alone! Keep reading to find out how these apps make previously complicated financial tasks easier than ever before.

1. Fabric

Using Fabric, you can secure a term life insurance quote, manage your policy, and access several other useful planning tools.

Easily manage your insurance coverage with the Fabric app. Image courtesy of Investopedia.

If you are a new parent and you haven’t heard of Fabric before—this is an app you definitely want to check out. Fabric is one of the few finance applications that is specifically designed to meet the needs of young families. Using the Fabric app, you view different term life insurance quotes, manage your life insurance policy, access free will writing services, and help you manage your day to day finances. Fabric offers a variety of policies including no-medical-exam term life insurance quotes so you can get the coverage you need to protect your family. When you download the Fabric application, you’ll first be presented with a list of questions to help the application learn more about your family, your financial situation, and the services you require. After that, Fabric will create a personalized financial checklist that you can use to take care of the most pressing duties first. Once you have your checklist, you can get started working on your top priorities as organized by the Fabric app. As part of your financial checklist, the Fabric app also allows you to manage your savings accounts—like a college savings account for example.

New parents can also use the application to easily create a will at no cost to the user. Writing a will is especially important for new parents to plan for the future—no matter what happens. Using the Fabric app, parents can designate a guardian for their children, name beneficiaries for assets, and choose an executor for your will. This service is all available to all users completely for free.

Beyond setting goals and managing your will, new parents can also take advantage of the financial planning aspects of the Fabric app. It can be difficult to get a big-picture idea of your finances when you have several accounts and credit cards between yourself and your spouse. When you use the Fabric app, your family can easily link all accounts and credit cards so that you can view all of your finances in the same application.

Overall, the Fabric app offers term life insurance quotes and comprehensive life insurance services along with budgeting and savings tools that are perfect for new parents. This makes it one of our top choices for new parents who are looking for ways to view all of their finances in one place. Additionally, all information stored in the application is heavily encrypted at bank-level security, so you won’t have to worry about potential hackers.

2. Mint

Mint is one of the best budgeting applications, offering easy set up and a comprehensive view of your finances.

Mint helps you identify spending patterns. Image courtesy of Business Wire.

If you are searching for an application to manage your finances—without the benefit of finding term life insurance quotes and will writing services—then Mint may be the right application for you. This easy to set up application is perfect for new parents because it is free and it offers detailed reporting on your finances and spending habits once you have input your information. All you need to do to get started with Mint is input your data into the application. From there, the application will automatically generate reports on your spending so you can get a clear picture of your habits. From these reports, new parents can easily view where they are spending their money and where there is room for improvement.

There are a few drawbacks to using Mint that we should mention as well. First, the free version of the service can be difficult to use on account of the amount of advertisements.

Advertisements are commonplace on free applications, but the amount on Mint can distract from the usefulness of the application. Additionally, some users have reported that Mint has a difficulty synching with certain financial institutions. There are also reports that their customer service availability is spotty, so keep that in mind if you run into issues with the application. There is also an ad-free paid version of the Mint app for $16.99 per month that includes added options that allow you to monitor your credit score.

3. Personal Capital

Personal Capital is perfect for new parents looking for greater insight on their investments.

Personal Capital is ideal for people ready to make strategic investments. Image courtesy of Gunderson Direct.

For new parents who want an app to help them manage their investments, Personal Capital can help. The Personal Capital application offers more in-depth insights than the first two applications we’ve listed. Using this application, you can monitor your investments, your 401K, Roth IRA, and other retirement related accounts.

Much like Mint, Personal Capital is easy to set up—all you have to do is input your banking data and you’re ready to start managing your finances. Another key feature of Personal Capital is the ability to model different saving and spending scenarios. For example, if you are trying to pay off a vehicle early, you can input the amount that you still owe and the amount you can spend each month toward the payment. From there, you can figure out how long it will take you to pay off your vehicle. The same goes for saving for big purchases. You can use the Personal Capital application to determine how much you need to save monthly to afford a large upcoming purchase. Really, this financial modeling tool can be used to help you wrap your head around any major expenditure.

This application—however—is not for everyone. Personal Capital designates an investment minimum of $100,000, which likely excludes some new parents from using the app. There are also relatively high investment fees for the application, which may cause some potential users to search for a different way to manage their finances. Other than the investment fees, this is a free application.

4. You Need A Budget (YNAB)

If you are a new parent with outstanding debts, we recommend trying out You Need a Budget.

Plan for major purchases with the help of YNAB. Image courtesy of Millennial Money.

You Need A Budget is one of the best applications to help you pay off debts or begin saving money for major purchases in the future. By using YNAB, you can make sure that every dollar you earn for your family is being put to good use. The application is able to sort your finances into one of three main categories including investing, spending, and saving.

Because your money is categorized, users can easily identify ways they can save money by altering their spending habits. YNAB is the most comprehensive application we have listed so far—and they do a great job of providing excellent customer service. However, these perks come at a price. There is no free version of YNAB, but you can access a free month-long trial to see if the application works for your family’s investment goals. Beyond the free trial, YNAB costs $11.99 per month, or you can purchase a year’s subscription for $84 total.

Because your money is categorized, users can easily identify ways they can save money by altering their spending habits. YNAB is the most comprehensive application we have listed so far—and they do a great job of providing excellent customer service. However, these perks come at a price. There is no free version of YNAB, but you can access a free month-long trial to see if the application works for your family’s investment goals. Beyond the free trial, YNAB costs $11.99 per month, or you can purchase a year’s subscription for $84 total.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored guest post in partnership with Responsival. All contents are provided by Responsival.