These freebies help you keep tabs on your finances on the fly:
• Mint. This was one of the first websites to track your account balances and expenditures automatically and assign categories to transactions. Mint downloads data securely from your bank, credit card, loan and investment accounts, and creates a personalized financial dashboard. You can track your finances, analyze your spending and develop a monthly budget. The app also sends online alerts if you’ve gone over budget or a bank balance drops too low.
• MasterCard ATM Hunter. If you need cash when you’re traveling or in unfamiliar territory, this app lets you find the nearest ATMs and filter them by features such as surcharge-free withdrawals and drive-through access. Visa offers a similar app that lets you find its ATMs.
• Expensify. This app allows you to import transactions from accounts at major banks and credit card companies and add the data to an expense report. If you’re on the road, snap a picture of the receipt with your phone and it will automatically create an electronic record that you can access online.
• PayPal. PayPal’s mobile app lets you check your PayPal balance, send or receive money, or even take a picture of a check with your phone to deposit it into your account. The coolest feature: You can transfer money to someone else who has the app by “bumping” phones together.
• Chase. If you have a Chase account, this app lets you check your balances, pay bills and make person-to-person payments. And like the PayPal app, the Chase app allows you to snap a picture of a check to deposit it into your account. Other institutions, including PNC Bank, Schwab and USAA, offer this mobile deposit technology, too.
• Pageonce Money & Bills. Like Mint, Pageonce Money & Bills aggregates information from your financial accounts and displays it in one place. But Pageonce also lets you track nonfinancial accounts, such as frequent-flier miles, rewards-card programs, and cellphone minute and data usage. With an easy-to-use calendar and alerts, it also helps make sure you pay your bills on time.
Send your questions and comments to moneypower@kiplinger.com.
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