I'd be so lost without You Need A Bugdet.

+1 for YNAB

Level is great. iOS and Android versions are both really well done. US only at the moment though I believe.

https://levelmoney.com

Short and to the point: YNAB or Moneywell (my choice) - everything else is imo a glorified Excel sheet, that doesn't help you manage your money but only tells you where it went, when you run out of it.

Some years ago I had a difficult relationship with my financial situation myself: I always had enough money and I never had any debt, but I was living from paycheck to paycheck, like most people do, I guess.

I felt, that there must be a better way and so I started looking for money management apps. I tried the most interesting ones (a decent interface and an iOS app were the minimum requirements) for multiple months: Money, Squirrel, Koku ... and I also tried others for as long as the free trial period allowed. Long story short: Every of those apps answered my usual question at the end of the month "Where did all my money go?" with beautiful graphs and wonderful charts. But that didn't stop the question appearing month after month.

Then a friend told me about YNAB and the whole philosophy behind it. I was intrigued and realized its potential, but found the interface so horrible, that I was sure I wouldn't use it in the long run.

That's when I remembered Moneywell, an app I tried several times, but never understood. But the experience with YNAB convinced me to give it another chance and really try do understand the thinking behind it.

Admittedly, it took me A LOT of time: Although they provide a lot of helpful articles and videos and also their support staff is great, Moneywell still has a very steep learning curve. The philosophy behind it is great and works flawlessly, but because it is so different to the usual "enter all your transactions and that's it" apps I took me a lot of time to fully understand how everything works together. But I'm so glad I pulled through!

When I had finally everything set up and started spending (and living) according to those principles it completely changed my way of interacting with money. I almost immediately stopped living from pacheck to paycheck, but have a complete overview of all upcoming bills and expenses now AND (the important thing) at the same time complete confidence and security, that I will be able to pay them. In the ~3 years I'm using Moneywell I saved a considerable amount of money without any real effort and I'd be able to just spend it, because I know I will still have enough money for all upcoming expenses.

Without any exaggeration I can say, that Moneywell changed my life like no other application before. Besides 1Password it's my only "trusted system" and I'd pay almost anything for keep using it.

And yes, although this sounds like an paid advertisement I'm just an extremely satisfied customer. :)

Excel. I grab a CSV from my credit card providers and checking / savings bank every so often and crunch all the numbers myself. I find that getting my hands dirty in my financial history curbs bad behavior, since I don't want to be reminded of it later.

Furthermore, I found mint.com to be way too much interface. The visualizations are pretty and I understand its value in saving me the time of aggregating all that data for me, but I feel like it abstracts me too far from the numbers themselves.

I like the explicit self-shaming of calculating exactly what percentage of my paycheck that trip to the bar was.

Even though it's not a native app (neither is Mint) I can highly recommend Simple. They make it super easy to organize (with categories & tags) and keep track of all your activity, including budgeting.

Mint + spreadsheet combo.

Mint tracks all the purchases, but it's too passive and hard to tell what months I overspent on what at times (mostly due to rollover budgets). By imputing it all into the spreadsheet, I take a more active role in the process and can see a bit better where I overspent (or didn't overspend, even though Mint tells me I did because I spent too much last month).

I also like Check on my phone to keep track of recurring bills (especially variable ones) so I don't transfer money out of an account right before a bill comes. Unlike Mint, which tells me after the money is out of my account, it links up with the bill itself so I know how much will be due. I also like it reminding me to pay recurring bills that either I don't want to or cannot set up on autopay.

I use an Excel budget that I found online: http://www.fatwallet.com/static/attachments/238354_sample_budget_v3.xlsx

I used to flow so much money through Mint, sit there and look at the neat pie charts and be in shock at how much money I was spending. Thing is I would never actually do anything because it didn't seem like I was REALLY spending that money.

Now inputting expenses in by hand really made me realize what things were worth, I always think twice about if I need something or if I should just eat at home instead because I think about putting that money into my budget.

I will definitely check out "You Need A Budget" though!

I'm using MoneyWiz. It has a decent design. It's easy to use. Has apps for OSX and iOS.

It doesn't offer a lot of features, but honestly I never needed anything more.

Negative side is that iPad and iPhone apps are sold separately.

I can't say enough nice things about Personal Capital. Using Personal Capital I finally feel like I have a dashboard view of my finances that makes sense to me and that I can visually understand. I can see my progress and make tweaks to improve. Free account, supports nearly all my financial institutions, etc.

Moneydashboard UK equivalent of Mint. Web is well done, improved quite a lot in the past few months. iOS and Android apps are simple but get the job done. (Free)

My wife and I use Homebudget - http://anishusite.appspot.com/ Its exactly what we need. Sync across devices, export to excels and has reports and budgets. Even let you add your own category icons if you want to design your own.

Try Spendee

Ari, what aspects of money management are the most important to you? Are you looking to fix some financial problem or just generally pay attention to income and expense?

I swear by Mint:

The good:

• Auto-tagging expenses works really well (believe me, you don't want an app that requires you to enter transactions manually).
• Supports a lot of banks (even Paypal) and investment accounts (think IRA).
• You can set budgets and get alerted when you exceed these budgets (e.g. max monthly budget for lunches, or max budget for internet so you get notified when Comcast jacks up its prices).
• Great charts, and you can pivot on many datapoints. E.g. you can see how your net worth is progressing year by year.
• Alerts you when your bank charges you a fee.
• It's free!

The not so good:

• Requires manual grooming (I do it once a week): fixing tags, adding comments to transactions. Fixing credentials of your bank accounts etc.
• Sync problems with banks.
• No support. The service is stable now, but wasn't in the past. There are tons of ananswered questions in several forums. The Mint team is bad in communication.

Other options: - There are not many. CreditKarma is a new player (Google is investor) but I personally invested too much time in Mint that I cannot justify a switch. Although I use CreditKarma to track my credit score, something Mint doesn't do.

If you have multiple credit cards, check out Wallaby - it helps maximize your rewards by telling you which card to use when you shop - they have both iPhone & Android apps, as well as an online browser.

I like Dan Eden's Brills.

...granted, this is a website, not a native app.

Edited to note that this is a website, not an app

I recently started using digit.co. It's entirely SMS based and they text me my balance every day while every once in a while putting some cash aside for me. You don't save a TON of money, but it's nice to get the daily reminders.

https://digit.co/

I've been looking myself, and it's a hard one. They all look bad, are overly complicated, and cost a lot. The best I could find was Koku which interface looks very promising, but the iOS version of the app still isn't updated for iOS 7 and that rubbed me the wrong way...