Five Essential Finance Apps for your iPhone

Being organized with your finances has never been more important than in the current economic downturn. With the economy still finding it hard to pull itself out of a funk, most families and individuals are still feeling pinched and under pressure. Whether you are the kind of person who has always been on top of their finances and likes to have them organized and up to date, or whether you are someone who has always been the opposite – completely disorganized and always paying late charges – there are now hundreds of apps for the iPhone that allow you to keep right up to date with every single aspect of your day to day financial life. These apps are a godsend to financial organization as they remove the need for taking time out of your working week to organize and move around financial receipts and transaction details from one place to another in order to update home accounts. Instead, these apps let you keep every aspect of your finances fully up to date as you go along, which of course all helps when it comes to staying on budget and getting bills paid. Here are some of the most useful apps:

Tipulator – First up is a financial app that is incredibly useful, though not essential. Even the most fiendish of mathematicians can sometimes get bogged down in figures when attempting to work out their share of a tip when sharing food with people and working out a large bill. Tipulator is a really simple but extremely elegant iPhone app that takes care of any tip stress for you. Simply set the app to calculate the tip percentage you want to give and it will work it out for you. However, it goes one better than that. It will also work out how much everyone at the table owes on their bill and how much tip they therefore owe as well.

Xpense Tracker – An indispensable app for small business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone who needs to claim back money on their expenses when it comes time to go through their tax returns. If you are out and about a lot for business purposes then this app allows you to record every single detail of the money you spend on the road. You are able to enter how much you spend (and on what) as soon as you spend it and the app lets you enter it simply and quickly, as well as putting each expense into the correct category. Thus, every single train ticket, plane ticket, tank full of petrol or business meal entertaining clients goes into Xpense Tracker and is filtered into travel expenses, entertaining expenses etc It also features a brilliant little app for recording your mileage travelled and fuel used in your car.

Bill Minder – This is another app that does exactly what it says in the name. A simple, but effective app that can save you a small fortune simply by preventing you from making late payments on important bills and incurring charges. Bill Minder will keep you up to date with all your bills, paid or unpaid and give you a total at the end of the month. It also has a calculator, backup and syncing abilities with other iOS devices.

Loan Shark – With the economy as bad as it is at the moment there are more people than ever finding themselves needing to take a loan. That could be a credit card, a cash loan or a mortgage – either way it is important to be able to choose the very best terms so you save yourself money over the length of the loan. This app does exactly that, providing everything you need to know before you make your choice. Loan Shark allows you to see all of the information about every loan on the market, from type of loan to interest rates and payments schedule.

Mint – If you were to buy just one financial app then it should probably be Mint, the app linked to the respected financial site Mint.com. Mint is an all-encompassing app that tracks every single one of your accounts and syncs them over your iOS devices. It categorizes and organizes all of your accounts into different views and categories and keeps tabs on your balances, your spending (including exactly what you have been spending money on) and your income. It also, very usefully, can alert you when your balances get to a certain level or when you have a bill due for payment.