My Top Best Budgeting and Expense Tracking Apps For Traveling

I love a good budget! Budgeting and expense tracking allows us to travel more. Here are a few of my favorite apps.

Hi everyone! :) I can't believe it is almost the end of July!! Summer is going by so fast, and I hope August slows down a little bit.. Things have been so busy these last few weeks with starting a new job and packing, but I am back to my weekly blogs! This week I wanted to talk about budgeting and expense tracking apps. It is important to budget trips (and your daily life!) and these listed below are the ones I have used and really like! The expense tracking apps also help you stick to those set budgets. I definitely recommend trying some of these out!

Budgeting Apps

EveryDollar

This is an app that Vince and I have been using for over a year. He started using it to pay off his student loans, and I started using it to budget my money better. We love the app for how easy it is to use, and we love Dave Ramsey, the creator of the app. He really can help get people's lives back on track! The app idea is that every dollar you earn, should match a category in some way (rent/mortgage, utilities, student loans, savings accounts, etc.) In terms of using it as a travel budget, we create a category for our traveling that we will be doing that month. We make sure that we can afford the travel we are doing, by not letting our expenses for that month go above our income!

Mint

This another popular budgeting app that I have used in the past. A lot of people love it because it is so easy to use. I also really like it because it is owned by Intuit. I will talk about QuickBooks below, and these two apps work really closely with each other. You can budget in Mint, and track everything in QuickBooks. You can easily track your income/expenses by connecting your accounts and it will import your data automatically. This can help you real-time to determine how much you can budget to your travels. There are really great graphics in the app to show you how you have been spending.

PocketGuard

This is a new app I have been trying out. It is a lot like Mint in that you can connect your accounts and it will automatically import your income/expenses for you. I think this is really valuable when you don't have time to enter it all in manually and it is a real-time, accurate representation of your income across all your accounts. I also like that on the front screen, it shows you your upcoming expenses. This can help you be aware of where your income is and how you can budget for your next trip. I also just came across a spot in the app for "vacation savings". You can look for cheap flights, save on great hotels/cars, etc. I think this will come in handy on our next trip!

Expense Tracking Apps

QuickBooks

Okay the accountant in me loves this one.. It may be a little harder for some people to use, just because it takes some getting used to. However, I think once you understand it, it is really easy to separate your spending into categories. It is an easy way to see how much money you have spent on different things. Vince uses QuickBooks as he has his own business, and it is perfect for tracking his income/expenses and importing it into TurboTax for his taxes :D

Splitwise

This is a great app if you are traveling with friends and need to spilt expenses with them. What I really like about the app is it that it is so simple! It is something I wish I had in college to spilt costs with my housemates! How it works is, you and your travel buddies both have an account in the app and can enter in all costs; like plane tickets, Airbnb costs, Uber rides, etc. It keeps a running total for you of how much you owe each other! One thing that I think would be really cool is if they partnered with Venmo or PayPal, so it knew once you were settled with each other. Or you could hit a ”send request” button and it requests the money though these other apps! Maybe someday.. :)

TravelSpend

This is an app that I just learned about, but am excited to use it on our next trip. I have been looking for an app to just track travel expenses. I have used some in the past, and they just aren't very user friendly. However, when looking at this one and trying it out a bit, it seems so simple to use! I am used to just using a good ole Excel sheet to track my expenses (the Accountant in me again!), but that is just to time consuming for this purpose. In the app you can enter your trip, the dates, and your budget for the trip. Then on your travels, you can enter in the expenses you have! I think this will be really helpful to stay with our budget on our upcoming trips!

Overall, there are a lot of apps out there both for budgeting and expense tracking that you can benefit from when it comes to travel. I am impressed with a lot of money apps, and they really have helped me with my money over the past few years! I think any of these apps above can help you too, especially when it comes to budgeting and sticking to those budgets on trips!