Best Family Apps and Planners

17.10.2018

Family life is a permanent collective work. Previously, such a formulation was frightening and oppressive. But with the development of technology, collective work has become much easier and, most importantly, more efficient. And if you are guided not only by the thirst for profit, as in corporations, but also by such good goals as maintaining peace, well-being and harmony in the family, this work can bring a lot of pleasure.

As you know, any task needs to be planned. So it ceases to look like a creepy and invincible monster, and you have a universal weapon with which you can defeat this monster.

Today we will talk about the latest types of such weapons - about the apps created for managing family affairs - family budget calculator, family budget planner and so on. They really make our life easier, more pleasant and more productive.

How to Create a Family Budget

You can create an account for general family expenses, pay loans together and achieve financial goals. It is the best option to manage an average family budget.

The approach to budget management in different families may be different: some add up all the money together and spend when it is needed, others only share money for general expenses, and part of the money is left for personal use. In any of these options, there may be misunderstandings and suspicions that one of the family members is spending more and the interests of the other are being infringed.

If the family does not fully understand where the money goes, this can be a reason for quarrels and offenses. In order to avoid confusion and mutual recriminations, it is necessary to make general expenses transparent, discuss large purchases and financial goals in advance, but at the same time leave space for personal expenses. Let’s find out what honest and effective management of the family budget is.

Plan your costs together

So how to make a family budget? Budget planning is a great tactic that most wealthy people follow. For example, a survey of successful Russian businessmen showed that 73% of the participants constitute a hard target budget, in which all expenses are recorded in advance.

Planning solves several problems:

Avoids impulse purchases, which are often unnecessary. It creates a more meaningful approach to spending and achieving goals, such as saving on entertainment, to afford an expensive purchase or to pay loans faster. Eliminates misunderstandings and suspicions. When you are still at the planning stage you can see how much money is spent on each person, you can correct the costs and restore justice.

At the beginning of the month, calculate all the necessary expenses for food, utilities, transport, clothes and shoes, pets, write approximate amounts. Then you can divide the costs equally according to the principle “I buy food, you pay the bills” or create a monetary fund from which money for general needs will be taken.

Make the budget transparent

How to create a family budget? Make it transparent first. Your financial relations in the family are partially clarified already at the planning stage, but for complete harmony, transparency is also necessary in the process of implementing the plan. Let us analyze several ways to solve this problem.

Collect checks

This is a rather laborious and inaccurate way, since checks are easily lost and are not issued everywhere. In addition, to see the costs, you will have to sort through the mountains of paperwork, remember what each “nameless” check was issued for, and calculate the amounts.

Install a mobile application for cost accounting

This method is much more convenient and faster. There are quite a few applications in the App Store and Google Play that allow you to record all expenses by category, set up sharing for all family members, and view statistics.

However, general access in most applications is possible only when paying a subscription. In addition, if you do not record expenses on the spot, they can be forgotten and lost. As a result, at the end of the month there is always an amount spent no one knows where.

Use a common bank account by linking cards to it

This is an even easier way to track costs. All transactions are reflected in the banking application automatically, so that nothing is forgotten or lost.

If circumstances change, you can at any time close access to all accounts, loans and deposits. But, even knowing this, not every person is ready to fully open their income and expenses to family members. And it's not about lack of trust or some kind of secret shopping, just many people need some freedom and personal money. And this item should also be taken into account when building a family budget.

Leave space for personal spending and savings

If you have chosen a bank account as a general fund, it is not at all necessary to transfer all income to it. You can transfer only a part of the money, and leave the rest on a personal account.

Many personal finance experts recommend putting off 10–20% of your income as savings or investing this amount. If revenues allow you to postpone something, use this advice: savings will help out in a difficult situation.

You can set aside a part of your income by making a private deposit, and if you want to save money for something along with your family, use general savings accounts and deposits.

Achieve common goals

It happens that one family member is trying to achieve some goal - to cut costs, to quickly repay a loan or save for a trip - and others support it only in words. To avoid this, you need to pre-negotiate goals and strive for them together. For such cases, you can use joint deposits or split credit and mortgage.

For example, you decide to pay off your mortgage faster. You agree with your spouse to spend a certain amount for this, open access to the mortgage and begin to repay it together. In this case, the vague desire to quickly pay turns into a specific goal for him - to make two thousand more this month, and your plans are beginning to be realized.

The same thing happens with savings accounts and deposits. You create a cumulative goal (“For Vacation”, “For a New Car”, “For Birthday”), open access and start to transfer together the agreed amount every month.

Keep track of children's expenses and help your parents

Pocket money for children and financial assistance to elderly parents - another item of expenditure, which can be divided into two. The most convenient way to do this is through a banking application. For example, you can set up an auto payment for monthly assistance to parents or create a separate account for them and transfer money there if needed.

In addition, you can contribute this expense item to your family budget for a month using any other family budget software.

It does not matter how many people in your family earn money, have a steady income or occasional part-time jobs. All this can be considered and the costs can be honestly shared. For example, creating a family budget if one receives a salary once a month, and the second works as a freelancer and has several cash receipts, they can distribute expenses at the planning stage and then track actual expenses in a mobile application or their Internet bank account.

Best Family Budget Apps

For effective use, the application must be multi-user and be suitable for different operating systems so that each family member can make changes in real time. For the possibility of accessing several people, developers, as a rule, offer to pay. Keep this in mind.

CoinKeeper

You can manage finances using a mobile application or a web version of the service. The developers claim that CoinKeeper allows you to deal with the cash flow of the family, and with the budget of a small company. The application supports the import of transactions from a huge number of banks, recognizes expenses from SMS. You can set reminders for the return of debts and a limit on spending in the reporting period.

Toshl

The application supports almost 200 currencies, including 30 cryptocurrencies, and constantly updates the rate. Imports data from online bank files, recalls the need to make wastes in the appropriate boxes, automatically synchronizes with the site. Funny monsters will help track the budget. For conservatives, the application generates reports in PDF, Excel and Google Docs.

EasyFinance

The developers call their service a financial browser in a browser and a smartphone and promise to take into account personal finances, import and synchronize operations from more than 200 banks in ten countries, including Russia. The application allows you to forecast costs and plan the budget for the short and long terms.

YNAB

YNAB does not just account for income and expenses. This is a complete system that allows you to plan your budget for the short and long terms. It identifies underspending and overspending and works correctly with debts.

Cash Organizer

Multi-user program in which each user can hide part of the movement of funds on the accounts of other family members. Data can be entered offline and subsequently synchronized with all devices via the cloud. The developers promise to protect data with 256-bit encryption, so that even they do not recognize the financial information about users.

Family Budget Example

Here is the actual example of family budget for 2018. It is divided in two main categories:

• Bills
• Household Money

So let’s start with all that stuff that we call “Bills”:
Cell phone - 120
Water/Trash - 80
Netflix - 10
Internet - 74
Car insurance - 180
Electricity - 200
HOA - 42
Life Insurance - 60
Lunch Money - 30
Health Insurance - 730

Now let’s check household money:
Weekly money - 400
Costco - 210
Gas - 200
Dating - 120
Clothing - 130
Personal money - 100

This is an example of a budget for a family of five people.
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