The dreaded day has come. It’s the end of the month. That means there are a whole bunch of different bills and payments that need to be paid for. But what bills need to be paid? How much will each of these and payments cost? Will there be enough money in the bank account to pay for these bills? What if the payments can’t be made?
If you are like the typical person, keeping track of your bills does not come naturally to you and you do not enjoy doing it either. Unless you are hyper-organized or are a human cyborg, keeping track of all of your bills and the rest of your personal finances can be extremely difficult and overwhelming.
Every month, there are likely a large number of bills that need to be paid. Loan payments, your credit card, rent, utilities, and your many subscriptions are just part of a huge list of bills that need to be paid. These bills are for different amounts of money, might need to be paid at different times, and can be both paper and electronic bills. Further, if you are tight on money, paying these bills and carefully budgeting for them throughout the month is a painstaking task that can take up your precious time. What an unbelievably large headache! If only there were a solution to this problem…
As there is with everything, there’s an app for that! That’s right, there are awesome apps that can track your bills and remind you when to pay them as well. Using a bill tracker app can be a great way to stay organized and to never miss another payment! Sure, you could always dig up all of your bill payments and put them into your calendar, but that takes time, focus, and precision that is better done by a computer. Not convinced you need a bill tracker? Let’s take a deeper look into why a bill tracker app can be helpful for you.
Why a Bill Reminder App Can Be Helpful
Obviously, the ability for something to automatically track the bills you need to pay and to remind you when you need to pay them is a helpful feature. However, this is not the only benefit to bill tracker apps. Here are a few more benefits we’ve found with bill tracker apps.
Organization
Getting organized and staying organized is a task that is much easier said than done. While it may look easy for other people to do, it might not be for you. Wouldn’t it be nice if every bill you needed to pay for the month automatically neatly fell on your desk as they needed to be paid? Well, that’s exactly how bill tracking apps work but on your phone. With these apps, your bills and other payments are in one organized and easy to access place. From your credit card to your random movie service subscription you never use, your bills can all be found in the same place.
Additional App Features
Like other apps, many of these personal finance apps that track your bills have additional features along with bill tracking that can make the app useful in many aspects. For example, some apps have budgeting features while others can track your net worth over time. Additional tools on these apps can help you get your personal finances on track in one easy place.
Credit score
This may be surprising, but bill tracking apps can really help your credit score. Again, keeping track of every bill payment is hard. However, missing certain payments hurt more than others. If you’re late on your utilities payment, you likely won’t get your water or electricity shut off instantly. Failed to make your Netflix payment? You simply won’t get to watch a movie or binge your favorite show until it’s paid. However, if you miss a credit card or loan payment it is a completely different story.
Did you know that your payment history makes up 35% of your credit score? Payment history is by far the biggest weight to your score. This means that if you fail to make a payment on your credit card or other debt, your payment history will suffer and your credit score can take a big hit. The longer it remains unpaid, the more it can hurt your payment history.
Bills like credit card payments and loan payments can really sneak up on you and might even pass you by. This may have even happened to you once or twice and it hurt your credit score as a result! With a bill tracker app, you will be reminded to make these payments so that you never miss another one again. Over the long run, making every payment can do wonders for your payment history and your credit score in turn. As such, a bill tracker app is a great way to ensure this happens.
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Download NOWBest Bill Tracker Apps
There is an unbelievable number of bill trackers and personal finance apps that it can be difficult to know which one is best for you. We did the heavy lifting for you and came up with a few of our favorite bill tracker apps. Here they are.
Mint App
Mint is an awesome app that has a plethora of personal finance app features including bill tracking. Created by Intuit, who also created Quicken Loans and TurboTax, Mint incorporates many aspects of managing your finances that are easy to navigate for beginners. Mint is mainly marketed as a budgeting app, but this does not mean it falls short in the bill tracking category.
After a short bit of setting up and connecting your many financial accounts with Mint, you can begin to have your bills and subscriptions tracked automatically. This will also give you the opportunity to cancel any unwanted subscriptions. When a payment of yours is almost due, Mint will notify you that you need to make your payment soon. With this, Mint will alert you with how much is due and how much is currently in your various accounts. For example, if your rent is due in a few days, Mint automatically knows this and will give you a push notification reminding you to pay rent. A combination of features like these are one of the main reasons we like Mint so much and feel that it can be really helpful if you are struggling with keeping track of your bills.
Further, Mint has many other features that greatly complement the bill tracking aspect of the app. As we mentioned, Mint is one of the premier budget planner apps. Frequently making helpful budgets with Mint and sticking with them is a great way to ensure that you have enough money to pay all of your bills every single month. Likewise, Mint automatically categorizes all of your spending into an easy to see place. This allows you to truly know where your money is going and can shed light on ways to improve your spending habits. Mint also allows you to link a credit card and various investment accounts so you can have all of your finances in one place.
The drawbacks of Mint are minimal, but can be frustrating to some users. For example, Mint seems to try to push a series of accounts and other companies’ products onto you, which can feel like you are constantly running into advertisements. Also, some of the spending categorization with Mint is questionable and you might find many of your purchases wrongly categorized.
Overall, Mint is an awesome bill tracker app that combines bill tracking with a series of other helpful personal finance tools, making Mint a one-stop-shop for many of your personal finance needs available right from the app store.
Truebill App
Did you know that for some subscription services, as many as one-third of all subscribers are unknowingly paying for that subscription every single month? For some subscriptions, that could be hundreds of dollars down the drain every single year! Think this might be happening to you? If so, Truebill is a great app to help.
Truebill can help you get many of your subscriptions and other bills under control and straightened out. Truebill is mainly advertised as an app that can help you cancel these many subscriptions as well as an app that can negotiate on your behalf for issues that arise with your bills. For example, Truebill can negotiate canceling some of your subscriptions and bills. Instead of running into tons of obstacles and wasting your time trying to cancel bills or subscriptions online or over the phone, Truebill touts that they will take care of this hard part for you.
In terms of bill tracking, Truebill functions somewhat similarly to Mint. With Truebill, you take a few minutes to connect all of your many accounts. Once you have completed this and have allowed Truebill to comb through some of your information, it will begin to pick up patterns in your spending. For example, Truebill is able to see if you have any automated payments or recurring bills that are made every month. It can then present you with a list of upcoming bills and other monthly payments. You can then decide for yourself if you need these subscriptions or not. You might be surprised with the amount of money you can save from allowing Truebill to track your bills and find random, unnecessary spending!
Truebill can also negotiate deals for your bills and subscriptions without you needing to do anything. Truebill negotiates with companies like Netflix, Planet Fitness, and many more. Allowing Truebill to negotiate your bills on your behalf can save you a great deal of money if they are successful!
Mobills App
Mobils is an awesome bill tracking app that is available on iOS, Android, as well as Windows. Like Mint, Mobills is an all-in-one bill and expense tracker as well as a budget creator and savings app. With the combination of all of these features, Mobills could be the only app you need to completely revamp your personal finances and to get your bills under control.
While Mobills is fairly similar to Mint, there are certain features that differ from Mint that may make you want to go with Mobills. For example, Mobills has an awesome savings goal feature to their app that can help you save for things like a vacation or a new car. Expense tracking with Mobill’s budgeting feature could really free up some cash that previously was stuck behind wasteful spending and subscriptions you never use. Combine this with the savings feature and you could find that meeting your savings goals are much easier.
Overall, Mobills is not as developed or advanced as an app like Mint. However, if these features that we have laid out sound appealing to you, you should consider giving Mobills a try.
Bills Monitor App
Bills Monitor is another app that allows you to track your monthly bills like your credit card as well as other subscriptions. Bills Monitor arguably has a more sleek and clean interface than many of these other apps, which could attract you if you are looking for that. Like the other apps, it does a great job of keeping you organized and on top of your expenses. With Bills Monitor, you are connecting you many accounts as well as categorizing your bills. While you are bound to put more time and effort into inputting information with Bills Monitor, you can basically guarantee it will be more accurate when it comes to your bill categorization compared to an app like Mint.
While we agree with many of the good reviews that are found on the web, the only major drawback we see is that the app is not free. While the price of the app is a measly $1, you still might not want to pay for the app when you can get an app like Mint that has even more features than Bills Monitor. However, $1 is nothing in the grand scheme of things if Bills Monitor helps you find some additional funds and helps you to never miss a payment again!
