The best apps for tracking and reducing household expenses

With the cost of living still high, many renters are living month-to-month and having to carefully balance their income and expenditure. If that’s you, the good news is that there is now a great choice of budgeting and money management apps that can collate and connect to your bank accounts so you don’t have to switch between different mobile banking apps and can track everything in one place.

These apps help you break down your spending into different categories, which makes it much easier to see where your money is going and the areas where you might be able to cut back.

With all these apps, there is a free version and then paid plans that give you access to more advanced features. Here are three of the top-rated ones to consider:

Best apps for tracking your money

Snoop - https://snoop.app/how-it-works/

Tracks your spending habits and actively helps you save money:

• Allows you to you track your spending by category, e.g. fuel or groceries, or retailer/supplier
• Lets you easily compare your current spending to last month
• Tracks your bills and the suppliers/providers to make sure you’re not overpaying
• Gives access to special offers and exclusive deals to help you cut costs
• Lets you create budgets for total monthly spend and individual categories – or you can let the app set budgets for you
• Recommends ways you can save at places you regularly spend money
• Highlights things that need your attention, such as utility cost increases, and can warn you when bills may not be covered

Monzo - https://monzo.com/

An app-only bank that has been one of the most popular and fastest-growing financial apps in recent years:

• Lets you set up different ‘pots’ and arrange for direct debits and standing orders to be taken from specific pots
• Helps you split bills and joint costs with friends - and will even send payment reminders to them
• Lets you set budgets for things like groceries and eating out, and can alert you if you’re spending too fast!
• Has a savings feature that lets you round up payments to the nearest pound and puts the pennies into a ‘savings pot’
• Alerts you if a bill is more expensive than last month
• Gives you weekly and monthly insights into your spending habits

MoneyHub - https://www.moneyhub.com/app

Offers good spending analysis:

• Tells you how much you spent in each category the previous month so you don't over or under budget the following month
• Gives you ‘nudges’ throughout the month to tell you how much of your category budgets you’ve spent
• You can view different graph options to see how much you're spending compared to previous months and where most of your money is going

Build your credit rating via a rent reporting service

Some of the expenditure tracking apps will also automatically report your rent to credit reference agencies (CRAs) – for instance, the Emma Plus subscription option (£4.99 per month) reports to Equifax, Experian and TransUnion – helping you build a credit history.

The higher your credit rating, the easier and cheaper it can be to apply for a mortgage, loan, mobile phone account or other credit in the future. And with more people renting longer-term, it’s only fair that their regular rent payments are acknowledged in this way, just as homeowners’ mortgage payments have always been.

If you don’t already use an app that automatically links your rent payments to CRAs, you can sign up for a rent reporting service, such as:

• CreditLadder – report to Experian, Equifax or TransUnion for free, or take a paid plan to report to all three plus Crediva
• Experian’s Rental Exchange
• Zable – an app-based service

You simply sign up, link your bank account and tell the service which payments are rent-related. Then make sure your rent is always paid on time and check your credit report after 6-8 weeks to make sure your payments are being recorded.

If you have any questions or concerns about managing your rent and bills, our property managers are always here to help. Just get in touch with your local branch and have a chat with one of the team.