If you’re looking to sort out your personal finances, then reach for your phone. Or maybe a tablet, laptop or even your desktop computer.
There’s a growing range of apps that can help you plan your income and spending, keep on top of bills, or even slash the cost of your weekly grocery shop.
Best of all, most of them are free.
Here are five financial apps that you can’t live without.
Smartphone app Wally was developed in Dubai itself and last year it won the best start-up demo award at the Arabnet Digital Summit in Beirut. Available on iTunes, it tracks your financial expenditure and compares it to your income and log your expenses. Wally even includes a scanner, that pulls all the data from your shopping receipts, and adds them into the program.
Right now, it is free, although the developers plan to add premium features, such as currency conversion for travelers, and family financial management, from around $0.49 to $4.99.
Keep on top of your utility bills in Dubai with app Dewa. You can pay monthly bills in real time, and even log any complaints, with your GPS location and photos if you wish. Dewa includes tips on how to reduce your electricity bills, and allows you to activate or cancel your electricity or water supply when you move in or out of a new home. Available from the iPhone App store. Also works on the BlackBerry and Android platforms.
It’s all in the name. Spending Tracker allows you to track your everyday spending, to make sure you’re not going over budget. This app, which is free for iPhone and iPad, allows you to log all income and expenses, to help you stay within budget and hit your spending targets. It also produces reports, with graphs and charts, to help you visualise where your money goes. This stylish app is free.
If you’re looking to cut back your costs, your grocery bills will be one of your biggest expenses. This free app, available on Android, lets you search grocery products across supermarkets such as Carrefour, Al Maya and Choitram’s. Key your shopping list into the site, and it will show you which supermarket is cheapest place to fill up your basket.
As its name suggests, this free Android app is pretty simple to use. That’s largely because this money manager has a pretty simple aim, which is to help you save money on a regular basis for a specific goal. That might be a major target, such as a property deposit, new car or holiday, or irregular bills, say, an annual insurance premium. Saving Made Simple also helps you set up a savings plan to pay off loans and credit cards, to make sure you don’t miss a payment. It shows you how much you need to save either every day, bi-weekly or monthly, and how close you are to hitting your target. It works with 65 currencies.