Best Free Money Management Software

Software and certainly personal money management are both passions of mine.  Therefore, I recently set forth on a mission to find the best money management software to help people manage their finances better this year.

While conducting my research, I found a number of products that either have free trials, or are offered as free money management software with no obligation.  You can’t beat free, right?  And free trials let you take advantage of testing products to find the ones you like best!

So, let’s get start looking at money management software with free trials and then we’ll take a look at some of the best free money management software products available to you today.

Best Money Management Software with Free Trials

YNAB – You Need a Budget, or YNAB, is home money management software based on a proactive money management approach.  You assign every dollar a job which takes just 20 minutes each month.  The software is based on 4 key principles which includes assigning every dollar a job, saving for less frequent expenses, fixing overspent categories the following month and planning ahead to stop living paycheck to paycheck.  The features include budgeting, spending analysis, bank transaction import, splitting transactions and assigning to multiple categories, scheduling recurring transactions and an iPhone App.

PearBudget –PearBudget, built based upon a spreadsheet budgeting method turned into a web application, is a budgeting tool that also uses the envelope budgeting method.  You can walk through the online guide to create and customize your budget to fit your specific needs.  It’s easy to get started and just takes a few minutes to set up.

MoneyDance -Moneydance is an international product with users in 75 countries.  You can get a complete view of your finances from the home page so you can quickly see balances across all of your accounts and forthcoming expenses.  Functionality is extensive with links to your bank accounts to download spending transactions, spending graphs, reminders you can customize to pay your bills on-time, an iPhone application to manage your money away from your computer and budgeting functionality.   You can use a MoneyDance trial for up to 100 transactions for free.

Now let’s look at a number of solid free money management software products…

Best Free Money Management Software

Mvelopes – Mvelopes is personal money management software based on the popular envelope budgeting system. The features include the ability to perform electronic envelope management, set up a spending plan and fund your envelopes, import financial transactions, split transactions across multiple envelopes, reporting to analyze spending, bill pay, a debt payment tool and mobile application.  Mvelopes has both a free and paid version.

Mint.com – The popular Mint.com product includes the ability to manage all of your financial accounts in one place, set spending limits, investment tracking, splitting transactions, automatically imports transactions from your financial institutions (you can see pending and cleared transactions), goal setting (pay off debt, save for emergencies, etc.), investment management, suggestions to save money, iPhone and Droid apps for mobile money management.

Click to start using Mint to manage your budget

Pocketsmith – Pocketsmith provides the ability to create a budget utilizing a calendar versus the typical spreadsheet or envelopes.  With a calendar, you can forecast all your future cash flow needs and identify when the bills are due.  The calendar is a unique and smart approach to managing money.

Yodlee –Yodlee makes it easy to manage your money online.  As with Mint, it provides the ability to see all of your financial accounts in one place.  The features include budgeting, ability to link to your financial institutions, net worth tracking, account alerts, bill pay, savings goals, transferring funds and a real estate management center for your mortgage.  You can also create a financial calendar so you know when bills are due.

MoneyStrands –MoneyStrands isn’t short on functionality either with a number of features that reminds me a lot of Mint.com.  It links all of your financial accounts, automatically categorizes your transactions (re-categorize transactions or create your own custom categories), conduct spending analysis with easy to read charts, use the budgeting wizard to create a budget in 4 easy steps, create a 12 month spending plan, receive spending alerts, track your debt to income ratio, receive personalized savings recommendations, a manage bills with a calendar and an iphone mobile app.   You can use the free version or a 15 day trial for the premium version.

Budgetpulse – Budgetpulse has an excellent graphic interface that makes it easy to understand and use the software.  It includes a money management dashboard, budgeting capabilities, extensive transaction management which includes splitting transactions, tagging transactions and scheduling recurring transactions.  The graphs are easy to view and understand to analyze your spending.  You can also set up savings goals and even allow friends and family to contribute towards them.

Buxfer –Buxfer is another product that is easy to use and has a nice user interface with excellent graphics.  Functionality includes the ability to create a budget, manually enter transactions and allocate them to your budget using spending tags.  You can also set up email reminders so you know when your bills are due and to avoid late payments.  Interestingly, you can track IOUs for your friends and you can manage your money from your mobile device with the mobile version of the software.

AceMoneyLite –This personal finance software provides all the tools of AceMoney, but youll need to keep in mind the free money management software download doesn’t support multiple accounts.  You still get all the core functionality to help manage your money such as budget planning, tracking spending, investment performance, bill deadlines and debt planning.

MySpendingPlan.com – MySpendingPlan.com is a nice online budgeting tool also based on the envelope budgeting method.  It provides the basic functionality of creating electronic envelopes, funding them and the ability to track spending.  This product goes a step further by providing savings tips, financial task management and the ability to set up savings goals.  You can also run bill, spending, savings and task reports.

Do you use any of these free money management software products?  If so, which ones do you like best?