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8 Best Personal Finance Apps for Android

After my husband got his new Android phone, the HTC Hero [1], the first thing I had to check out were the Android apps for money management. He finally gets to upgrade, courtesy of the new sero premium [2] from Sprint.

I downloaded every financial android app I could find and narrowed it down to my favorites. The money apps I selected are of course, all free!

I think I covered almost all of the finance categories for stocks, frugal shopping, account management, and cash back rewards.

You can download each Android personal finance app by scanning the QR Code [3] with a barcode scanner app [4].

Best Personal Finance Apps for Android

  1. ShopSavvy Barcode Scanner [5]. Use the camera to snap a picture of any barcode. You can find the best price for the product online or locally. It’s really handy when you see something at the store; you can quickly check to see if you can get it cheaper next door. After our kids tried on new shoes last week, it was a snap to figure out that we could order them online and save $20 a pair (and earn cash back at Ebates [6])!

  2. Key Ring Reward Cards [7]. I’m a huge fan of earning all the rewards possible on each purchase. But the reality of carrying around rewards cards for 30 different stores is that it won’t happen. With Key Ring, you scan in all of your rewards cards, and it stores them for you. When shopping just pull out your phone, and the cashier can scan your barcode.

  3. Mint.com [8]. You can instantly see a snapshot of your Mint.com [9] account including account balances, cash flow, alerts, and your budget. I use Mint.com to track a lot of my credit card accounts, using the alert features. It worked pretty well to log in and see, by merchant, which transactions came through. I honestly never thought I’d need to look up any bank transactions on my phone, but the ability to do so actually impressed me so much, that it was the first thing I thought of later in the week when I needed to quickly see if a check I’d written had cleared yet. You’ll need a free account at Mint.com [9] to get started with this app.

  4. Gas Buddy [10]. Want to find the cheapest price to buy gas? The GasBuddy.com app has you covered. Just click “find gas near me” and you’ll get the cheapest gas closest to your current location. I can’t see our Costco gas station from the street, so it’s incredibly helpful to know how the price compares there, since I can combine it with Costco rebates, and cash back on gas purchases [11]. You can sort the list by price or distance, and click on the station to get directions.

  5. Google Finance [12]. Watching the stock market in real time doesn’t get any easier than the Google Finance app. This will be a handy app to use during our investment club meetings when we need to look up the current price of a stock being discussed. The app syncs to your google portfolio, but it doesn’t show the performance tab, so it could be better with that feature.

  6. TouchTip Calculator [13]. I usually just calculate tips in my head, or use a calculator if I really need it. However, I know many of you love tip calculators that divide by the number of the people at the table quickly, so my list wouldn’t be complete without it. My favorite tip calculator is TouchTip since you can quickly use the touchscreen to increase the numbers for the bill without having to enter the entire amount on a keypad. It’s fast.

  7. ATM [14]. There are lots of apps to find the closest ATM for various networks or banks. However, if you are like me, and your bank reimburses you for any ATM fees, you need an app that will show you all ATMs. They’re sorted by location, so you’ll see the closest ATM to your current location. You can also look for the closest bank or credit union. The app itself is pretty basic, and isn’t the prettiest with the ads scrolling across the bottom, but it gets the job done.

  8. Mileage [15]. When I was little, my dad used to track all of the mileage on a little pad of paper he kept in the glove compartment of his car. Later he calculated the mileage he was getting and the cost per mile for fuel. This app is for my dad, and all the other mileage trackers out there. The statistics page shows fuel economy and prices and tracks your fill-up costs. It also has export capabilities to send the data to excel for all the number crunchers. If only this app could somehow work in connection with the GasBuddy app, we’d be all set!

Android App Wishlist

Overall, I was a little underwhelmed with the personal finance apps for droid. It’s a great start, and I expect in the future we’ll see a lot more improvements. Here’s what I’m looking for android apps finance:

Quicken. Now that I’ve converted to Quicken [16] to manage all of my personal fiances, I’d love to see a Quicken app.

Taxes. I tried out a lot of the tax apps, but honestly, couldn’t find one that I’d recommend. Obviously, I expect once tax season rolls around we’ll see more in this market. Update: Just as I expected, now that tax season is here, I found some Helpful Android Tax Apps [17] that I like.

Apps that Sync. I tried out various personal finance apps, like Moola and EasyMoney, but they were entirely too cumbersome to enter everything on my phone. However, if they linked to a website, where I can type everything in there to get started, and just make updates from my phone, they might be worth taking a look at.

Universal Banking. Every bank has its own app. Wow, how inconvenient. I realize this is competition, but I have bank accounts at a lot of places. It would be nice to have an app that lets you access (not just view) all of your bank accounts in one place.

Better Grocery Lists. There are plenty of grocery list apps out there to track your grocery list, like Ourgroceries. But what I’d really like to see is a grocery list that coordinates with sale prices and coupons.

Don’t have an Android? Check out 7 of the Best Free Finance Apps for the iPhone and iPad [18].

What are your favorite money android apps?