Let’s face it, budgeting can seem boring and overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be like that.

By using your phone as a budgeting tool, you’re opening yourself up to a range of apps that can help make your money work harder for you. Whether you’re looking to invest a little cash, save for something big or just stop spending... there’s an app that’s got you covered.

To help, I’ve sifted through some of the apps available and found the best ones to help get you started.

Starling Bank / Monzo

Starling and Monzo are both online-only banks that offer instant notifications and tools to track your spending in a number of ways. Anytime you spend money on your card or withdraw cash, you can have a notification sent directly to your phone. This is great to remind you where you just spent your cash.

You can also view your spending habits by the type of product/service you spend your cash on. By being aware of how you spend your money, it really does help to work out where you can start making savings.

Moneybox

Ever thought about investing your money but don’t know where to start? Moneybox rounds up your everyday purchases and puts the excess cash into stocks and shares. You can choose from 3 options: cautious, balanced or adventurous. To get the most out of your cash, however, it’s important to remember that your capital is at stake and could be lost so choose wisely.

Squirrel

If you’re the kind of person that gets paid and then feels the urge to spend every penny, you might benefit from having your money paid to you in phases.

The Squirrel app acts as a buffer between you and your wages and drip feeds it into your account. This allows you to have access to your money as and when you need it and prevents spending all in one go.

Squirrel can also take control of your monthly bills, making sure that money is always there to pay out but not available for you to spend. So you'll never end up in trouble with banks or phone companies again!

Savings Goals

If you’re not into the thought of attaching your bank details to a third party app, but really want to save some cash then Savings Goals could be the key. You can create multiple goals within the app, setting a target amount and deadline for you to hit your goal.

There’s a visual progress bar every time you update your amount and the app also tells you how long until your deadline is due, encouraging you to save a little bit harder to reach your target.

Acasa

If you’re currently living with friends then I can bet that tracking what each of you spends on bills, food and other stuff can get pretty tricky. Acasa allows you to create a household and add as many people to the household as required. Each person can add an expense that is shared but they’ve paid for and the app instantly works out how much everybody else owes. If someone's a little shy to pay the money back, you can send a gentle reminder at a push of a button to save any awkward requests.

There we have it guys, these are just a few of the best apps to help you manage your money a little better. We all want to get the most from our money so get downloading and start saving today.