Personal finance apps (also called budgeting or money management apps) are mobile applications that sync your credit cards, bank, and investment accounts under one roof, keep track of all your expenses and visualize them in convenient graphs and charts.

The very first financial apps and services replaced the good old notebooks allowing people to keep records not on paper, but on a computer. The history of personal finance management started in 1983 with the founding of the Intuit company and its flagship product… You guessed it, Quicken, originally written for MS-DOS and the Apple II.

But as the electronic accounting services had more opportunities, they soon began to expand their functionality. Categories of expenses and incomes emerged, along with payment reminders, analytical tools, budget planning, the ability to have joint accounts with other users.

There are two main types of personal finance apps:

• Manual, where you have to input all the records personally and indicate the figures and category of each purchase or income
• and Linked, where an app draws all the information about your expenses automatically.

There are several reasons why millions of people have a budgeting app on their phones:

• They simplify finance management
• It's a great way to take control and see exactly what you spend your money on
• They help to save and plan for the future
• They help to prepare for financial emergencies and get out of the credit holes
• They make tax duties less complicated.