Some of the best financial planning software options for consumers

There are a lot of options these days for web-based financial planning. This is a very good thing for consumers, but sifting through them all can be a struggle. That is why we came up with a list of the best financial planning software for consumers for 2022. Some of these applications are free and some you must pay for

Budgeting: Mint

Mint is very popular and used by millions of people. There is a reason for this: It’s really good. You can easily link your credit card, debit card, and bank information into Mint. From there you can make out how you are spending your money and potentially also figure out where you need to cut back on spending.

It’s great for budgeting because it’s so easy to track your expenses. You can also have alerts set up where you can see when bills are due and if your balances in your bank accounts are too low.

With inflation raging, budgeting and seeing where your money is going is more important than ever. Using Mint you can see which items have gone up the most in price.

Mint does not cost anything, but they do hammer you with ads and solicitations. You can also use their app for free on mobile devices.

Retirement Planning: WealthTrace

It used to be that the only online retirement applications people could use were simple retirement calculators that were not detailed, not accurate, and were downright dangerous. But that is not the case any longer. WealthTrace offers a retirement and financial planning application that has the power and details of advisor-based software that usually costs five times more.

With WealthTrace you can link your brokerage and bank accounts, run Monte Carlo simulations telling you the probability of never running out of money in retirement, run complex scenarios such as Roth conversions, and see detailed reports on important things such as tax projections.

You can also get help from their on-hand expert support staff including a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) who will walk through your plan with you and make sure you haven’t entered anything incorrectly.

It is of utmost important that retirement planning uses accurate assumptions for taxation, Social Security benefits, Required Minimum Distributions, different account types, and inflation. WealthTrace handles all of these.

WealthTrace is not free and their Deluxe version costs $300 per year. But you will not see any adds and the company provides phone, Live Chat, and email support. There is also a free trial accessible for seven days.

Taxes: TurboTax

TurboTax has been the best do-it-yourself tax software for years. It has an intuitive interface and is so simple to use. The software walks you through each step with clear instructions. You can also upload documents such as your W2.

There is now also an option to talk to a live expert in taxation where you can get advice and personalized answers. This costs more money, but can be so worth it if your taxes are more complex.

TurboTax offers an online version and a desktop version. Both will remember your information from previous years so that each year it is easy to get started.

Dividend Investing: SimplySafeDividends

With low interest rates, many investors have embraced investing for dividends. For many, this is their income stream in retirement as opposed to relying on bonds to generate enough interest to pay for retirement expenses.

The best software application for dividend investors is SimplySafeDividends. This company has a team of experienced finance and investing professionals who constantly research thousands of companies. Using their software you can calculate what they call the Dividend Safety Score. This helps investors understand which companies are likely or unlikely to cut dividends in a recessions. A higher score means they are less likely to cut their dividend.

You can also enter your portfolio and the software will track your investments. You will be able to see important information such as dividends yields, payout dates, dividend growth rates, and more. You can also click on each holding to get updated research on the company.

Probably the best part of this software is the stock screener. You can filter for many variables such as dividend growth rate, whether or not the company has cut dividends in the past, the dividend yield, and by Dividend Safety Score.

SimplySafeDividends has a very modern and intuitive interface. It is fairly simple, but in a good way. Nothing is complex and users can hit the ground running.

It is also simple to import a portfolio of your holdings. It is also easy to sort and filter as well as download all of your data to Excel.

The software costs $400 per year, which might seem pricey, but they don’t have any competitors that come close to what they are doing. They also offer a two week free trial.

Personal Finance Software Has Come a Long Way

There are wonderful tools out there now for the do-it-yourself investor and financial planner. Take advantage of the software that exists and become empowered. Not only that, you can save a lot of money by doing so much of your personal finance tasks and planning yourself.