Get on top of managing your money in 2025 with apps – MoneyMagpie Editor and financial expert Vicky Parry shares her favourites
We don’t often think of the phones in our pockets as mini personal assistants, but that’s exactly what they can become with the right apps.
You can get an app to budget, track receipts, sweep money into savings, and even invest for yourself! If getting your money sorted is a 2025 resolution, download these apps and start revolutionising your financial management at the tips of your fingers.
Budget with an app
There are loads of different budgeting apps. Some will even check through your bank account to summarise what you’ve been spending and where – which can be really handy to analyse where your money goes. The Emma app is a great example of this. The free version can link and analyse up to two bank accounts, or you can pay for additional ones.
We also really like Snoop at MoneyMagpie, as it has loads of budgeting features but can also send you a weekly spending report, daily updates of all your bank accounts in one place, and help track your budget. It also reminds you when you have contract renewals like insurance coming up, so you have time to shop around and save money.
Control your spending
One of the best ways to stick to a budget is to find tactics to control your spending, especially if you can be impulsive. HyperJar is a useful app, because you can load a pre-paid card from your bank account and use it to spend in stores. You can assign money from the card to ‘jars’, and link to stores directly – so if you spend in a store, the money is deducted from that jar. It’s a great way to keep track of your spending and make you think twice if you need to purchase something.
Track your receipts
A common budgeting tip is to pay for things in cash so you can see physical money being handed over. However, with cashless shops and services being more integrated into daily life than ever before, this isn’t always practical.
However, keeping track of your receipts can be another way to watch your spending. Expensify is a good example of this, making it easy to take pictures of your physical receipts which are then automatically loaded into an expense report. It’s designed for business owners and employees, but if you want to have an easy way to track your spending (and be able to search your receipts), it’s definitely worth looking into.
Did you know you could also make money from photos of your receipts? If you’re comfortable sharing your spending habits, apps like ReceiptHog will pay you rewards for snapping pics of your receipts. It’s not a huge reward, but it can add up fast over the course of a year! ZipZero is a similar app but it earns money for you to spend on your bills, like your water bill.
Split bills with friends
No longer do you need to quibble over who is going to pay for a group trip and claw back the cash from everyone else. There are plenty of apps that allow you to manage money as a group, so you can all pay into a pot and authorise expenditure from it – or, you can request money from friends digitally so you don’t have to wait until they happen to have cash on them.
PayPal is an easy app that’s everywhere, and it’s really easy to send a money request from your account to a friend that they can pay. For group pots, try apps like Splitwise which helps you split your bills with people, whether that’s with your housemates or friends taking a trip together.
Use an app to invest
The first thing we always suggest at MoneyMagpie is to sweep your savings into a separate account. This is available in many banking apps, allowing you to ‘round up’ spending to save pennies.
If you have spare money to consider investing, a robo investor can be one of the easiest ways to start investing on the stock market. The platform fees are much lower and you can invest small amounts, making it ideal to test the waters. AI is used to analyse trends and invest your money or suggest investments to make (remember any investment puts your capital at risk, and you could lose what you put in).
Some of the brands and websites we mention may be, or may have been, a partner of MoneyMagpie.com. However, we only ever mention brands we believe in and trust, so it never influences who we prioritise and link to.
Some of the brands and websites we mention may be, or may have been, a partner of MoneyMagpie.com. However, we only ever mention brands we believe in and trust, so it never influences who we prioritise and link to.
