In a recent post, we talked about online tools to help make one’s life easier when setting one’s finances on track.                 As Save.net is all about helping you achieve you financial goals, I have decided to write something that will benefit the millions of iPhone users in terms of managing their finances and stretching the functionality of their $400 gadget. As the hottest trend in the market today, probably everyone has an iPhone by now. Okay, not to overdo, not everyone has but a lot of people do, and many are on the way to get one. Since managing your money shouldn’t get in the way of living your life, personal finance apps have been made available for the gizmo-lovers out there. These apps aim to help them in their financial management needs while cashing out on their pricey shiny investment. As listed in my previous post on “Money and Personal Finance Quotes”, Frank Hubbard puts it, “The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket”. Do you think this is the only way out to save more money? No, it can never be this. Man is subjected to temptation and no one can ignore the sensation that money gives. However, the smarter way for you is to think and spend, than spend to think. But since you have an iPhone handy, let it help you on the ‘thinking’ part. It could even make you appreciate and enjoy you gadget more.

Whether it is tracking your stocks, expenses or calculating your debts or converting currencies, you can now have real time pleasure with your iPhones. You can also manage all those multiple account woes or transfer money between your accounts with your phone through the apps I am to introduce. The very trendy GPS or WiFi helps users to find the nearest route to the ATM. You will get all these applications for a low cost, and others even, free.

Every time when you swipe your credit cards, you either end up paying huge bills or accumulate huge debts. What happens next is you have to consolidate debts in order to do something about bad credit history. Sounds a bit complicated, doesn’t it? The best way is to gorge on things that help you to lead a frugal life, but with style. So take a look at these stylish yet cost-effective finance iPhone applications.

Let us begin with the free services. Besides, anything free is always appreciated. Then, you can take your pick from the other available apps in different price range. Remember, it’s good to explore your options, but only get what you truly need.

*Bloomberg Mobile (Free)

Wall Street Traders swear by the Bloomberg Terminal to analyze real-time financial market data, place trades, and get news and price quotes. Bloomberg Mobile isn’t quite the same thing but it is a beautifully designed app that provides up-to-the-minute news, stock quotes, company descriptions, and price chart and market trend analysis. You are also able to create a customized list of stocks that you want to follow from markets around the world. The My Stocks feature is a more detailed replacement for Apple’s stock Stocks app. And Bloomberg Mobile takes full advantage of the iPhone’s position sensor by providing larger charts when you rotate the phone to a horizontal position.

Currency (Free)

Currency is a must-have for forex traders as it provides up-to-date exchange rate information for over 100 currencies and countries! A perfect tool when you travel abroad and need to calculate the latest exchange rates so you know how much your money is worth. With Currency, there’s no need to get ripped off with your money when on a business trip, vacation, or holiday.

ATM Hunter (Free)

Taking full advantage of the iPhone’s location awareness technology, MasterCard’s ATM Hunter app can help you find the nearest ATM, wherever you roam. Perfect when you’re out and about in a new city and run out of cash!

FEATURES:
• Finds ATMs based on your current location.
• Finds ATMs based on any address or airport location in the world.
• Tells you whether an ATM is a bank ATM or an ATM in a local store, as well as exactly where it’s located, i.e., a grocery store, gas station, etc.
• Lets you search for your own bank’s ATMs when you want to make a deposit or a withdrawal.
• Provides you with the distance between your chosen location and the closest ATM.
• Filters your search based on the following ATM features: drive through, 24 hr service, wheelchair accessible, surcharge free, and deposit sharing.
• Provides you with driving directions and a map to the nearest ATM location.
• Allows you to share ATM locations with others via SMS.
• Gives you helpful tips on how to be smarter with your money and safer at ATM locations with the click of a button.

MoneyStrands (Free)

Moneystrands iPhone app shows account balances in one place, transactions information and has customizable alerts.  The budget tool is especially slick in this app, and you can add and delete budgets and track individual account updates.

PayPal (Free)

PayPal app provides complete access to your PayPal account allowing you to check your balances and send money to your friends and family, all from your iPhone. It’s much easier than going to the ATM to withdraw cash, writing checks, and sending gifts the traditional way. And you can manage your PayPal account right from your mobile device. It supports 16 currencies and is secured by your existing PIN or password.

Tiptap (Free)

More traditional but no less useful is the free Tiptap which is one of the most straightforward tip calculators I’ve seen. Featuring a large custom keypad and a large picker wheel, it’s extremely finger friendly, a plus when when your dining companions are tapping on their wallets and waiting for you to tell them how much they owe. You can choose to enable rounding, splitting, or tax support and Tiptap works with multiple currencies and multiple languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Swedish and Japanese).

PocketMoney Lite (Free)

A simple, elegant, and powerful replacement for your checkbook – PocketMoney tracks your finances quickly and accurately. Take a glimpse on its features:

- Track your accounts. (LITE version limited to 2 accounts).
- Repeating transactions (LITE version limited to 2 repeating transactions).
- Supports Withdrawal, Deposit, and Transfer transactions.
- Generate expense reports & pie charts.
- Auto-complete transaction based on Payee.
- Track today’s balance, future balance, cleared balance and available balances.
- Turn on multiple currency support if you are frequent traveler.
- Built in backup and restore over local Wi-Fi network. (Requires SyncDocs)
- Import and export QIF & TDF files over local Wi-Fi network. (Requires SyncDocs)
- Enter a PIN to protect your data.
- And much more…
- Several languages supported.

LITE (free) vs FULL VERSION ($4.99): The free version is limited to 2 accounts and 2 repeating transaction, it doesn’t allow editing of splits, and view options can’t be changed in the transaction register or the edit transaction screens.

PocketMoney is a powerful yet easy to use personal finance manager, PocketMoney lets you track your cash flow, understand your net worth, and improve the overall health of your finances. This app can track an unlimited number of accounts, can auto-complete transactions based on payee, and will generate expense reports and pie charts. What’s more, PocketMoney can import database files from the Palm version and also Quicken Interchange Format (QIF). You can even sync these files over a WiFi network using a free desktop app.

Spend (Free)

You can also keep track of your money with Spend, a quick and easy budget tracker for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Create daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or yearly budgets in categories that you define, and enter new expenses in seconds with a few touches of your finger. Spend travels with you on your iPhone or iPod Touch and does not require internet access, so you can enter your purchases before you even leave the mall or grocery store! Spend is perfect for people who like to budget their money but don’t want to bother with using a full-blown money management application. You can also export your data to a CSV file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications including Excel and Numbers.

Spend Lite is the free version of Spend, a simple, easy to use budget manager. Spend Lite allows you to create an unlimited number of daily or weekly budgets; the full version allows for an unlimited number of daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, semi-monthly or yearly budgets.

iPortfolio Lite (Free)

A simple yet elegant app. If you need just simple stock portfolio tracker that does not require any accounts and registration – this one is ideal. With iPortfolio, you can get the information you need on stock quotes, portfolio performance, gains/losses – just by one tap on your iPhone/iPod screen.

Tipulator ($0.99)

Tipulator lets you easily calculate restaurant tips on your iPhone and iPod touch. Take the guesswork out of restaurant tipping. Enter the bill amount, select a percentage, and Tipulator will calculate the tip. And it’ll split the check among friends. Tipulator stands out in a crowded field of tip calculators (it’s often said that the true test of how successful a new platform will be is how quickly a tip calculator appears for it) by marrying cute graphics with easy-to-use number dials. It features a simple and beautiful user interface, optional checksum/palindrome on check total to prevent frauds and local currency settings.

Wealth Calc ($1.99)

WealthCalc is recommended for investors, brokers, CFOs, accountants, students and anyone with an interest of finance.

This app will show you the enormous power of compound interest (reinvested profits) and how it manifests in several scenarios. WealthCalc can calculate your desired parameter in a split second on the following:
a) Required Annual Profit %
b) Required Time to Target Wealth
c) Required Principal Amount
d) Wealth Over Time

Day Bank ($1.99)

Day Bank is a pocket-sized check register that has been built specifically for the iPhone with a number of features that take advantage of the phone’s capabilities. Unlike the others included here, Day Bank seems particularly suited for entering transactions on the go and tracking your cash spending. Transaction entry is particularly speedy and the app uses the iPhone’s camera to capture images of receipts or purchased items. I like the ability to easily filter the view by day, week, and month. Day Bank isn’t as full featured as its competitors and currently can’t serve as your primary money manager due to its inability to reconcile transactions but it is improving rapidly and in its next version will support transaction geo-tagging, the ability to rename categories, QIF, CSV, & XML export, WiFi backup and restore and more.

Pennies ($2.99)

Pennies is a slick expense tracker with an interface that looks like it could have come straight from Apple. It doesn’t pretend to be a full-featured money manager like SplashMoney or PocketMoney but what it does do it does exceedingly well. It lets you quickly establish a monthly budget and record and track your daily expenses against it. Large finger friendly buttons and fun features such as a fuel gauge that indicates how much money is left in your budget make Pennies a joy to use. If you still rely on cash for your daily purchases and only want to make sure you are meeting your budget goals, Pennies is a good choice.

Loan Shark ($4.99 – now on sale for $2.99)

Designed to help you navigate the often treacherous waters of financial lending, Loan Shark provides a number of features that let you calculate and compare loans from different vendors. You can calculate any component of a loan, including payment, interest rate or loan amount, see the full Amortization Table for the loan’s lifespan and play with “what-if” scenarios that let you determine the effect of making extra, higher, or lower payments. Loan Shark can help you determine how long it will take to pay off that credit card, determine how close you are to paying off your mortgage, and compare the cost of different loans, among many other uses. As a bonus feature, it lets you locate nearby banks using the iPhone’s location-awareness.

Splash Money ($4.99)

SplashMoney is another mobile checkbook that is well known from its implementation on Palm and Windows Mobile. SplashMoney allows you to track different account types: checking, savings, credit card, cash, asset, liability, money market and line of credit. You can create a budget and track and analyze your spending with customizable reports and charts. SplashMoney bests PocketMoney by connecting wirelessly to many online US banks using the same DirectConnect service as Quicken and Microsoft Money. In order to sync with the desktop, you’ll need to purchase the desktop version of SplashMoney separately.

There is an enormous number of other options available for iPhone users to sift through. You can Google the type of feature you actually need and it will yield you impressive results. But only choose what that best meet your needs. Looks like the iPhone have conquered another category than just being purely a vanity item. If you want to save money in style, make use of these finance iPhone applications. Get away from age old methods and make use of your gadgets to bag more money into your pockets.