It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but can’t imagine my life without a smart phone. Probably like you, I carry my smart phone everywhere and get a bit panicky when I don’t have it around. There are some personal finance apps in Canada downloaded on my phone that have made my life a lot easier. Here are some of my favourite personal finance apps in Canada that might be helpful for you too, for 2020.
Personal finance apps in Canada encompass a large umbrella of financial technology apps, including budgeting apps, investing apps, and saving money apps. Here are some of the best personal finance apps in Canada in my opinion- I use these on a regular basis.
Investing Apps and Budgeting Apps in Canada:
Wealthica
Probably one of my favourite personal finance apps is Wealthica. I use Wealthica to track my net worth and I use it as an investment portfolio tracker. You can see all your investments in one place with Wealthica. It is free to use.
What is Wealthica? Wealthica is like the Personal Capital of Canada. I use it to track my dividend income received, I use it to track my portfolio performance and compare it to the S&P500, and I use it to track my transactions in my investment portfolio.
You can also add bank accounts too. You can add your real estate assets manually as well so it can give an accurate snapshot of your net worth.
Wealthica is an important part of my investment strategy and is a great investment tool and I can check the aggregated market value and book value of certain holdings if they are invested across my accounts (for example, within the RRSP, TFSA, and non-registered accounts).
They have a ‘private’ mode so that you don’t see all the numbers right away when you are logged into the Wealthica app.
Here’s my Wealthica review. Or you can sign up for Wealthica for free here and try it out yourself.
Mint
Mint is a personal finance app and website that helps you track your day-to-day spending. It is like a Mint expense tracker. In recent years Mint personal finance software was bought out by Intuit.
You link your credit cards and bank accounts to Mint and it can help you track your purchases and spending. You can also link some of your investment accounts with Mint and it gives you the total amount of portfolio. For example, if you have a TD account, it will show you your TD credit card, your TD Bank balance, and your TD e-series RRSP if you have these.
I used to use the Mint app a lot but I cancelled Mint because I didn’t like how I kept having to reauthorize my credit cards that were attached to the Mint app. I also tend not to budget (I prefer pay yourself first approach) and I didn’t like the passive aggressive emails that said I “might want to look into that” when I spent $10 more in restaurant spending than my allocated budget.
Finally, I didn’t like that it would mislabel certain purchases into wrong categories. I know it’s a small thing because I could just correct it, but I found it cumbersome.
Here’s essentially the difference between Wealthica vs Mint.
If you like to track your day-to-day spending and like to budget, the Mint app might be for you. It’s probably one the of the best budgeting apps in Canada. It’s free to download.
Decluttering your Wallet App in Canada:
Stocard App
I have used the Stocard App for years. It’s a mobile wallet that helps you declutter all the loyalty points cards in your wallet or hanging on your keychain and allows you to collect your points without forgetting your points card at home. You can finally stop carrying loyalty cards in your wallet!
This post may contain affiliate links. Please see genymoney.ca’s disclaimer for more information.
It’s free to download and you can upload your loyalty cards very quickly. It is the leading mobile wallet in Europe and Australia.
Everyone seems to be peddling a store branded loyalty points program now (like Toys R Us, Plum Rewards, Rexall, TJ Maxx etc.) and if I carried all of the loyalty cards they had I would probably need to put all my loyalty cards in an entire purse and not a wallet.
I use it regularly to collect my Air Miles points when I grocery shop at Safeway since I don’t carry my Air Miles card with me.
The downside to the Stocard App is that when your iPhone or phone resets (like how my toddler son factory reset my phone twice unfortunately) you lose all your cards that you have stored in there. So this means you still need to keep your loyalty cards as ‘back-up’ somewhere (it just doesn’t have to be in your wallet).
Money Saving Apps in Canada:
PC Optimum
The PC Optimum App is essential if you shop regularly at any of the Loblaw’s branded stores- like for example Real Canadian Superstore or No Frills.
With the PC Optimum App, you can check your recent transactions, your current number of points, and most importantly, see the unique offers that you have. The unique and personalized offers are usually tailored towards your spending history. For example, if you buy diapers, you might get some PC Optimum offers for diapers the next time you log on.
One thing people might not know about is that you have to log on to your PC Optimum App to load the offers (or click on the email to load the offers), so this makes having the App on your smartphone pretty much essential… unless you open their emails.
I used the app to make sure that I was getting my extra points when I use my PC Financial World Elite Mastercard at No Frills or RCSS.
Here are 6 ways to maximize your PC Optimum Points.
Other Canadian personal finance bloggers would agree that PC Optimum is the best app.
Flashfood App
I routinely check Flashfood app daily to see what’s available but I only purchase when I’m planning to head to Superstore or see something that I’ve been wanting.
Flashfood App is a partnership with certain Loblaws stores in Canada to deter food wastage. You can get 50-70% off foods like produce boxes, deli meats, gourmet cheeses, yogurt, meat, and pizza crusts that are all perfectly fine to eat.
Every day the selection is different and you can buy goods directly on the Flashfood App- you have until closing to pick up your items. The foods that they put in the Flashfood section of the store are foods that were purchased in surplus (e.g. too much of it) or they are foods that are going to be expiring soon (but not yet).
Here’s my Flashfood App review.
Click here to join Flashfood here and get $5 off your next purchase after you make a purchase of $0.50. You need to have a cell phone number to sign up.
Checkout 51
Checkout 51 is a money saving app that originated in Toronto. Basically you upload your receipts after checking for offers and then you receive cash back within the app when the receipt is approved.
Checkout 51 has some high value coupons (recently got $1 cash back for Lucerne milk which my kids consume like water). Some of the other coupons can be very specific, like Boursin Portions cheese, Olymel Bacon, or Kellog’s Eggo Waffles 8 count.
They currently have a partnership with Ampli (another cash back app) to get $10.00 cash back in your Checkout 51 account.
You also have to hit $20 to be able cash out from Checkout 51. Here’s my Checkout 51 review.
Caddle
Technically Caddle is more of a short survey app rather than a money saving coupon app, but I still tend to head into the app to do their short few-second surveys on an almost daily basis to get $0.05 (another embarrassing admission).
They do have coupons that you can submit receipts for, and lately they have been paying you $0.10 to submit receipts from places like Safeway, Sobeys, FreshCo, and Loblaws. They also pay you cash back for submitting receipts from your shopping at Costco. However, submitting receipts for cash back is time sensitive and you have about a week window to submit the receipts and shop within the time frame.
Here’s my Caddle review– you can see whether it’s worth your time to download it. Somehow I find doing the surveys pretty addictive.
You can get $1 when you download Caddle and taking a daily survey.
It is $20 minimum to cash out via a cheque.
Flipp App
The Flipp app is a shopping app in Canada to help you save money. I check the Flipp app very frequently and love it.
Flipp aggregates all the flyers available and you can search for what’s on sale. For example, if I’m looking for eggs on sale, I just search ‘eggs’ and it tells me the retailers that have eggs advertised in their weekly flyers and the respective prices.
You can also search by store. For example, if I’m wondering what the weekly flyer for No Frills is, I just type in No Frills in the app (or on the website).
The other flyer app in Canada is called Reebee, I think that is more popular in the Eastern Canada, like Ontario.
Hopefully you enjoyed this list of the best personal finance apps in Canada. I’m sure there are more out there, or better alternatives to the ones I have listed.
For example, you could use Apple Wallet instead of Stocard, but I prefer not to upload my credit card information onto Apple Pay so I will stick with using Stocard for now.
Honourable Personal Finance App Mentions
I don’t use these because I don’t like linking my credit card or bank accounts to apps, but some people have no issues with this, and probably use these personal finance apps very often.
I’ll include these Canadian personal finance apps as well here.
Ampli is a cash back app that is similar to Paymi or Drop where you link your credit card or bank card to the app and you get cash back automatically when you shop at a preferred merchant. Ampli is partnered with RBC Ventures. You can download it and get $5 using the promo code AMPLI5.
Rakuten Canada is one that I use often but I usually use the website and not the app format since I don’t like to shop on my phone (because that would be dangerous, haha). They have lots of merchants for cash back, including Sephora, Clearly (for contact lenses), and Walmart. Before I buy anything online I always check if I can get cash back through Rakuten. You can sign up here for a $5 cash bonus
Paymi is as mentioned, similar to Ampli where you can get cash back through linking your bank account and credit card. It is a partnership with CIBC. You can sign up here and get at $5 bonus for signing up.
Finally, Paytm is another one that I do use from time to time, they have a nice selection of gift cards (e.g. Starbucks, Amazon.ca) that you can use once you collect points. They were great before but now they charge a fee for using your credit card. You can pay your property taxes, utility bills, and Canada Revenue tax payments with Paytm. It can work well if you have a high cash back promo rate like 10% cash back or you need a minimum spend for travel points to get the credit card bonus. You can use this promo code PTM820951 to get $5 worth in gift cards for paying a $50 bill when you sign up.
To summarize, here are some of the best Canadian personal finance apps that will make your financial life a lot easier if you have them downloaded on your phone:
Have you tried the personal finance apps in Canada that are on this list?
What are some Canadian personal finance apps that you are a big fan of?
GYM is a 30 something millennial interested in achieving financial freedom through disciplined saving, dividend and ETF investing, and living a minimalist lifestyle. Before you go, check out my recommendations page of financial tools I use to save and invest money. Don’t forget to subscribe for blog updates, a free dividend yield spreadsheet, and the free Young Money Bootcamp eCourse.
Great list. The only one I would add would be the Triangle app by Canadian Tire. They often have bonuses there for collecting more Canadian Tire money if that’s where you shop.
@Maria- Ah, great addition, thanks!
Great list. Thanks for the Wealthica mention.
@Martin- Thanks for creating Wealthica! It has made my investing life much easier.
Hey Gen Y Money, greetings to Canada from the U.S.! This is such a comprehensive list of apps! I personally enjoy Mint, but these will all help people manage their money well. Keep up the great work!
@FLA- Thanks for visiting from down south.
I really want to like Mint, as I know so many people who use it, but it always breaks and fails to get data from my bank. This often happens for weeks or months at a time. I eventually gave up on it and went back to tracking everything with an Excel spreadsheet. I think I’ll have to look into Wealthica and see if I have better luck!
@AnotherLoonie- Okay so it’s not just me, good to know! Wealthica doesn’t do day to day banking like mint (it’s not meant for budgeting) but it has a much better look at global view of your investments compared to Mint.
Great list. I stopped using Mint years ago because it doesn’t do a good job of keeping track of portfolio performance. I don’t use Wealthica because most of my US accounts aren’t supported, but I’m consolidating my accounts into a US brokerage that is supported. I currently use Quicken US, but I’m excited to use Wealthica again soon! For loyalty cards, I use the Google Pay app. My favorite app is Flipp.
@DreamingofDividends- Thanks, I should look at Google Pay app. So funny I get a bit weary of ‘the big G’ but I’m sure apps like Stocard are the same in terms of watching you (haha), it took forever for me to download Google photos.
I would also include Reebee as well. It is a replacement for Flipp. It is developed in Canada.
Sorry I missed that it was noted in the article…
@John- Thanks! I should have a closer look at Reebee, I have just heard of it and never gave it a try. I’m happy with Flipp though.
Great insight!
For PC optimum, deals are automatically loaded now. You don’t need to click anything to load them. You do, however, need to click each product you want to postpone to (save it for) the next week.
@Tomtom- Good to know, thanks! Do you still have to open the app though? When I talked to a customer service rep (this was a few months ago) they said I needed to open the app and when you open the app the deals load.