Top Apps For Tracking Your Travel Budget

While people often travel to relieve stress, one of the most anxiety-inducing aspects of hitting the road is finances. When exploring new destinations it's natural to want to splurge to have novel experiences, not to mention transportation and accommodations are necessary expenses that quickly add up. Luckily, tech-centric travelers can enjoy a number of apps for tracking their travel budget, ensuring they have a memorable trip without breaking the bank.

BillGuard (free; iOS & Android)

For those who want to track expenses but also worry about protecting their identity abroad, BillGuard puts all your accounts in one place and allows you to keep spending organized as well as monitor for unauthorized charges. First you'll sync your accounts to have all spending shown in one place. From there, you can group spending into different categories, like food, nightlife and hotels, with the option to set category limits. Charges are shown in real time, and you can confirm each one and report suspicious expenses with one click. A watchdog feature keeps you abreast of any recent data breaches with major companies.

Pocket Expense (free; iOS & Android)

With Pocket Expense you don't actually hookup your bank accounts; however, you create budgets for different categories in your life - for instance, travel - and tell the app your weekly or monthly limit. When you spend or earn money you input this to alter your allowance, with a nifty 7-day calendar showing your expenses for each day, while cash flow charts put your past and future spending into perspective. For those who forget what bills are due when they're on the road, the app allows you to set notifications, so your rent/mortgage and cable bills still get paid.

Travefy (free; iOS & Android)

For road warriors traveling in a group, Travefy makes planning - including budgeting and splitting expenses -- hassle-free. The app lets you create a private group discussion where travelers can collaborate on their group trip itinerary, even browsing restaurants, bar and activity suggestions complete with reviews, maps and photos within the app to add. Travelers can also add expenses, for instance, the cost of the hotel room, and split the total up amongst the group, who can all pay the one booking through the app via credit card or PayPal. Travefy also keeps track of who covered what so that nobody gets stuck footing the bill.

Trail Wallet (free; iOS)

Trail Wallet offers a number of useful features to travelers on a budget, like the ability to work with multiple currencies, instantly view exchange rates and add expenses to different categories. Travelers can add expenses to different categories, with the option to spread the sum over multiple days as well as view it in a 5-day calendar, pie chart or list for an easy-to-understand spending visual. Note iOS 8 or higher is needed to download this app.

Concur ($8+ per month; iOS & Android)

Concur is most useful for business travelers, especially as there is a bit of an expense involved. Like the apps mentioned above, it's simple to input and track your expenses, with the added benefit of being able to research and book travel through the app, as well as keep organized and keep bookings in a single itinerary through the included integration of TripIt Pro. What's great for traveling professionals is the ability to photograph receipts and add mileage reports to track work spending and create expense reports, with the option to submit the report to your company through the app.

Be sure to leave a comment below to let us know what you thought about this post!

Note: Available plans and coverages may have changed since this blog was published.