Managing your finances is just as important as making money. Capitalism is excellent for innovation and business expansion, but it cuts down on social welfare and promotes unrestricted spending. We're not going to argue about its ups and downs, but concentrate on what you can do here and now to stabilize your financial situation.
According to a Bankrate survey, 56% of Americans would not be able to cover a $1000 unexpected bill from their savings. It's especially troubling when it comes down to expensive healthcare. Europe's welfare states are struggling with rising prices, and high taxes put a strain on workers' paychecks. Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine did not help to ease the global financial tensions, but here's how you can take the initiative to secure your financial well-being.
Why Do You Need Financial Management Apps?
No matter how good you are at keeping tabs on expenses, money management apps can help you in more than a few surprising ways.
Budget apps help visualize and analyze monthly income and expenditures. But there are also apps dedicated to paying off bills, saving money, investment management, or earning a quick buck.
Remember, e-commerce is expected to keep growing, and you can use the Internet to your advantage. Below you will find useful apps to help you improve your financial well-being.
Money Saving Apps
✔️ Digit
Consumerism is fine and dandy until you dry out your account before monthly bills. In reality, the continuous stream of advertisements incentivizes spending, be it a candy bar, new shoes, or League of Legends skins.
Digit is a useful app for those that like spending more than saving – for everyone! It uses machine learning algorithms to construct your financial profile. It will automatically withdraw the amount it thinks you can spare and move it to a retirement or savings account. Remember that you can withdraw the savings anytime you need. Also, remember you're using this app to do it as rarely as possible.
The app is easy to use and saves your money in FDIC-insured banks. It's automation-oriented, so once you get used to it, feel free to leave it running in the background. However, its free version covers only six months, and you will have to pay $5/mo after that, which might be problematic for some users.
✔️ Qapital
Qapital is a micro-saving app with an impressive 4.8-star rating on the Apple app store. It claims to help people save up to $1.500/year, backed by positive user reviews.
Compared to other money-saving apps, Qapital is highly customizable. It allows setting various rules that will trigger the app to move a certain amount of money to the savings account. For example, you can set a limit on how much you want to spend in a certain place – anything below that will go to savings. The most popular is the roundup rule, which will convert $1.75 to $2 and send $0.25 to the savings (the numbers may differ.)
Qapital is a goal-focused saving app with a 30-day free trial available only on Android and iOS. It doesn't have any transfer fees but costs $3, $6, or $12, the middle tier providing all features with extra webinars for the Premier plan.
Budget Monitoring
✔️ Mint
Nowadays, it's nearly impossible to keep track of your every penny without some visual organization. Mint does just that, linking all your financial accounts in one place. Within minutes it will overview your spending habits, categorize them, and provide an astounding amount of financial insights.
Mint does not offer investment features but allows you to track them. This way, it provides a holistic view of your financial situation, and you can organize your savings accordingly. Moreover, they emphasize security, encrypting all your data combined with multi-factor authentication for safe login.
Mint is free to use but uses ads for monetization. It provides notifications and alerts but does not allow joint accounts necessary for families and households.
✔️ Personal Capital
So far, we've focused on beginner-to-mid-level apps, but here's a heavyweight one. It provides a comfortable budgeting dashboard to monitor your finances but excels at investment analysis. You can allow this app to monitor your investments and analyze your assets (bonds, cash, stocks, etc.), comparing their performances to various indexes.
This app is an excellent choice for a retirement plan. Moreover, if you meet their strict investment criteria, you can get two financial advisors. You can also input your biographical details, and it will provide a sufficient and achievable retiring plan, so you know where to start.
Regarding security, personal capital uses AES-256 encryption to secure your data. Even though not the latest, it is a good encryption algorithm that will repel most cybercriminals. However, we recommend using additional data protection software to remain safe because it handles so much of your sensitive data. Moreover, if you plan on downloading and uploading such financial data to the Cloud or sharing it with family members or financial advisors, ensure it's encrypted before leaving your device.
Personal capital is a fantastic retirement, investment, and budgeting platform but has extraordinarily high management fees. It can analyze vast amounts of data but requires advanced software knowledge.
Money-making apps
Lastly, we'd like to mention a few options for making a fast buck when you need it most. These options will not substitute for a salary but will pay for that bucket of KFC at a movie theater.
Services like Survey Junkie, InboxDollars, Swagbucks, and others will pay you to complete online surveys, watch ads, or use their search engine. If you spend a lot of time browsing online, this might be a chance to monetize some of your time.
You can use apps like Pawns or Honeygain that will pay you for Internet traffic. You can share your bandwidth with these companies that use it for SEO and online research and get some money for it. It's an excellent choice if you have a decent Internet plan and live in an area with a fast connection speed.
Lastly, consider joining an affiliate program if you're big on social media. Numerous online services will pay you well to promote their services on Instagram, Discord, Reddit, and alike.
Summary
The intricacies of the contemporary economy are hard to comprehend, but it doesn't mean they translate to financial insecurity. The listed software will help you make sense of your expenses and investments, help you save money, or even earn some quick cash without too much effort. If in doubt, we recommend reading through some online user reviews because there are some spectacular stories of how people improved their financial well-being!
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