Finances can be tricky to navigate. People have digital investments to explore, subscription services to manage and more lessons about money. With so many things to consider, your finances can be overwhelming. Fortunately, many mobile apps can help you sort through the financial clutter.
Let’s face it: planning and saving for your future – let alone your retirement – in your twenties or thirties can be a “big” task. Can you visit your local mortgage lender about getting your first home? Can you dabble in stocks? These words may seem like foreign languages, but technology can help you decipher them for your benefit.
So how can you use your phone apps to grow your savings account, improve your money management and prepare for the future?
How Mobile Apps Improve The Way You Manage Money
Contents
1. Budgeting
Real-time data management is a crucial aspect of any financial service. It also gives you a better understanding of where you spend your money.
In 2014, more than half of Americans admit to struggling with keeping a budget. Less than half of them admitted that they know so little about personal finance management. This is where mobile banking apps come in handy. They can help users understand where they spend their money and how they can manage it well.
With a mobile banking app, you can create a monthly budget to track credit transactions, spending habits and saving behaviors. Is your spending too much on clothes, food, games or transportation? A mobile banking app can help you categorize your expenditures and how to allocate them moving forward.
2. Organization
Most people have multiple credit cards and accounts to manage, which can be tricky. With an app, you can easily manage multiple savings accounts, checking accounts, credit card bills and online transactions – all in one platform.
Consolidating all of your accounts in a single platform helps you monitor your finances and pay debt easier. You can easily tell where you spend your money and which areas you should cut back.
3. Advice
Today’s mobile apps provide users with unique advice on spending, budgeting and tracking through user data analysis. An app can track your data by analyzing your previous expenses, which can help you realize and recognize where your money is going. So if you’re planning to invest in stocks, rent an apartment or perhaps rent out Disneyland, you’ll know if you have the funds to do so.
4. Targeted Recommendations
The data tracking feature available on most mobile payment apps offers a wellspring of information that can enhance your money management knowledge and experience. It can also provide you with real-time, actionable advice so you know the best options when it comes to saving your money.
Thanks to mobile apps, you don’t have to physically visit your local bank to make transactions. Fortunately, there are many apps meant for payment tracking, basic money management and advice.
The Best Mobile Apps for Investing and Improving Your Financial Literacy
1. Clarity
Are you subscribed to Netflix even though you know that you canceled three months ago? Clarity identifies unwanted subscriptions, categorizes your spending and grows your money with its high-yield savings account.
2. Empower
Empower combines accumulating savings with budgeting. This online budgeting and banking app links to your other financial accounts. The app tracks all of your spending activity, giving you more control over your cash flow. You can set monthly or weekly spending limits for different spending categories in your life.
Empower empowers users by also informing them on their tracking progress. You can also save more money via the AutoSave feature. All you have to do is set a savings target and the app will automatically add available funds into your savings.
Apart from helping you budget better, Empower analyzes your spending patterns. Like Clarity, it can also help you cancel unwanted subscriptions.
3. Acorn
What are you going to do with the virtual change in your banking account? Acorn makes it worth your while by investing it with no effort. All you have to do is set up your account and get going.
Use Acorns to set up recurring withdrawals to your account, round up your transactions and boost your account. The app also has a new shopping feature called Found Money. When you buy items from certain shops, these partner brands will automatically invest in your Acorns account.
4. PocketGuard
If you are looking for a money management app that looks for saving opportunities in your spending, PocketGuard is here to save the day. Sync up your accounts with the app so you can track all of your expenditures. You can also use PocketGuard’s analysis to build a better budget.
Managing your finances is easier today. Thanks to mobile apps, you don’t have to make transactions inside a physical bank. Saving more money and growing your finances is just a tap away! Download them today.