I don’t really like to think about money. I’m in that sweet spot of my early career where I’m making enough money to live, but I don’t actually think about saving. I’m not organized or pay close enough attention to draw up my finances into a weekly and/or monthly excel sheet, so I looked to a few resources who might be able to do it for me, or give me some convincing red flags that might encourage me to avoid eating out more than three times a week. Mostly, I wanted to see how I could rework my money into my own favor. Here are the apps that have helped me so far, and hopefully, they can help you!
Albert
Albert is an app that does all the work for you, from overpayment protection, automatic saving and smart investing. Albert sends “smart notifications” that make it practically impossible to stay in the dark about your spending habits. . So once you realize you have been spending $128 on coffee this month, you’ll cut back caffeine (or just start making it at home). It will also alert you know when your bills are increasing – now, you have set protection against the gym randomly changing your monthly membership without thinking you’d notice.
To make it easier, you can even text Albert at any time! It will text you with suggestions that can help you keep more money in your pocket and will answer any financial questions you may have, such as if it’s time to lease or buy a car, or any larger financial undertakings.
Acorns
Acorns, an app that’s one of its kind, helps you create a micro-investing account that allows you to invest with just your spare change. Setup takes less than five minutes and automatically adds money to your diversified portfolio with the help from a Nobel laureate. You can also start putting away money for retirement if you are not already. They’ll recommend an IRA that’s right for you, and update it regularly to match your goals. Thirdly, they will help you build a portfolio, a select combination of investments, which are often small stocks or bonds that you own through the app.
Qapital
Qapital, like some of the other apps mentioned here, allows you to set up savings goals, with a variety of ways to save up. Set up your goal, decide how you want to save (either by putting a set amount away each week, rounding up purchases to the nearest dollar, and many more.) The pull for me was their freelance option. Freelancers owe taxes at the end of the year rather than getting them withdrawn from their paycheck, and unless they save each time, it can slip to the back burner and come back to bite later. With Qapital, set the Freelance rule, which sets aside 30% of your freelance paychecks as soon as they’re deposited. No tax surprises at the end of the year, here!
Clarity Money
Clarity Money is the app that wants your money to work hard for you. They help you organize your expenses, break down your spending by category, and track your transactions at a glance so you have full *clarity* on how much of your money is going to travel or nights out. It can also help you cancel unwanted subscriptions – maybe you’re still signed up for Apple Music, Spotify, and Pandora but have no idea, but Clarity will cancel any unused, inactive subscriptions. It will also help you start saving money – whether it’s $25 every week for those shoes you’ve been drooling over for months or $10 everyday for a new car. It will also let you know how much money you’re spending over the past few days, weeks, etc.
Honey
This last addition is technically a browser extension, but needed to make the list nonetheless. To put it simply, Honey is the coupon company of your dreams. Once installed, you’ll be able to apply coupon codes you didn’t know existed. Simply press the Honey button on your web browser at checkout, and it will scan the internet for any existing codes and try them all to assure you get the best deal
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Feature Image via Stocksy
