Helpful Apps for Managing Your Money
Harley Dixon Whether you’re just starting out or you’re a seasoned investor, no one wants to spend too much time trying to parse their finances. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. Budgeting, saving and investing are all possible from the convenience of your mobile phone. While there is a plethora of apps at your disposal, here are just a few to consider.
Money Dashboard
This app is a good place to start with getting a handle on your finances. Once you connect it to your accounts, it gives an overview of your accounts, cards, outgoing finances and incoming finances.
You can create categories for your spending, such as groceries, dining out and entertainment, in order to get a helpful look at your spending habits with charts and graphics. This can be a great first step in tracking your spending and managing your budget better. It’s important to note, though, that this app is only a view of your finances. You can’t use it to move money around.
Emma
Speaking of budgeting, Emma is a little more firm with you. Once you connect it to your accounts, the app calculates a manageable savings target for you, then gives you alerts when you’re spending outside of your budget.
While some might find this a little frustrating, it’s probably less frustrating than not having any savings for a rainy day.
Bean
Bean was built on the understanding that sometimes we aren’t saving enough simply because we’re paying fees that are too high for the services we use. With all your financial connections in one place (read only), bean then flags better deals for you on things like household bills and insurance.
With your permission, it will also ask you whether you’re really using that newspaper subscription or other monthly spends. The app also offers tips on saving and budgeting.
MoneyBox
Now that you’ve saved all this money, what are you going to do with it? If you’re new to investing or you find the idea of playing the stock markets too intimidating, MoneyBox is a great start. You can start by investing as little as 1GBP.
Rather than investing large sums, you can set it up so that, each time you make a purchase, MoneyBox rounds up to the nearest pound and deposits the difference in to the portfolio of your choice. You can choose whether you want your level of risk to be cautious, balanced or adventurous and take your pick among a variety of different funds.
eToro
For the more involved investor or even someone who enjoys online betting, eToro gives you a wide range of investment options to choose from, including buying and selling stocks on most major exchanges worldwide, ETF options and over 15 different cryptocurrencies.
While the app doesn’t offer much in the way of news or market research, it does give you the opportunity to chat with over 12 million fellow investors about their strategies. If you really like the cut of someone’s gib when it comes to investing, you can easily copy their investment portfolio, saving you a lot of work.