How to keep your coins in your pocket. Raise your hand if you tired of overspending?
Spending more than you’re saving or saving less than you want to can be a burden and very stressful.
BUT good thing you’re reading this! You’re about to learn how you can save more than you spend with various mobile apps.
What is overspending and how does it affect us?
Overspending is when you are spending more money than you’re saving. This affects us in so many ways because without money we can’t have access to the life we truly want to live. Living our desired lifestyle the way we want to is the ultimate goal but we have many steps to take before getting there. We need start with our money.
How do you get started with saving more than you spend?
1. Reading this blog! Lol.
2. Creating personal and financial goals to make sure they align together. Add deadlines!
3. Finding out how much money you make and spend each month.
Personal Capital is really cool, because for one, it comes in app form, like Who doesn’t love a good app and you can have your own financial advisor.
So within the app, it will allow you to see the key benefits of a financial advisor, see that it’s an IRA account.
Sidenote: IRA is an individual retirement account, where you can put your after tax dollars into the account and when it’s time to retire, the money is tax free.
Fees do apply for the financial advisor portion. So whether you put in $100,000, or put in 50k, there is a fee for them managing the money. And they tell you the exact percentage that they require in order to hold your investments.
Also, on the app, you can see your net worth after you link your bank accounts. You can do your credit cards, you can do any loans you have, of course your debit cards, and everything (your checking or savings accounts). Once you link all of those, then you can see your actual net worth, which is your assets minus your liabilities. And it comes with the graphs to show like your net worth from however many months, you’ve been using the app, so you should definitely look into it.
The app will show you the accounts such as your banking, your investing, it will have a little checkup, and also have advice for you.
But this next one is not free. So the second one is called Qapital with a Q, different right? Yeah, definitely. So they do have a 30 day trial that you can go through just to see if you like the app and everything.
And then they have like 3 basic types of plans to join.
Plan 1: Basic Plan for $3
Plan 2: Complete Plan for $6
Plan 3: Complete Plan for $12
So make sure you look at each plan to see which one will fit with your personal goals and financial goals. This will help you navigate the app how you want to, so it’s efficient, and you get the best out of your money.
BUT you can also cancel anytime.
Qapital does have a way of directing your goals towards the plan you should go with. After I added my savings and investing goals, it directed me to the 3 the basic plans and showed me which plan would be best for me.
Qapital has a cool way of showing you how far you are from achieving your goal in percentage form.
Example: Let’s say I am trying to fund my savings account. I want to save $10,00 but right now, I only have $1,000. It will show that I have 10% of that 100%. As time goes on and I continue to fund my savings, the percentage goes up.
This is a great way to have a visual representation of, okay, like, I’m doing a good job, like I have 90% more to go. I can achieve my goal of 10k and my emergency savings. I love that about this app.
After you get past the part of putting in your bank accounts and everything, that’s when you can start automating stuff.
If you want a certain percentage to go into your emergency fund, you could do a percentage for bills, spending money, investing, and more.
I mean, it’s only a couple of dollars a month to make your life easier!
Let’s get into app number three. So this one is more so of a simple goals app. It’s called 52 weeks. So a whole year to save up.
How to set your savings goal?
1. What is your saving goal?
2. How much do you want save each week?
3. When do you want to start saving?
Shows a summary of the information you input then you’ll press start!
Once you press start, it will show you how you still have 52 weeks left of saving, they will show you how much you will have each week. So if I start next week, I’ll have $100 the week after I will have $200 and so forth.
I really love the visual representations of exactly how it all works. It can help you stay motivated and become more discipline.
But I really love how they show you exactly how much you will have each week. And up until the 52nd week.
Also, it lets you add on more goals as well.
- Add name of the goal
- How much you want to say each week
- When you want to start
The great part is you being able to have multiple goals while the app is free. If you love simple, you want to get straight to your goal, and want to take a year then 52 weeks is for you. Get the app.
Let’s get into number four. They’re very, very popular. They are associated with TurboTax and QuickBooks. They are Mint.
Mint is a really cool way for you to track your savings, your spending all of it.
I personally was just using it. And I’m still amazed.
Once you link your bank account, everything you spent your money on in each account, your checking and your savings accounts, will pop up as well as your credit card pops up as well. And it shows like, alright, you spent this much on your credit card this month, and you need to pay it off. And then it also shows like your net worth and everything.
Mint also puts your money into categories.
Example: So let’s say I spent $200 on groceries, spent $100 on clothes, and spent $1000 bills. It will show all of this in their appropriate categories. Cool right?
You can also create goals on the app.
1. Type in how much you want to save and for what then they try align your goals and the money you have together to achieve this goal.
Mint really helps you know exactly where your money is going.
Benefits of MINT:
Brokerage Account: They help you open a brokerage account. Yes, oh, nice little brokerage account, to start investing in it today, they will set it up for you. They tell you the benefits of it, how much you need, what’s the minimum you need to have in the account and how the process will work.
What is a brokerage account?
If you don’t know what a brokerage account is, it is mainly an investment account where you can buy and sell a variety of investments such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and exchange traded funds.
Credit Score: They will also show you your credit score for free.
Did I say free? Yes, they’ll show it to you for free!
So you’ll get the whole package deal, a brokerage account, you’ll see your credit score, have a great track of where your money is going, and your goals so everything is aligned.
Definitely look into Mint, it’s free, they may have some fees up in there. So make sure you’re checking that out. But as far as I’ve seen, I just put in my bank account and from there.
YNAB stands for you need a budget. This one is basically self explanatory. So they mainly help you create a budget, which is basically a financial plan for your finances for your everyday, monthly, weekly finances.
Example: Let’s say that the water bill is due on the first of the month, and it is $60. Putting this information into the appropriate columns will help you get a visual of when the water bill is due and plan out your finances ahead of time.
The great thing about it is even though you have to pay, college students receive one year for free.
So if you’re looking for a great way to start budgeting, you put in the exact day that your bills are due to make sure you aren’t overspending.
You can customize your budget to your liking and to fit your goals and your needs.
Dave is a cute bear and it’s an app and is really cool. Because they have a way of you getting a small cash advance of $250 without impacting your credit score.
You can also set up a spending account with them, they can also help you find a side hustle. Like they Dave has some tricks up his sleeve. There’s also a tab for your goals, you can put in, let’s say you want to save $2,000 for your child, you could do that, you can make sure you’re putting away enough money to fund this goal.
You can also get a credit card with Dave. And when you do that, they have ways for you to get cashback they have like exclusive offers, within the app that’ll show you like, okay, you can go to this restaurant, get some money back for that.
You can add your bank statements, and your bank account everything up there. With them, you can open up your spending account, it’s different ways for you to interact with your money.
And to just get a new feel of the app. There’s also a goals tab that you can press. Once you create a goal, you will put in a name for it, how much you want to save, add the end date, and then you want to put maybe a little photo for a visual representation of what you’re trying to achieve a sense of vacation and put a picture of that beach with the palm trees and everything just to have that so it can be more motivating and more so like, Okay, I need to stay disciplined, and stay on this so I can achieve this visual representation that I put on the app. So they have that as well.
And they also have a way for you to get a MasterCard with them. And you can earn cashback. So it’s like certain exclusive offers out there that you can check out and just look around, see what they got up there. Maybe like a little restaurant you like, or maybe Walmart or something, you just check it out. And you can get some pretty, pretty nice deals.
So I’d say check out Dave if all of this sounds interesting.
7. TRIM
Trim is great, because it’s different from all the other apps is more so trying to help you save on the bills you have now.
So we all have a phone bill, we all pay water, electricity, we all have subscriptions that we use and don’t use. So what they do is they come in they see your spending patterns. And they’re like, okay, you know what, for Netflix? How about you cancel that since you don’t use that anymore or if they see that you can save by doing a bundle for Hulu and maybe ESPN or so.
They simply just try to find a way for you to save more money on the bills you have to pay each month. Basically, that’s what it is. And it’s really cool. I love that because we don’t think that oh, because I have a phone bill it’s something I need. How are you going to reduce how much I pay each month, there’s way, it’s called negotiation. And that’s essentially what they do, they will contact maybe AT&T. And they will see, hey, can we get a lower price. They to maneuver their way into getting you the best deal, basically.
So if you want to try that out, definitely look into trim, they can help you, they help people all the time, save hundreds of dollars, hundreds, hundreds of dollars a year, just by negotiation and seeing your spending patterns. So definitely check it out.
Final Thoughts:
I will say that some of these apps you do have to pay and some of these apps you don’t have to pay. So just make sure you are reading the fine print of everything, read everything carefully. And also just pick the right one for you. So depending on if you want an app for budgeting, or you just want a simple app for saving, or if you need help saving money on your bills, it just depends on what you need and what you’re actually looking for. And then you can tailor to your needs to the app that will work best for you. So definitely do that.
What’s Next?
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