Do you love manually pushing the transfer button on your savings account and seeing the money transfer from one account to the other?
Then this may not be the post for you.
But if you are someone who wants to automate as much of your financial life as possible- then free up some space on your phone for these apps. Seriously, ain’t nobody got time for thinking about every area of your financial life.
Why Apps?
You’ve got enough things to worry about on a normal basis. We live very busy lives.
Hit your goals at work. Go to the gym. Meal prep. Pay extra on your debts. Read the latest books. Listen to that podcast.
It’s exhausting! The last thing you need to worry about is managing your money. That’s where apps come in handy. Your brain has a limited capacity to exert energy on multiple tasks. This is why we should be automating as much of our lives as we possible can.
So let’s dig in to the money apps that I am a #fangirl over.
1. Betterment
This robo-advising app helps you save for retirement very quickly and easily. You can set it up so you are constantly saving for retirement automatically. It also allows you to see your time weighed returns. With the click of a button you can adjust your portfolio investments.
Sidenote- this is where I do all my personal retirement investing today. It’s easy. I love it. And the fees are super low.
- Get 90 days for FREE by using this link
2. Qapital
This app gamifies savings. You can set up savings goals, or make it fun. For example. every time you Pin you will have $1 transferred to savings or save $10 for Thailand every time you go to the gym. So cool, right? Oh yeah, it’s also a free app. Try it out and let me know what you think of it.
3. Digit
Although no longer free, Digit is still a great option for people who have a hard time saving. It will text you and tell you how much money will be transferred to savings and also provide account updates to tell you how much you have in your checking. If you struggle to save, then it may be worth the $3 a month fee to give your savings accounts a much needed boost.
Hey, if you’re on Pinterest, pin this infographic as a reference for you later.
4. Your bank’s app
This is the best place to start, so you can see exactly what’s going on in your account. It makes the most sense for your current financial life and you don’t have to integrate anything. Most allow you to group transactions into categories (eating out, groceries, etc) and transfer from your checking to your savings with the click of button.
5. Mint
Pretty much the all-in-one money solution for your life. Mint is great because it syncs all your accounts into one place. You can get alerts on bill due dates, schedule payments, and budget. Oh yeah, you can also see your credit score too. I’m a big fan and think it’s worth checking into.
6. Cinch Financial
This app is different than others because it makes recommendations that are truly in your best interest. If you struggle with credit card debt, you won’t be getting recommendations for the best credit cards. Cinch is essentially your own Chief Financial Officer- in your pocket. They truly live up to the fiduciary responsibility by putting your needs and goals before making money- which is why you won’t find any ads on the app. You can save money on monthly expenses, and manage what comes in and out of your account every month. I am STOKED about this app!
- Try Cinch out using my referral link here
7. Clarity Money
Through the power of AI (artificial intelligence), this app starts to learn your financial habits and make recommendations on how to best approach your financial life. This is an app that is catching a lot of traction and is even helping people negotiate lowing their bills directly from the app. The coolest feature- IMO- is that Clarity will list out all your monthly subscriptions and bills and allow you to cancel them directly from the app. Bye bye, subscriptions that you forgot you were still paying for.
Those are the apps I’m *currently* geeking out over. FinTech is constantly changing, so I’ll definitely be revisiting this topic again in the future. If you would like a more detailed review of one of these apps, let me know by commenting below. I’d love to write up a lengthier post about one of these if you are interested. 🙂
Forever livin’ debt free,
Whitney
Thanks, I did not know about some of these apps. I personally use and love Betterment because of how easy it makes index investing. I also love my bank’s app (Ally). However, I’m still really reluctant to use apps that require me to hand over my bank login credentials. With breaches such as the recent Equifax hack, I’ve yet to reach that level of trust.
Miguel, I totally understand the reluctance! Personally, I have somewhat accepted that there is no such thing as secure information in today’s world. (Which I realize is a sad perspective….) haha!
Hi Whitney! I’ve been a user of some of these apps for a while now, but I had never heard of Cinch or Clarity Money, I’ll have to check those out!
From this list Qapital is my favorite! I especially enjoy the “If This, Than That” rules I have set up. One example, I save a ton of articles from Facebook but I used to never read them. I started transferring them to the Pocket app to organize/read off line and then once I read and archive the article I save $1 for my Roth IRA with Qapital! Right now I have 15 IFTTT applets set up with Qapital and I have savings goals for my vacation, funding my Roth IRA, my next Sephora trip, new furniture, and a 52 week savings goal.
Besides using Qapital to squirrel away savings, I use Wealthfront for index investing, along with Personal Capital and Mint to track net worth and spending. So many financial apps <3!
I’m super interested to see what you think of Cinch or Clarity! Qapital is so much fun too! I love the gamification behind it.