Increase your Saving Through Mobile Apps
Savings apps are a tremendous help to get your bills and savings on track while not having to write everything down or creating a excel sheet. I use the below apps to keep myself on track in order to reach my weekly, monthly, and even yearly savings goals. Look over the apps and decided which ones will work best for you. I have provided a summary of each below, but the first step is to do a little of your own research or test out some of them for yourself.
Smarty Pig is your virtual piggy bank! It is a free savings app with a high interest rate of 1.80%. It is an automatic depositing account that allows you to choose the amount and frequency that you would like to contribute. What’s great about this app is that it helps users stay on track with savings goals by taking away any manual transactions. Set your desired goal and let the system do the rest. The app was created to change users mentality from spending money you don’t have and paying it back later, to saving up money before you spend for a specific goal.. Therefore keeping you out of debt! With Smarty Pig you are being paid interest rather than paying interest.
Packet guard is a finance tracking app that takes all your credit cards, bank accounts, bills, loans, ect and displays them in one easy overview and summary. By getting to know your regular expenses and monthly spending habits, Pocketguard will help calculate your take home income, build a budget, pinpoint your largest expenses, in order to help find areas where savings are possible.
Honey is a web app extension for Google Chrome that automatically searches for and applies online promo codes. This takes away the work of coupon clipping, google searching, and avoids missed saving opportunities. Once the extension is added to your browser, Honey will automatically scan the web during check out of your online purchases and apply any valid promotional discount codes that are available. This ensures you never miss out on a savings opportunity! It is completely hassle free and doesn’t cost any money to download!
Digit is a savings app that uses your spending habits to save smart and effectively. By choosing a specific savings goal, or multiple goals, Digit will analyze your income, spending, and expenses to calculate how much you can afford to save and when. By tracking your financial habits, Digit tries to find a way to take a small amount of money each day and automatically transfer it into the digit bank account for your goals. The money that is put aside for savings is held in FDIC insured banks and is protected up to $250,000. It is free for the first $30 days and then $2.99/month.
Pros:
-It offers automated savings that takes out the guesswork.
-There is no limit to the amount of savings goals can you have.
-You receive 1% savings payout every 3 months.
– There are unlimited withdrawals, low balance protection, and no minimum account balance.
-Digit will also reimburse you in any event of over savings.
Cons:
-It will cost $2.99/month after your first 30 days.
Qapital is a micro money savings app that uses specific goals such as a vacation or a new car to encourage you to stay on track with positive saving habits. The goals are endless and saving up for something specific has been proven to keep you more motivated than just the idea of aimlessly saving. One unique feature of the app is the joint savings goal. This allows multiple people to take part in the savings journey so you can encourage each other to reach it along the way.
To help build awareness of spending habits, Qapital uses Money Missions as a learning tool. These missions create a fun and interactive platform that challenge you to look into your current savings and figure out how to improve in the future.
Qapital can also help it’s users invest their money. The app has pre-built portfolios which is great for anyone who is new to investing and does not have an extensive amount of knowledge about it. To ensure there is not a high risk in losses, Qapital diversifies each portfolio so the investor’s money is not all in one basket.
Qapital will cost you $2.99/month.
Chime bank is another micro savings and banking app. Chime offers a Chime Visa debit card, spending account, and an optional savings account. It is a great opportunity to get away from the brick and mortar banks that make billions off of fees and overdraft charges.
Chime gives instant and up to date notifications on spending and money deposited to your account. This will ensure you are always informed of your account balance and hopefully will be less likely to spend large amounts without hesitation.
Chime allows you to set up an automatic savings plan. This means that every time money is deposited into your bank account, Chime will automatically redirect the percentage you have chosen into your savings app to help meet your desired goals. To increase your savings even more, Chime has an automatic roundup feature. With this, the total of every purchase you make is rounded up to the nearest dollar amount. The cents that are rounded up will be put directly towards your savings goals. You will be amazed by how much a few cents here and there can grow overtime. Other features of this savings and banking app are mobile check depositing, money transfer abilities, and free ATM withdrawals from over 38,000 ATM nationwide. Chime savings accounts are FDIC insured which means the security of you and your money is top priority.
Another rapidly growing savings app is called Robinhood. Robinhood offers commission free investing in stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies. You are able to build a diversified portfolio in order to mitigate risk to different assets. I would recommend this app to more novice investors who have previous knowledge of the stock market and trading. Due to the commission free platform, it is more hands on and does not offer preset portfolios.
Robinhood is fairly new and still developing, so new features are still being added. Their newest features include daily financial news updates to keep users informed on what is happening in the financial world. This provides investors using the app quick access to everything they need to know in one convenient place. Also, the in-app stock analysis feature provides insight into almost every stock available in the market – including ratings for buying, holding, or selling – so users can use the information to their advantage when making investment decisions. Once you begin building your portfolio Robinhood will give suggestions for similar stocks that match/are competitors of your current investments.