BRB Bottomline: With google chrome extensions such as Finance Toolbar and apps such as Evernote, Honey, etc., everyday people like you and I can make informed and effective decisions with our hard-earned money. This article teaches students how to leverage the power of technology to create better habits around saving and spending while gain access to cheaper ways to invest and invest safely.
With just a little financial literacy, technology leverages the ways consumers manage their savings and investments while allowing them to track how much they spend, so they don’t spend too much. This article is a curated list of the best investing, saving, and spending apps that you should be using to maximize your financial potential. In an age of fast technological advancement, you should use technology to give you the right habits and visibility to reach your financial goals faster and with ease.
Investing Apps
For those of you who want to get acquainted with stocks but have a difficult time figuring out where to start, we highly suggest downloading a chrome extension called Finance Toolbar. It provides you with real-time data on stock market information transported from the IEX stock exchange, which is a special stock exchange that shows you more accurate, up-to-date quotes on stock prices. For those of you who aren’t as finance-savvy , this extension exposes you to the speed and constant stream of information that pervades financial markets. In addition, sources like Investopedia and Reddit are perfect places to look up the seemingly-complex business and financial jargon that you’ll inevitably come across.
For those of you who are ready to delve into the stock market, Acorn and Robinhood are very good ways to start building that investment portfolio. Acorn is an app that automatically rounds up your expenses and uses that money to invest in portfolios carefully selected for your investment temperament. Robinhood gives you a little more freedom if you feel like you’re ready for individual stock selection. The app allow you to trade in the stock market without incurring trading commissions all the while providing free financial literacy and stock market educational videos to help you reach your investment goals (very technical note: there is an implicit cost because Robinhood doesn’t give you the best market price, i.e. you don’t get access to the actual bid-ask spread). Most brokerage firms charge a trading commission. TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab charge $6.95 and $4.95 per trade, respectively. Moreover, hiring an investment advisor to provide investment advice also costs money that Robinhood doesn’t charge you As Robinhood has grown, people have questioned whether it can continue to offer these services for the low price of nothing. The company may consider an IPO soon to raise additional capital. In any case, leveraging these fintech-related apps can only increase your exposure to the rapidly changing financial world and puts you on the right path towards financial independence.
Budgeting & Saving Tools
Another application that is extremely useful for saving and spending is Mint. Mint is a personalized app that assists you in paying bills. Mint offers a platform in which professionals provide free, personalized tips for maximizing your saving and spending habits. Mint connects to your bank account and provides insights using data into how you’re spending, where you’re breaking your budget, and where can you save better. Ultimately, the company offers a comprehensive money management tool that brings together everything from your account balances to your free credit score, net worth, and etc.
You can save even more by spending less on the things you need to buy. Honey and Paribus are both apps that search databases of related goods to provide users with the best price for everything in real time. Honey is an app that compares the prices of the item on which you’re browsing and provides quotes on whether that item can be purchased for a better price elsewhere. It also automatically checks and apply every promo code when shopping online.
Paribus is another app that gives users cashback on products that they have already bought when stores subsequently lower their prices and guarantee money back. Paribus notifies the user when there is a reimbursement and how much the store owes them. This app improves customer satisfaction and trust between the seller and buyer by leveraging new tools in data fusion.
If you’re buying any piece of electronics like a keyboard or USB WiFi adapter, Vipon gives you instant coupons on sponsored products that can be redeemed at the checkout on Amazon.
Everyday Life Hacks - Time is Money
Beyond the apps that explicitly help you save, invest, and spend better, you should be cognizant of other ways to improve your productivity or time efficiency. Time is money. And, the efficiency with which you allocate your time can be better and more easily outsourced to an app. One of the most useful apps to have readily available is Evernote, the leading app in note-taking. Evernote is an app everyone should consider because it offers many benefits : cataloguing information, setting reminders, journaling, etc. It can be effective in the workspace too as ideas and plans can be freely shared across all devices. It also can be used for budgeting purposes by generating convenient schedules of automated transactions, which can better inform your financial decisions.
Another extension that can make your work-product more efficient is ADblocker. ADblocker uses filtering guidelines to block or hide ads on the web pages you visit. Both Evernote and AdBlocker indirectly save you time and money.
Take Home Points
The intersection between financial literacy and fintech continues to broaden as app developers and entrepreneur seek new ways of using technology to improve the explicit and implicit ways we save, invest, and spend our hard-earned money. There are so many tools that can help you with the everyday aspects of financial life and independence from financing and saving, to investing and organizing. Make the most of these apps so you can experience more of what life has to offer!
