These are the personal finance apps you need in your life right now.
Working in technology and innovation, I test and try out A LOT of new apps and web products. When making recommendations to friends, I find that there are a handful of staples that I consistently gush about. Family and friends if you haven’t heard, these are the tools that you need to start using ASAP.
Mint.com
As a power user since 2011, it surprises me how many people don’t know about this life changing personal finance tool. Mint combines your transactions across all of your accounts, bills, banks and financial institutions in one dashboard. It displays trends and tips, and helps you become a better saver [plus much more]. This weekend, one of my girlfriends told me that she types all of her and her husband’s transactions each month into an excel file to track their goals and expenditures. Even as an excel nerd, this made me cringe thinking back to all of the hours I used to spend budgeting by hand before Mint entered my life.
How I use it: I log into Mint from my Desktop once a month when I’m paying bills, and use the mobile app instead of logging into 8+ individual account apps throughout the month (so all the time). I’m obsessed with their net income/spending trends and have found their budgeting tools useful for yearly planning. Recently, Mint has helped me realize that I need to stop splurging on Ubers to get to any destination that’s over a half mile. Whoops.
Stamp of Approval: I understand the fear of having all of your accounts in one place, accessible with one logon. When I first found Mint, I asked my financial advisor his thoughts and found that Mint was the primary tool he used to manage his own family’s finances. Can’t get a better recommendation than that. Now that I work in tech, I know that Mint pulls read-only files, which means that they literally couldn’t enter into your bank account if they wanted to. Someone hacking into your Mint Account is comparable to finding a grocery store receipt outside on the ground. It’s also owned by Intuit, a heavy hitter in internet security.
Wealthfront
Wealthfront is an online, automated financial advisor and it’s the product that I currently get the most giddy to talk about. Their Tax Harvesting tool takes into account that sometimes losses SAVE you money on your taxes, and it automatically rebalances your accounts every month to get your money the highest return it can. Where TurboTax made it easy to understand how to do your taxes, Wealthfront does the same for financial investing. If you have seen me in person over the last 6 months, I’ve likely shown you their awesome mobile app graphs or gushed about how PUMPED I am about the roll out of their new Portfolio Review feature.
Stamp of Approval: This comes with my biggest insider tip. I learned about Wealthfront from from a mentor of mine, who along with a bunch of his Venture Capitalist buddies, moved all of his personal investment accounts over to Wealthfront. This endorsement helped me get over the mental hurdle of sending my savings to a faceless computer rather than to a real person that I could call up and yell at if they lose my money. The result: Wealthfront has driven impressive returns for me, and I’m still calling up my financial advisor that I know hasn’t looked at my accounts in over a year [note to self: move remaining accounts over to Wealthfront immediately]. Sometimes algorithms and technology are just better than human eyeballs.
I think that this is the CYA part where I say that I’m not making an endorsement for where to invest your money. Wealthfront is working well for me, and if you’d like to give it a shot here’s my personal invite link that gives us both $5K in assets managed for free. Also, Wealthfront peeps are pretty awesome on chat/email. I’ve thrown them some tough investment questions and they’ve been impressively knowledgeable; feel free to do the same. I’ve also checked out Betterment, which may have a better fee structure for you if you’ve got more to invest.
Venmo
As I have learned from handfuls of young professionals in my dance company, you are now inconveniencing your friends if you AREN’T “Venmo-ing”. Venmo lets you send money to your friends for free. It’s super fast for both the receiver and the giver, oddly fun, and has a social component. Recently, the head of Innovation at MasterCard said that about one-third of Millennials “don’t understand why banks have to exist. They would rather go into a dentist than go to a bank.” This made me laugh and of course repeat as a fun-fact everywhere. DO NOT be that friend that pays your friends back with cash they don’t want to carry or heaven forbid- a check that they have to go to the bank to cash.
How I use it: I now make all of my peer-to-peer payments via Venmo, even my monthly rent check. Anyone that tells you that they don’t spend an extra 10 seconds choosing the exact right emoji to accompany their transaction to their friends are lying. It’s fun and free- just do it!
I would be remiss to not mention that two of the developers on my Innovation team say that Vemno is “for the plebs” and that they force me to @SquareCash them for our Sushi orders. However, I had recently had to teach them how to use Snapchat, so take that with a grain of salt.
Splitwise
I’ve been using Splitwise since 2012 with roommates in Boston for keeping track of and splitting shared expenses. It’s a staple web product for me, and I’ve recently been using the mobile app on vacations with friend groups of all sizes.
Splitwise is simple and has everything you need. One of my girlfriends started using it after her parents (in their 70’s) were raving about using Splitwise on their last vacation. Tracking down friends or roommates for money can be a hassle, I can vouch for the time and awkward conversations Splitwise saves.
Pro Tip: If you’re using Venmo to “Settle Up” your expenses on Splitwise, record it as a Cash transaction and pay via the Venmo app separately; they are currently working on some integration issues.
This post originally started as a head’s up on all types of apps, but ended up just focusing on financial tools- sorry! :) As a quick aside, my other most used apps right now are Fitbit, MyFitnessPal and NikeRun for fitness (sometimes all at the same time), Sworkit for ab workouts, AirBnB for vacation planning, Zillow for condo dreaming, Spotify Premium for music, and Evernote for crossing work & home to-do lists.
I hope this helps!
Cheers,
Kayla
PS. If this topic jazzes you too, let’s chat: Email & LinkedIn
