Using Technology to Make Better Financial Decisions
As busy young people, we often leave our finances at the bottom of our to-do lists, and only pay attention when something significant happens. Making a budget has typically been an effective way to start managing your finances, and start allocating more funds to your goals. However, budgeting has traditionally been a very manual process using a spreadsheet and trying to add up your expenses at the end of each month. This meant that you didn’t have an accurate picture of what you’d spent at any given time, and couldn’t make informed financial decisions at any moment.
That’s why I’ve really enjoyed seeing and trying out some of the new budgeting tools hitting the scene, that actually provides you with useful information when it comes to your finances. I’ve spoken about apps like Frollo, PocketBook and Money Brilliant before, however, another fantastic tool that has recently launched a new service is Moneytree.
Unlike a spreadsheet, Moneytree digitally connects to your accounts for “always-on” access to the entirety of your financial data, without the need to ever download transactions from each account separately. The spending summary, graphs, account activity notifications, spending category budgets and monthly spending report are great tools that go way beyond what a spreadsheet can offer. Moneytree Grow also gives you a handy tool to download your transaction data.
A great starting point to improve your financial well-being is to really understand what you’re spending money on.
Moneytree Grow helps you to control your expenditures and plan for the future by providing simple tools to analyse, review and set goals for your expenditures. When setting a category budget, Moneytree Grow displays your average spending and the most recent month’s transactions for each category. This super-simple approach helps you grasp where your money is going right away, across all your bank accounts, credit cards and financial institutions.
The budgeting app also helps you focus on and gain better control of specific types of spending. By setting limits or goals only in areas where you need to gain control, it can also cut through the noise and improve your finances. It’s important to build regular habits of review and reflection when it comes to your finances, so that you always know what’s going on. The best starting point for any financial decision, is to understand what you’ve done and where you are today.
Learn more about Moneytree and their budgeting app here. I’d love to hear your budgeting strategies, so please send them my way via email.
If you’re interested in learning more about money and personal finance, catch us on the How To Money podcast which you can find on iTunes, Spotify or via our online web-player.
Follow us on Twitter @HowToMoneyAUS, and on Medium at How To Money Australia.
Cheers,
Kate
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