The following is a post by MPFJ staff writer, Toi Williams, who is a professional personal finance blogger of Fine Tuned Finances. She has backgrounds in personal finance, sales, and real estate.
Smartphones have made it easier than ever for people to manage their finances anywhere at any time. A number of companies have come up with new apps that make money management even simpler. Many of these app connect to your bank and credit accounts to help you make smarter spending and saving decisions.
Here are some great new personal finance apps to try in 2016.
Nudge
Released in late January, this new personal finance app from HSBC is designed to encourage customers to make small, regular financial decisions that will result in a change to their long-term spending habits. Nudge identifies trends in customers’ spending habits and sends regular, targeted push notifications to make people aware of their expenditure. There are currently 38 different types of nudges, including notifications about the amount spent on groceries in a week and how much customers are spending or saving versus others in the same income bracket. The app is currently in a pilot phase and will be rolled out to a wider audience once all of the kinks have been worked out.
Savings Coach
This stand-alone app, launched by USAA in July of last year, tries a new method to get its customers on track to increase their savings. Built with voice recognition and text-to-speech technology provider Nuance Communications, the app analyzes your financial transaction data to recommend daily amounts of money to put into savings. Savings Coach also deploys a number of gaming techniques to encourage saving, including rewarding points and badges to members and allowing them to reach new levels within the app. The app is available to all USAA members that have checking and savings accounts.
Hip Money
This new financial app links to consumers’ checking and savings accounts to help users make smart financial decisions throughout the day. The first lo-fi prototype of the app was released in September of last year, and the full app will be available some time later this year. The company behind Hip Money, Hip Pocket, plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in March to fund the development and roll-out of the app. Donors to the Kickstarter campaign will be the first people to get the app, as well as be the recipients of cool merchandise from the company, according to Mark Zmarzly of Hip Pocket.
Qapital
This app applies theorems from behavioral science to the world of financial management. Users of the app can assign financial rewards to daily goals, including reducing spending in specific categories or reaching specific savings goals. This is supposed to keep users interested in money management and on track to reach their financial goals. Initially available only for iOS when it launched last year, the service is now available for Android customers.
Fam-ess
This app is geared towards helping kids learn money-management skills. Fam-ess is an acronym for Family First, Earn Always, Save Often and Spend Wisely. The app helps determine whether if a wanted item is really worth the effort it will take to earn it. Users spend about 4 minutes per session with the app and typically use the app every day to every few days. A free public Beta has been launched for iPhone in the App Store and GooglePlay for Android.
Even
The app from Even aims to solve the problem of income volatility by providing hourly workers with the steady cash flow of a simulated salary. On the weeks when users outearn their Even salary, the company banks the surplus into a separate, Even-managed savings account. On the weeks when the users earn less, they will still receive the full salary amount, with the difference made up from past surpluses or interest-free credit from Even. The app was released to all customers in January and the company is reportedly seeking partnerships with large employers who might offer Even to their part-time employees as “a subsidized benefit, akin to health insurance or financial wellness programs.”
Penny
This new personal finance app gives users personalized financial advice using a simple chat interface. Nearly everything done with the app is done through chatting with Penny through pre-written prompts. Users can see graphs showing income vs spending, see how much they spent in certain categories like groceries, or see their account activity. Penny can be downloaded from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
Trim
This app scans your monthly credit card transaction history to find recurring payments that could be eliminated for more savings. When subscriptions are located by Trim, the app sends you a notification and with a simple text to Trim, you can have the subscription canceled. This is great for those who tend to sign up for free trials, but forget to cancel before the company begins to charge you fees.
Wealthee
Wealthee is an all new personal finance management app for Android users. The Wealthee app allows you to manage all of your personal finances, including expenses, income, investments and bill payments with a click of a button. It also provides advance alerts and notifications of low balance situations. No transaction and banking information is collected by the company as everything is saved on your phone.
iBudgetix
iBudgetix was designed to help users create a monthly budget, optimize their cash flow, and increase savings. The app calculates and shows how much money is still available, how much has been saved or overspent, and displays largest spending categories. The iBudgetix beta is now available in the Google Play store for free. The beta test will run for approximately four weeks to gather feedback from real users before the official launch. After Android, the company is planning to add iPhone, iPad and Blackberry support.
How about you all? Do you have a favorite personal finance app? What do you use your personal finance apps to track?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4017/4328628491_dffe3856c2_b.jpg
