We are becoming more and more tied to our phones as they become increasingly useful in our lives. We can use them for communication, banking, photographing, taking notes, keeping our car insurance ID cards, and more. While you may be a little wary of how entwined in our lives and smartphones are becoming, you shouldn’t count them out. There are many useful purposes phones can serve and one you might consider, especially if you are struggling to save for retirement, are budgeting and savings apps.
It is a commonly known fact that the state of retirement is not looking good for Americans, most have under saved. If you want to read up on some stats, check out this article from The Street. Saving is hard and so is planning for retirement. But as mentioned, your smartphone might be the tool you need to start getting ahead in savings. Here some apps you might consider using:
Budgeting – There are two great budgeting apps that you can test out and see what works better for you. The first is Mint. If you use Turbo Tax to file your taxes, then you will likely feel comfortable linking your personal information to Mint because it is owned and ran by Intuit, who also operates Turbo Tax. Mint is a comprehensive all in one app where you can manage all your money from one place, track spending, create budgets, and more. The app is very powerful and you can access everything online as well as on your phone.
If you are looking for a simpler app, look into Every Dollar. If you haven’t heard of the financial guru Dave Ramsey, you should read up on him. He is a well-known author and Every Dollar is his budgeting app. It is relatively simple to set up and you can input your expenses to see how much of your income you have spent based on the categories you set up for yourself and set savings goals.
When you are saving for retirement, budgeting yourself is extremely important because it can be easy to lose track of what you’re spending. Or if you are already retired, you can set up your budget using these tools so you can make sure you stay on budget and don’t spend outside your savings.
Savings – There are a lot of saving apps out there, but NerdWallet ranks its top four in their article, “NerdWallet’s 4 Best Money Saving Apps”. The four apps they recommend are Qapital for goal setting, Acorn for investment options, Digit for simplicity, and Chime for an alternative bank. Read the article to go more in-depth on these apps to decide if one of them will work for you. Note, we do not recommend Chime because we have no experience with them in regard to ease of aligning your account with them with your estate plan (we actually have a list of financial institutions we recommend to ensure the effectiveness of your estate, which you can discuss further with us as you plan your estate).
Having apps that help you save automatically can be very useful especially if you are bad at doing so yourself. Saving small increments or investing small increments like a lot of savings apps do, allows you to feel more comfortable with the amount of money you are moving and a little adds up.
While saving for retirement can be tricky, testing out these useful smartphone apps could help you start walking in the right direction. These apps are only tools to help you, you should consider speaking with a financial planner and should meet with an estate planning attorney as soon as you can to not only plan your estate but make sure your plans and goals for retirement will be attainable.
To learn more about this and other estate planning topics, visit our website and schedule a complimentary consultation today!