5 Essential Financial Well-Being Apps: Master Your Money
Managing personal finances is a crucial skill that everyone should master as it could help us achieve financial well-being. On the other hand, I realized that I had yet to learn how to manage my finances at the school. Then I realized fintech bros worldwide could help me achieve financial well-being with their apps. For the past few years, I have tried a few financial well-being apps that could help you learn to manage your money.
Managing personal finances is a crucial skill that everyone should master as it could help us achieve financial well-being. On the other hand, I realized that I had yet to learn how to manage my finances at the school. Then I realized fintech bros worldwide could help me achieve financial well-being with their apps. For the past few years, I have tried a few financial well-being apps that could help you learn to manage your money. Here, I’ll share my experiences with 5 of those apps. Enjoy your reading, and I hope this helps you.
Before I Begin: What Is Financial Well-Being?
In our world, people are obsessed with the concept of well-being. But what is it? If you are afraid to ask that colleague who always talks about well-being, mindfulness, and a business model that you can earn a lot of money (yes, it is a pyramid scheme), don’t worry. I’ll try to explain what well-being is.
Simply, the concept of well-being is all about feeling good physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is not like if you are not sick or in distress, you achieved financial wellness. No, it’s more than that. It means you should be thriving and flourishing. In the financial sense, well-being is not about you being debt-free. Instead, it is about building a sustainable financial system for you and your friends and family. It is all about sustainability, education, and security. Financial well-being is comprised of several aspects, like budgeting, saving, and investing. If you feel you have a healthy relationship with your money and feel safe when it comes to financial situations, you might say you have achieved financial wellness.
What Apps Did I Use to Achieve My Financial Well-Being?
In the past few years, I have tried several financial well-being apps that could help me learn how to be at peace with my financial situation. I have learned several critical skills like budgeting, saving, investing, and debt management. Here are five of those apps that I strongly recommend if you want to achieve financial wellness.
Mint
Let’s start with the most popular one. Mint is a personal budgeting app that offers free and paid versions. You can manage all your financial accounts in the same place, so it makes it easier to be in track of your expenses. It is really easy to use with a tidy and customizable interface. You can set bill alerts, custom budgets, and specific savings goals. It is highly motivating when you see you have achieved a goal. It’s no wonder that Mint is one of the best budgeting apps that is chosen by Forbes. Sometimes it gets slightly janky when connecting to other financial accounts, but the app is quite good overall.
The paid version, Mint Premium, is exclusive to iOS, and it costs $4.99 per month. I mean, come on. Would I use this app if I had the money to get an iPhone? I’m just joking. Anyway… It gets rid of those annoying ads, gives you more advanced analytics tools, and seamless access to Billshark, which manages your subscriptions for you.
YNAB (You Need a Budget)
You Need a Budget, or YNAB in short, is one of the best budgeting apps in the market right now. According to the creators, the average user can save up to $6,000 per year with their app. I don’t know if it’s true, but it helps you budget better by making you set goals, add your expenses, and adjust your budget as needed. You can create your own budgets, so that’s a big plus in the customization department. You can link your bank account to the app, and it automatically imports your transactions to the app for better budget management.
I would recommend this app more if it wasn’t so expensive. There is no free version, and you need to pay nearly $14.99 per month, or you can buy a 1-year license for $98.99. But they offer a 100% money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with the app. To try and see if the app works for you, they offer a 34-day trial period. And believe me when I say you’ll need it. It has one of the steepest learning curves of all financial well-being apps on the market.
Acorns
Acorns focuses more on investing than saving. But as long as I get more money than I used to have, it is okay for me. It is also a great entry point to the investment world. It offers you low-risk, low-cost investment portfolio options. It eliminates that painful research period in which you read thousands of reviews of various ETFs and then quit investing before you even begin. It asks you a series of questions, your age, your income, etc., and gives you a custom portfolio.
But where does it get the money? Well, obviously, you can deposit some money into the app, but what I like about the app is the “round-up” method that it uses. For example, when you get a cup of coffee for, let’s say, $3.50, the app automatically rounds up the cost to the nearest dollar. You’ll realize that money quickly adds to your investment account.
One of the few things that I don’t like about Acorns is that their fees are a little bit higher than their competitors. Also, you cannot access a human advisor when you are investing.
PocketGuard
PocketGuard helps you to see where you spend much of your money. To track your money, you link your bank account to the app. From there, the app helps you track your income and expenses. Also you can set yourself some saving goals to motivate you into saving more. Plus, PocketGuard gives you alternative options for the services you use. For example, it can offer you a better deal on your phone service. You can track your subscriptions with this app as well, so if you don’t use your Netflix account, it might remind you to cancel your subscription there.
You don’t need to pay anything to use most of the features of PocketGuard. If you want to access the full roster of features, you can pay either $7.99 per month, $79.99 per year, or $99.99 for a lifetime membership. The only negatives about this app are that the website is a little bit confusing, and you have to pay to use some nice features.
Emma
Emma is a great tool for you to track your expenses, set budgets, categorize transactions, and many other things that could help you get a hold of your finances. One of the best things about Emma is that it can suggest to you the areas you can save money on your bills and subscriptions. It also warns you if you go over your limit on one of your budgets. After I started using Emma, I realized that I was spending a lot on subscriptions that I didn’t even use.
There are currently three paid subscriptions for Emma that allow you to access more advanced features than the free version. Emma Plus is available for $4.99, Emma Pro is available for $9.99, and Emma Ultimate will cost you $14.99. My only complaint for Emma is that most of the useful stuff is behind a paywall. The theme is also a little bit childlike for me, but it is easy to use and understand.
To Sum Up:
There you have it. I tried my best to share my experiences in achieving financial well-being. I hope these reviews help you achieve your goals. Remember, achieving financial wellness is not hard but takes determination and planning. It all depends on what you want to achieve. On the other hand, you don’t have to do it all alone. There are a lot of apps and communities about financial well-being. Good luck with your journey, and let me know how it is going.
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