Managing personal finances appropriately becomes one of the important things in our fast-paced world to secure and prosper in future.
On the convenient side, technological advancements have made following up on expenses, budgeting, and financial goal attainment as easy as possible.
In this post, we’ll cover ten Personal Finance Management Skills and finance apps that will be just perfect to change the way you’ve managed your money and give you a way to control your financial future.
Personal Finance Management Skills
These Are The 10 Personal Finance Management Skills You Must Have!
While using these apps, personal finance management entails making financial decisions responsibly and effectively regarding income, expenses, savings, investments, and debts to achieve financial targets and secure financial well-being.
It encompasses a broad range of financial behaviours, including the ability to make sound financial decisions about spending, saving, investing, and borrowing. The goal of achieving sound financial stability, security, and growth is aligned with this. Explore how to achieve long-term financial security.
Key aspects of personal finance management include:
1. Budgeting
Budgeting is one of the major pillars of personal financial education and training. It includes creating a budget that shows where the earnings will be used, such as for housing, transport, utility bills, food, entertainment, and savings.
The items’ budgets can be identified with the help of the means of showing how much your money is spent and by
comparing this amount to how much is spent on each item. This way you can reduce costs in some areas and use the freed-up resources to meet the needs for each item more effectively.
2. Saving
Saving should be the key element of building an emergency fund, saving for short-term goals and preparing for long-term financial (e.g., retirement) needs.
Useful saving tactics include saving a part of money monthly, automatically transferring it into savings accounts, and the
ranking among the saving goals to decide how urgent and important it is.
3. Investing
Investing is a process of putting money into assets like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate or retirement accounts, with anticipation of a profit in the future.
Investing is one of the ways to increase people’s wealth, outpace inflation in the long run and achieve long-term investing goals such as retirement or educational funding.
Knowing and carefully considering risk tolerance, investment objectives, and time horizon is essential before making investment decisions.
4. Debt Management
Debt can be an efficient financial instrument for acquiring a home, a vehicle, or education, but it can become a liability if used carelessly.
Proper debt management includes reviewing the terms and conditions of loans, avoiding high-interest debts, making timely payments and, as a result, paying off debts methodically.
5. Financial Planning
Personal financial planning is about setting specific, measurable financial goals and creating ways to accomplish them. It may include goals like buying a home, debt freeing, saving for college and planning a comfortable retirement.
Financial planning encompasses creating strategies necessary for financial assessment, identifying obstacles and risks, and readjusting plans in the light of new circumstances.
6. Risk Management
Risk management encompasses protecting yourself and your assets against any misfortunate events which might interrupt one’s financial stability like illness, disability, death or property damage.
Risk management could comprise acquiring insurance policies, e.g. health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance or home-owners/renters insurance to guard against financial risks.
7. Tax Planning
Tax planning is the activity that is supposed to optimize the tax situation to help reduce tax liabilities and increase tax savings. Therefore, it entails active participation and the use of tax-favoured retirement accounts, deductions of eligible expenditures and time-intelligent timing of income and deductions.
Finance Apps
Here are ten free money management apps that can help you automate your personal finance management needs
- Mint
Mint is a comprehensive personal finance app that supports the following features: expense tracking, budgeting tools, bill reminders, and credit score monitoring.
Mint users can gain insights into their spending habits, set financial goals, and track their progress over time. The app also provides personalized recommendations for saving money and reducing unnecessary expenses.
2. YNAB (You Need a Budget)
YNAB is a popular budgeting app that follows the philosophy of giving every dollar a job. Users can create custom budgets based on their income and expenses, allocate funds to different categories, and track their spending in real time.
YNAB also offers educational resources and support to help users develop healthy financial habits and achieve their goals.
3. Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a comprehensive wealth management app that offers budgeting tools, investment tracking, retirement planning, and wealth management.
Personal Capital, users can link their bank, investment, and retirement accounts to get a holistic view of their finances. The app also provides personalized investment advice and recommendations based on users’ financial goals and risk tolerance
4. PocketGuard
PocketGuard is a budgeting app that helps users track their spending, optimize their budgets, and save money effortlessly. The app syncs with users’ bank accounts and credit cards to automatically categorize transactions and identify opportunities for saving. PocketGuard offers personalized tips and advice for reducing expenses and achieving financial goals.
5. Acorns
Acorns is an investment app that helps users grow their wealth by investing spare change from everyday purchases. The app rounds up users’ debit and credit card transactions to the nearest dollar and invests the spare change in a diversified portfolio of ETFs.
Acorns also offers additional investment options, such as recurring contributions and retirement accounts, to help
users build wealth over time.
6. Robinhood
Robinhood is a commission-free investing app that allows users to buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrencies without paying any fees.
Robinhood users can easily build a diversified investment portfolio, track market trends, and trade easily. The app also offers educational resources and insights to help users make informed investment decisions.
7. Tiller Money
Tiller Money is a personal finance app that supports customizable spreadsheets and templates for tracking expenses, budgeting, and financial planning.
Users can link their bank accounts and credit cards to automatically import transaction data into their spreadsheets, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
Tiller Money also offers advanced features such as cash flow forecasting and net worth tracking to help users gain deeper insights into their finances.
8. Chime
Chime is a mobile banking app that offers fee-free checking and savings accounts, and debit card services with rewards. With Chime, users can get paid up to two days early with direct deposit, save money automatically with round-up savings, and track their spending in real-time with instant transaction alerts.
The app also supports financial tools and resources to help users manage their money effectively.
9. Goodbudget
Goodbudget is a budgeting app based on the envelope budgeting method, which involves allocating funds to different categories and spending only what is available in each envelope.
Users can create custom envelopes for expenses such as groceries, entertainment, and transportation, and track their spending against their budget in real-time.
Goodbudget also offers tools for setting financial goals, tracking progress, and sharing budgets with family members or partners.
10. Credit Karma
Credit Karma is a personal finance app that offers free credit monitoring, credit scores, and credit reports. With Credit Karma, users can track their credit scores and receive personalized recommendations for improving their credit health.
The app also offers tools for monitoring identity theft, disputing errors on credit reports, and exploring personalized financial product recommendations.
Thanks to the abundance of finance apps available nowadays, handling money is as easy and convenient. Whether you need one to keep track of expenses, get the most out of your budget, invest rationally, or monitor your credit score, there is one finance app to get the job done properly.
Build on the power of technology and applications in the top 10 list and you can find yourself achieving your financial goals and heading for a brighter future.