Managing your money with the help of technology goes much beyond using simple financial apps. Along with tech, there is careful planning involved too. Being on top of your personal finances requires you to try multiple apps and choose the ones that will give you the best 360-degree control. It will offer you great convenience and also potential savings in the form of time and money.
The time that you often end up spending on financial tasks, from budgeting to paying bills and handling taxes, drains you out. It’s understandable as it’s a common occurrence for most of us. Fortunately, there is technology in the form of financial management tools. Here are deeper insights into tech approaches that can simplify your personal finances.
1. Money management phone apps
This is the obvious mention here but an important one. For personal finance tracking, use apps. A good app will help you in tracking spending by linking online payment apps and also the credit/debit cards. There are good finance education apps for you to teach your kids the basics of spending and saving. These apps allow easy transfers and monitoring of purchases.
To use various apps for managing finances, we must ensure that our computer performs optimally. Being a little tech-savvy on your Mac is a life-saver in crucial times. When working on personal finance data, you will notice that essential files are hidden on Mac. The reason is that you will not accidentally delete these files. But at the same time, some non-essential hidden files just eat up your storage space. The system will not show hidden files. But we can view hidden files in macOS and organize them the way we want. You just need to delete the hidden files you do not use and free up storage space. Storage on your Mac is as important as saving money. It might save you the need for extra memory on Mac or buy an external drive to store files. It is also essential for your macOS to run smoothly.
2. Quick view tools
You can make handling personal finance simple by consolidating all accounts through a single platform. The consolidated view could be anything – retirement plans, clubbing various bank accounts, stock holdings, investment accounts, and much more. All things in one place offer a perspective for informed decision-making even when you are short of time and lack ideas.
3. High-yield savings account (a federally insured savings product)
Automatic savings features in high-yield savings accounts help in regular deposits and transfers. This will help you in managing savings without your direct manual intervention. It runs on auto mode so you can sit back and be worry-free about your personal finances. This is not exactly a wealth management app but there is technology that can help you in building wealth easily.
4. Online payment providers
There are a number of apps to make your payment process a real breeze. Various apps like Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, and Apple Cash can be used for secure and instant money exchanges. Using these apps will ensure that you do not need to carry physical wallets. Moving with the trend is important so try one of these apps right away.
5. Expense tracker
Here’s a budget app option to make your life easy. Electronic trackers are highly popular owing to the feature that allows you to automatically categorize and tally spending. With these trackers, you can easily identify the areas for potential cost-cutting.
6. Digital expense manager
Tax is a sensitive matter and often a reason for stress because you put too much focus on it and keep worrying about managing it. For tax-related matters, you can replace the traditional pile of receipts you maintain with a digital expense manager. This tool will help you to organize online copies of tax-deductible and your business expenses. With so much already handled by the tool, your filing will go as smoothly as you can think of.
7. Tax filing websites
The first thing that pops up in our mind when we hear tax is hiring an accountant. The cost involved in the hiring is good enough to make us nervous. Once you have the tech to help you do personal finance forecasts, filing taxes on time is important. When filing income taxes, you should use free IRS tax websites or popular programs like TurboTax and H&R Block. These platforms guide you step-by-step through the entire tax filing process.
Conclusion
Isn’t managing personal finance easy with so much that technology has to offer? There are various apps, online tools, and websites that assist you in some or the other process. And there are integration tools with which you can put everything in one place. Instead of noting down details in a notebook or maintaining a drawer full of bills and receipts, these apps will keep you organized, and save time and money. So from now on, instead of worrying about losses or lack of time to manage personal finances, let technology be your personal assistant that helps you in managing every aspect of your finances.