In the digital age, nobody likes carrying a lot of cash around – I know I don’t, anyway. This can be especially frustrating when you go to keep track of your expenses, who you owe money to, who you lent some to and just where it all goes over the month.
As always, there are a lot of apps out there to help you do various things with your money. There are apps to figure out how to manage your money, oversee expenses, send money to people, keep track of who owes you, and more.
In this article, I’ll show you some of the applications you can take advantage of to do everything I’ve mentioned here, leaving you free to pick and choose the apps that will make your life easier.
How to Manage Your Money
I’m beginning to learn just how difficult managing your expenses can be. For the most part, I use my debit card tied to my checking account to make purchases. I use it at the grocery store, when I go out to lunch with my coworkers and on the weekend when I’m out exploring the city.
At the end of the month, my bank statement looks pretty ridiculous. All of these small transactions make it difficult to sift through. I still know what everything is, but if I wanted to see where I could be saving some money I wouldn’t know the first place to look.
Sounds like you? Even if it doesn’t, you could still reap the benefits of visually being able to manage your money. These apps make the process a lot easier.
Mint
Mint has been on our radar since back in 2007 when Karl wrote about it. Plain and simple, if there is one app I want you to keep in mind it’s this one.
Mint is a free personal finance application that can help you compare your bank accounts, credit cards, CDs, brokerage and 401(k) to the best products out there. It offers a visual representation of your finances and is very easy to set up. Use it to manage your budget, get credit card advice and understand investing.
Here’s a great video showcasing an overview of Mint’s features:
For some helpful tips on how to use Mint, check out Bakari’s article on How To Use Mint To Manage Your Budget & Spendings Online.
Thrive
Thrive (directory app) is also a great application if you’re looking for a simple way to keep track of your spending. With Thrive, you get an overall Financial Health score, which is one number that shows you how financially fit you are. It also shows you scores in other areas and offers you advice on how to make improvements.
Thrive breaks down your spending for you and shows you where you can save. Compare your current budget to last month’s, as well as view a six month average and target budgets to follow.
Texthog
Looking for an even simpler way to track expenses? Texthog (directory app) lets you easily store, organize and access your receipts, expense reports and more via text message, the web, your email, iPhone and even Twitter.
A Texthog free account gives one user the ability to track expenses, view unlimited reports and get budget/bill reminders. Take a photo of your receipts and utilize tags and categories to keep track of everything.
To check out Texthog on your iPhone, you can find the application on iTunes.
Venmo
Speaking of text messages, have you heard of Venmo? Venmo (directory app) is a nice little app that lets you pay and charge friends with your phone. Send and receive secure payments by linking your card to your account. This allows you to settle small loans you give/get by eliminating paper transactions for small amounts of money.
To use Venmo, all you do is create an account. You can then send and receive money to other accounts simply by using text commands in SMS. Accept a “trust” request from your friends and make transactions without having to authorize them by texting a 3 digit code.
This is a pretty solid application that I have been using a lot lately with my friends/coworkers. It’s great for when a bunch of you are out to lunch and not everyone has cash on them. “I’ll just put it on my card and Venmo you all afterwards.”
Owe Me Cash
Owe Me Cash is a nice app I found recently that is also very easy to use. If someone owes you money, you just sign into Owe Me Cash with your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or regular account and tell the app about the debt. The app will send automatic reminders to those that owe you money by phone, text and email, so you can get paid!
This app is more fun than serious, but it doubles as an easy way to keep track of who owes you what. Let the app bug your friends to pay you so you don’t have to do it yourself – it’s a win-win.
Conclusion
With these applications, your finances will never look better. Say goodbye to paper money and change.
What do you think of these money-managing applications? Will you be using any of them?
Image Credit: marema
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Debt Reduction Task Force – a highly diverse group of private individuals – has laid out a comprehensive approach to closing the deficit and slowing the rise in national debt.
They do this through a combination of spending reductions, many though not all of which are excellent and transformational (about 53%) and tax increases, all of which are ill-advised (about 47%). The report’s near silence on Obamacare is noteworthy and unfortunate even to the exclusion of the universally abhorred CLASS Act. Their cuts to defense stand in stark contrast to the first obligation of Government to provide a strong defense of the nation.
The plan they lay out, along with the recently released Bowles-Simpson mark, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap, is yet another attempt to change the calamitous course the federal budget is on today. Kudos to the Task Force Members for furthering the discussion through hard choices, a discussion which should take place in Washington and across the nation over how big our federal government should be, what we expect from it and what we want our taxes to look like.
Transformational:
Most noteworthy, the Task Force has a striking proposal for Medicare to transition to a premium support program. This transformative change would empower Medicare patients with control over both dollars and medical decisions and result in more efficient delivery of quality care than the current system. They would also place strong limits on federal health spending ensuring that Medicare will be an affordable and sustainable program.
Good:
- Freeze and cap discretionary spending – here they could have gone further with actual cuts, though they include an important enforcement mechanism.
- Cut spending on farm subsidies, but again the cuts were too timid.
- Their tax plan sharply reduces top income tax rates and moves from six marginal rates to two. They also repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. They also lower the corporate income tax rate and phase out the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance.
- Strong budget controls, including discretionary spending caps and putting entitlements on explicit long-term budgets.
Lost Opportunity
- On Social Security, they have very modest reforms to Social Security’s finances such as indexing the retirement age for future changes in longevity, reforming the COLA mechanism, slightly moving to more progressive benefits and strengthening benefits for lower income workers. Except for the COLA change, all of their proposed reforms should go much further. Unfortunately, their changes really come about from raising the amount of income subject to payroll taxes to $180,000, which is neither wise nor necessary. This is lost opportunity for strong reforms to fix and improve the program.
Bad
- Like Bowles-Simpson, their tax reform plan is a Trojan horse for large tax hikes through the elimination of nearly all tax expenditures. Moreover, this tax plan contains a large explicit tax hike in the form of a Deficit Reduction Sales Tax at 6.5% that will apply to approximately 75% of personal consumption expenditures including such things as sales of new homes, privately funded healthcare costs, and food. Though the authors of the report take great pains to avoid the term, in reality this is a value added tax, or VAT which, as an additional tax, will not increase national savings or promote stronger growth and be a permanent cash cow for Washington.
- Also, like Bowles-Simpson, they propose cuts to the defense budget. This approach asks the wrong question (How can we cut defense?) instead of the right one: What is required to protect the nation? Defense spending should be made as efficient and cost effective as possible, but savings must be reinvested in defense to make-up for a decade-long hiatus in properly modernizing the force. Cuts to defense now will lead to a hollow and humiliated military much like we had after Vietnam—and rebuilding the military would prove even more costly than maintaining it. Instead, the country needs to provide for defense an average of $720 billion per year (to be adjusted for inflation) for each of the next five fiscal years.
Building the conversation
The Domenici-Rivlin report is the kind of big picture radical approach that needs to be discussed with the American people, as must Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan and the left’s big plan – that is whenever they are willing to discuss their long-term agenda with the public.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
bench craft company rip off secrets
Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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In the digital age, nobody likes carrying a lot of cash around – I know I don’t, anyway. This can be especially frustrating when you go to keep track of your expenses, who you owe money to, who you lent some to and just where it all goes over the month.
As always, there are a lot of apps out there to help you do various things with your money. There are apps to figure out how to manage your money, oversee expenses, send money to people, keep track of who owes you, and more.
In this article, I’ll show you some of the applications you can take advantage of to do everything I’ve mentioned here, leaving you free to pick and choose the apps that will make your life easier.
How to Manage Your Money
I’m beginning to learn just how difficult managing your expenses can be. For the most part, I use my debit card tied to my checking account to make purchases. I use it at the grocery store, when I go out to lunch with my coworkers and on the weekend when I’m out exploring the city.
At the end of the month, my bank statement looks pretty ridiculous. All of these small transactions make it difficult to sift through. I still know what everything is, but if I wanted to see where I could be saving some money I wouldn’t know the first place to look.
Sounds like you? Even if it doesn’t, you could still reap the benefits of visually being able to manage your money. These apps make the process a lot easier.
Mint
Mint has been on our radar since back in 2007 when Karl wrote about it. Plain and simple, if there is one app I want you to keep in mind it’s this one.
Mint is a free personal finance application that can help you compare your bank accounts, credit cards, CDs, brokerage and 401(k) to the best products out there. It offers a visual representation of your finances and is very easy to set up. Use it to manage your budget, get credit card advice and understand investing.
Here’s a great video showcasing an overview of Mint’s features:
For some helpful tips on how to use Mint, check out Bakari’s article on How To Use Mint To Manage Your Budget & Spendings Online.
Thrive
Thrive (directory app) is also a great application if you’re looking for a simple way to keep track of your spending. With Thrive, you get an overall Financial Health score, which is one number that shows you how financially fit you are. It also shows you scores in other areas and offers you advice on how to make improvements.
Thrive breaks down your spending for you and shows you where you can save. Compare your current budget to last month’s, as well as view a six month average and target budgets to follow.
Texthog
Looking for an even simpler way to track expenses? Texthog (directory app) lets you easily store, organize and access your receipts, expense reports and more via text message, the web, your email, iPhone and even Twitter.
A Texthog free account gives one user the ability to track expenses, view unlimited reports and get budget/bill reminders. Take a photo of your receipts and utilize tags and categories to keep track of everything.
To check out Texthog on your iPhone, you can find the application on iTunes.
Venmo
Speaking of text messages, have you heard of Venmo? Venmo (directory app) is a nice little app that lets you pay and charge friends with your phone. Send and receive secure payments by linking your card to your account. This allows you to settle small loans you give/get by eliminating paper transactions for small amounts of money.
To use Venmo, all you do is create an account. You can then send and receive money to other accounts simply by using text commands in SMS. Accept a “trust” request from your friends and make transactions without having to authorize them by texting a 3 digit code.
This is a pretty solid application that I have been using a lot lately with my friends/coworkers. It’s great for when a bunch of you are out to lunch and not everyone has cash on them. “I’ll just put it on my card and Venmo you all afterwards.”
Owe Me Cash
Owe Me Cash is a nice app I found recently that is also very easy to use. If someone owes you money, you just sign into Owe Me Cash with your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or regular account and tell the app about the debt. The app will send automatic reminders to those that owe you money by phone, text and email, so you can get paid!
This app is more fun than serious, but it doubles as an easy way to keep track of who owes you what. Let the app bug your friends to pay you so you don’t have to do it yourself – it’s a win-win.
Conclusion
With these applications, your finances will never look better. Say goodbye to paper money and change.
What do you think of these money-managing applications? Will you be using any of them?
Image Credit: marema
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Debt Reduction Task Force – a highly diverse group of private individuals – has laid out a comprehensive approach to closing the deficit and slowing the rise in national debt.
They do this through a combination of spending reductions, many though not all of which are excellent and transformational (about 53%) and tax increases, all of which are ill-advised (about 47%). The report’s near silence on Obamacare is noteworthy and unfortunate even to the exclusion of the universally abhorred CLASS Act. Their cuts to defense stand in stark contrast to the first obligation of Government to provide a strong defense of the nation.
The plan they lay out, along with the recently released Bowles-Simpson mark, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap, is yet another attempt to change the calamitous course the federal budget is on today. Kudos to the Task Force Members for furthering the discussion through hard choices, a discussion which should take place in Washington and across the nation over how big our federal government should be, what we expect from it and what we want our taxes to look like.
Transformational:
Most noteworthy, the Task Force has a striking proposal for Medicare to transition to a premium support program. This transformative change would empower Medicare patients with control over both dollars and medical decisions and result in more efficient delivery of quality care than the current system. They would also place strong limits on federal health spending ensuring that Medicare will be an affordable and sustainable program.
Good:
- Freeze and cap discretionary spending – here they could have gone further with actual cuts, though they include an important enforcement mechanism.
- Cut spending on farm subsidies, but again the cuts were too timid.
- Their tax plan sharply reduces top income tax rates and moves from six marginal rates to two. They also repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. They also lower the corporate income tax rate and phase out the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance.
- Strong budget controls, including discretionary spending caps and putting entitlements on explicit long-term budgets.
Lost Opportunity
- On Social Security, they have very modest reforms to Social Security’s finances such as indexing the retirement age for future changes in longevity, reforming the COLA mechanism, slightly moving to more progressive benefits and strengthening benefits for lower income workers. Except for the COLA change, all of their proposed reforms should go much further. Unfortunately, their changes really come about from raising the amount of income subject to payroll taxes to $180,000, which is neither wise nor necessary. This is lost opportunity for strong reforms to fix and improve the program.
Bad
- Like Bowles-Simpson, their tax reform plan is a Trojan horse for large tax hikes through the elimination of nearly all tax expenditures. Moreover, this tax plan contains a large explicit tax hike in the form of a Deficit Reduction Sales Tax at 6.5% that will apply to approximately 75% of personal consumption expenditures including such things as sales of new homes, privately funded healthcare costs, and food. Though the authors of the report take great pains to avoid the term, in reality this is a value added tax, or VAT which, as an additional tax, will not increase national savings or promote stronger growth and be a permanent cash cow for Washington.
- Also, like Bowles-Simpson, they propose cuts to the defense budget. This approach asks the wrong question (How can we cut defense?) instead of the right one: What is required to protect the nation? Defense spending should be made as efficient and cost effective as possible, but savings must be reinvested in defense to make-up for a decade-long hiatus in properly modernizing the force. Cuts to defense now will lead to a hollow and humiliated military much like we had after Vietnam—and rebuilding the military would prove even more costly than maintaining it. Instead, the country needs to provide for defense an average of $720 billion per year (to be adjusted for inflation) for each of the next five fiscal years.
Building the conversation
The Domenici-Rivlin report is the kind of big picture radical approach that needs to be discussed with the American people, as must Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan and the left’s big plan – that is whenever they are willing to discuss their long-term agenda with the public.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 7 <b>...</b>
Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Goldman Sachs yesterday denied that a fall in Chinese domestic stocks last month was linked to one of its research ...
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>
Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...
Carnahan Camp To Fox <b>News</b>: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker
Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.
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In the digital age, nobody likes carrying a lot of cash around – I know I don’t, anyway. This can be especially frustrating when you go to keep track of your expenses, who you owe money to, who you lent some to and just where it all goes over the month.
As always, there are a lot of apps out there to help you do various things with your money. There are apps to figure out how to manage your money, oversee expenses, send money to people, keep track of who owes you, and more.
In this article, I’ll show you some of the applications you can take advantage of to do everything I’ve mentioned here, leaving you free to pick and choose the apps that will make your life easier.
How to Manage Your Money
I’m beginning to learn just how difficult managing your expenses can be. For the most part, I use my debit card tied to my checking account to make purchases. I use it at the grocery store, when I go out to lunch with my coworkers and on the weekend when I’m out exploring the city.
At the end of the month, my bank statement looks pretty ridiculous. All of these small transactions make it difficult to sift through. I still know what everything is, but if I wanted to see where I could be saving some money I wouldn’t know the first place to look.
Sounds like you? Even if it doesn’t, you could still reap the benefits of visually being able to manage your money. These apps make the process a lot easier.
Mint
Mint has been on our radar since back in 2007 when Karl wrote about it. Plain and simple, if there is one app I want you to keep in mind it’s this one.
Mint is a free personal finance application that can help you compare your bank accounts, credit cards, CDs, brokerage and 401(k) to the best products out there. It offers a visual representation of your finances and is very easy to set up. Use it to manage your budget, get credit card advice and understand investing.
Here’s a great video showcasing an overview of Mint’s features:
For some helpful tips on how to use Mint, check out Bakari’s article on How To Use Mint To Manage Your Budget & Spendings Online.
Thrive
Thrive (directory app) is also a great application if you’re looking for a simple way to keep track of your spending. With Thrive, you get an overall Financial Health score, which is one number that shows you how financially fit you are. It also shows you scores in other areas and offers you advice on how to make improvements.
Thrive breaks down your spending for you and shows you where you can save. Compare your current budget to last month’s, as well as view a six month average and target budgets to follow.
Texthog
Looking for an even simpler way to track expenses? Texthog (directory app) lets you easily store, organize and access your receipts, expense reports and more via text message, the web, your email, iPhone and even Twitter.
A Texthog free account gives one user the ability to track expenses, view unlimited reports and get budget/bill reminders. Take a photo of your receipts and utilize tags and categories to keep track of everything.
To check out Texthog on your iPhone, you can find the application on iTunes.
Venmo
Speaking of text messages, have you heard of Venmo? Venmo (directory app) is a nice little app that lets you pay and charge friends with your phone. Send and receive secure payments by linking your card to your account. This allows you to settle small loans you give/get by eliminating paper transactions for small amounts of money.
To use Venmo, all you do is create an account. You can then send and receive money to other accounts simply by using text commands in SMS. Accept a “trust” request from your friends and make transactions without having to authorize them by texting a 3 digit code.
This is a pretty solid application that I have been using a lot lately with my friends/coworkers. It’s great for when a bunch of you are out to lunch and not everyone has cash on them. “I’ll just put it on my card and Venmo you all afterwards.”
Owe Me Cash
Owe Me Cash is a nice app I found recently that is also very easy to use. If someone owes you money, you just sign into Owe Me Cash with your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or regular account and tell the app about the debt. The app will send automatic reminders to those that owe you money by phone, text and email, so you can get paid!
This app is more fun than serious, but it doubles as an easy way to keep track of who owes you what. Let the app bug your friends to pay you so you don’t have to do it yourself – it’s a win-win.
Conclusion
With these applications, your finances will never look better. Say goodbye to paper money and change.
What do you think of these money-managing applications? Will you be using any of them?
Image Credit: marema
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Debt Reduction Task Force – a highly diverse group of private individuals – has laid out a comprehensive approach to closing the deficit and slowing the rise in national debt.
They do this through a combination of spending reductions, many though not all of which are excellent and transformational (about 53%) and tax increases, all of which are ill-advised (about 47%). The report’s near silence on Obamacare is noteworthy and unfortunate even to the exclusion of the universally abhorred CLASS Act. Their cuts to defense stand in stark contrast to the first obligation of Government to provide a strong defense of the nation.
The plan they lay out, along with the recently released Bowles-Simpson mark, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap, is yet another attempt to change the calamitous course the federal budget is on today. Kudos to the Task Force Members for furthering the discussion through hard choices, a discussion which should take place in Washington and across the nation over how big our federal government should be, what we expect from it and what we want our taxes to look like.
Transformational:
Most noteworthy, the Task Force has a striking proposal for Medicare to transition to a premium support program. This transformative change would empower Medicare patients with control over both dollars and medical decisions and result in more efficient delivery of quality care than the current system. They would also place strong limits on federal health spending ensuring that Medicare will be an affordable and sustainable program.
Good:
- Freeze and cap discretionary spending – here they could have gone further with actual cuts, though they include an important enforcement mechanism.
- Cut spending on farm subsidies, but again the cuts were too timid.
- Their tax plan sharply reduces top income tax rates and moves from six marginal rates to two. They also repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. They also lower the corporate income tax rate and phase out the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance.
- Strong budget controls, including discretionary spending caps and putting entitlements on explicit long-term budgets.
Lost Opportunity
- On Social Security, they have very modest reforms to Social Security’s finances such as indexing the retirement age for future changes in longevity, reforming the COLA mechanism, slightly moving to more progressive benefits and strengthening benefits for lower income workers. Except for the COLA change, all of their proposed reforms should go much further. Unfortunately, their changes really come about from raising the amount of income subject to payroll taxes to $180,000, which is neither wise nor necessary. This is lost opportunity for strong reforms to fix and improve the program.
Bad
- Like Bowles-Simpson, their tax reform plan is a Trojan horse for large tax hikes through the elimination of nearly all tax expenditures. Moreover, this tax plan contains a large explicit tax hike in the form of a Deficit Reduction Sales Tax at 6.5% that will apply to approximately 75% of personal consumption expenditures including such things as sales of new homes, privately funded healthcare costs, and food. Though the authors of the report take great pains to avoid the term, in reality this is a value added tax, or VAT which, as an additional tax, will not increase national savings or promote stronger growth and be a permanent cash cow for Washington.
- Also, like Bowles-Simpson, they propose cuts to the defense budget. This approach asks the wrong question (How can we cut defense?) instead of the right one: What is required to protect the nation? Defense spending should be made as efficient and cost effective as possible, but savings must be reinvested in defense to make-up for a decade-long hiatus in properly modernizing the force. Cuts to defense now will lead to a hollow and humiliated military much like we had after Vietnam—and rebuilding the military would prove even more costly than maintaining it. Instead, the country needs to provide for defense an average of $720 billion per year (to be adjusted for inflation) for each of the next five fiscal years.
Building the conversation
The Domenici-Rivlin report is the kind of big picture radical approach that needs to be discussed with the American people, as must Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan and the left’s big plan – that is whenever they are willing to discuss their long-term agenda with the public.
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