Technology can be one of the best tools we have to improve our lives. The growth of the fintech industry is evidence that people are turning to technology more and more to help with their finances. I think there are some great tools that can help with your finances and some that really won’t make a difference. Some of the tools I discuss will be obvious and others will be a bit more off the beaten path so to speak to keep it interesting.
These aren’t all the apps/technologies I use in my financial life. That would be far too long of a read for most people. I will discuss some of them in the future when I talk about how I invest and how I track my net worth. I hope you enjoy the read and if you have any questions on how I set these up, leave a comment and I’m happy to help however I can.
Mint
This one might be obvious but I think it is a good place to start. Budgeting is and always has been one of the most important aspects to financial success. However, manually tracking each transaction is tedious and can lead to you missing transactions or eventually getting burnt out. That’s where Mint came in for me.
Mint makes it simple to add your accounts and, once added, it tracks your spending across a wide range of categories. The auto-detection of categories works pretty well but there can be some issues. For example, if you buy groceries somewhere like Walmart it will frequently not catch that as groceries and label it as general “Shopping”. It can then suggest budgets for the various categories of your spending. You can also customize your spending for certain categories to set your budgeting goals. It will show you your historical spending in categories when you go to set it which helps see how likely you are to hit your number.
So what are the ways Mint has helped me save money? The biggest is the ease of entry into budgeting. I tried a standard written budget in the past and could not come anywhere close to sticking to it. With the ease of using Mint I have been able to consistently track my spending and cut back on categories that I need to cut back on.
Furthermore, it has helped me identify one off charges that I had either forgotten about(looking at you Sirius XM from when I purchased my car years ago) or thought I had cancelled. I have caught numerous recurring transactions that I had no need for and was able to cancel.
The other biggest benefit is regarding notifications. Since Mint is tied directly into your accounts it will notify you of upcoming due dates on credit cards. You can connect this to your calendar so you never miss a payment. Now, I do suggest setting up automatic payments on any credit cards but I usually keep mine set at the minimum. This is so that I have to manually go it and pay off the full amount intentionally.
Finally, Mint allows you to compare your categories to others in your area and age range. Now, normally I am not big on comparison but it can be a bit of a gut check on your spending. This is a newer feature that I think needs some work but it has been interesting to see. I think they could improve by telling you how they calculate “Minters like you”. For example, my rent is apparently “More than 45% of Minters like you.” but based on my circle of friends it seems like it is pretty much average. So, room for improvement but still interesting and I’d recommend using the comparison on more discretionary categories like “Shopping”.
Banking Apps
Now this might be a bit of an interesting one. I am sure almost all of my readers have their respective banking apps but I think some of them probably aren’t using them to their fullest extent. The one change that made these apps far more beneficial to me was enabling notifications and configuring them to my liking. The way I discovered this was when I got my American Express Credit Card. It had notifications enabled by default and I would get one each time I used the card. It was eye opening to see how I reacted to those notifications.
This has helped me in a few ways. First and foremost, I think it causes the same kind of mental reaction to using cash. There are studies that show we have more of a reaction to spending to cash than we do with cards. While I think this can help with curbing our spending it can be quite a pain. Especially with the rise of online shopping. I can’t exactly mail in my cash for recurring purchases on Amazon.
The notifications mimic a bit of this cash reaction. Since you’re getting this reminder a few minutes later you’re hit again with the reminder of your spending. Is it a perfect replication? Of course not. It has certainly helped me though and it might help you.
The final benefit of using your banking apps is the ability to see your credit score for free periodically. We do all get a free credit report from all the credit agencies once a year, but if you’re trying to build your credit you might want it more frequently. Most major banking apps will provide you a score from one of the major bureaus once a month. This can help keep track of your progress towards that goal.
YouTube
I went back and forth on including YouTube. Realistically, it is the most responsible for starting me on my financial journey. However, it is also the most precarious. There is a wealth of good information on YouTube but even more garbage. From get rich quick scams, to fake gurus, to day trading classes, there is no lack of terrible information.
Honestly, I was pretty lucky to have a good “bullshit detector” and never fell into these traps. I found mostly good information and motivation for my financial journey. It was incredibly helpful for me to get smaller bits of information more consistently than just reading longer books. I do enjoy reading but since I’m a millennial YouTube is just a constant for me and that made my financial education easier at the beginning. If there is interest I would definitely put together a list of financial YouTube channels that helped me most.
YouTube is great for both generalized videos about financial education but I want to provide a few warnings. Firstly, avoid falling into a negative down spiral. There are A LOT of people on YouTube predicting the next crash or the collapse of the economy and so on. Secondly, be careful with your comparison. There are a lot of YouTube channels where they are multimillionaires and that can be discouraging. Finally, don’t over-consume your media. Whether that be on YouTube or anywhere. It benefits you to be conscious of your consumption. If you want any YouTube recommendations let me know in the comments.
Plex
This is moving into the much less expected forms of technology that have saved me money. For anyone not in the know Plex is a client-server media player. “Ok Chris. What the hell is that and why has it saved you money?” Well my dear reader I will tell you all that and more. Plex is essentially your own personalized Netflix. It allows you to store your own content on one of your computers or servers and access that content from anywhere in the world (for the most part). Now this tool is really what you make of it. I have hoarded a lot of DVDs throughout my life and that allowed me to upload all of them and store them in Plex. Now I can access all my movies and TV shows at the press of the button. Now as a disclosure, this is only intended to be for your personal use and only for content you own.
So how has this saved me money? Mostly it has saved me money on keeping me entertained and never getting that feeling of going and renting something when I think I have it but don’t know where the DVD is. Now I can search for it and know immediately if I have that movie and can watch it. The second is when travelling. Ever since setting up Plex I have never rented a movie on an airplane or in a hotel. I can watch any of my favorite movies at any time on any device and I absolutely love it.
I included this as more of a fun entry to the list. It’s important to have fun with your financial journey and think of ways to keep it interesting. Has this saved me a ton of money? No. But it was a fun project that has benefits outside finance as well.
Summary
Technology can be both a good and bad thing. Arguably, most of us use technology way to much in our day to day lives. I know I do. In fact, I am in the middle of trying to cut down on my screen time.
That doesn’t mean it can’t play a powerful role in our financial journey. Technology is really what you make of it. So I urge everyone to be conscious of how they use it and how it can help them on their financial journey. Consider what can help you budget more effectively, or how to use other technology to cut out other costs.
As always, find what works best for you. It is called personal finance for a reason. We all have different gaps in our knowledge and have different things that motivate us. I encourage you to take some time and think about how you could leverage technology to help your journey.
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