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Yes, budgeting can be easy… And fun!
Consistent budgeting is the foundation of any successful personal finance strategy, and it’s never been easier to create and follow a personal budget in this era of apps.
Gone are the days of graph paper or Excel spreadsheets. Today’s apps let you quickly make a budget, visualize your financial progress and automate many steps of the budgeting process.
There are numerous personal finance budgeting apps for all sorts of nuanced uses. Here are our favorite ones for these though times.
1) Stash
With the market heading down, don't you wish you could buy some of your favorite stocks like Google Tesla?
I sure do!
But for some, it’s not exactly easy to shell out $500 to $100 on one share of stock.
There’s a new micro-investing app you can invest as little as $5 with no fee until you’ve funded more than $5,000. The fee, at that point, is a fair and minimal monthly subscription fee starting at $1.
So what’s it called?
It’s called Stash and it helps first-time investors get their feet wet in the stock market.
How? You can simply buy fractional shares of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or individual stocks.
It’s a total game changer.
You can check it out by downloading it here now.
2) Earnin
With everything going on, most of us are stuck at home trying to avoid the Coronavirus.
While it might be nice to be home on a weekday, being home for a lot of us means no work, and with no work comes no cash.
For others that are working, this current environment might really increase the need to get paid faster instead of waiting for your employer to pay you.
That seems silly right?
You put in the hours of work already, so why not just get paid right away?
Well good news -- thanks to Earnin you can, and for 100% free.
Earnin allows you to get paid as soon as you leave work.
To use the app before payday, all you have to do is connect your bank account and add your employment info to help Earnin recognize your pay schedule.
Once you’ve done that, add your earnings in the app. You can do this by sending Earnin your electronic timesheet or add your earnings automatically via the Automagic Earnings feature.
3) Mint
Mint is even more specifically focused on budgeting.
You won’t find any fancy stock-back incentives here, but it makes the basics of creating and following a budget extremely simple.
On a macro level, you can quickly see your financial position across accounts and can set up savings goals.
On a micro level, Mint offers easy-to-create budgets, automates the monitoring, and provides bill reminders and low funds alerts. That can help minimize costly mistakes such as overdraft fees.
Mint is great at tracking income and expenses. It’s particularly good if you have trouble remembering your bill due dates or the balance in our bank account.
Mint is one of the most well-known budgeting platforms, and it’s used by millions of people. For tracking your income and expenses, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better option.
4) Wealthfront
One of the most important aspects of budgeting?
Having a high interest paying account to bring in some extra income.
What if we told you there was one provider paying 14x more than the national average?
We’re dead serious. 14x more.
You probably have a checking or savings account, right?
You probably also don’t get paid anything to have your cash sit there, right?
That’s all about to change. Meet Wealthfront, a new online banking company that pays 14x more interest than a regular bank.
The average interest rate nationwide on various checking and savings accounts is .09%.
.09% That’s not a typo.
As of now, Wealthfront pays out 1.24% on its accounts.1
How do they do it? It’s actually super simple.
The US Treasury offers different types of bonds, with dates ranging from short-term to long term (30 years).
Rates on these bonds can range from close to 0% up to 2%.
Wealthfront is simply giving those returns to its clients, whereas regular banks are keeping the profits for themselves!
And guess what? It’s totally free to open an account.
5) Fiona
What’s another important aspect of budgeting?
Lowering your monthly interest payments as much as possible. This is especially important when it comes to credit card debt and the high interest rates they are.
The solution? Consolidating your credit card debt.
Why do you want to consolidate your credit card debt? Well if you do it right, it will bring you immediate relief and could save you thousands of dollars in future high-yield interest payments.
So how about a personal loan for as low as 3.84% APR?
If you're looking to consolidate your credit card debt, I found a new tool that helps find the lowest rates on the market. They don't charge you a fee and it won't hurt your credit.
It's called Fiona and I was really impressed by their revolutionary model putting you, the customer, first!
You see, in the past, you would need a high-interest personal loan to pay off your credit card debt. In order to receive one, you would have to pay to submit an application that may or may not be accepted by the lenders.
To make matters worse, your credit score would take a hit because all of these lenders would be checking it to see if you were eligible.
Fiona saw this problem and completely transformed the personal lending space by pairing consumers with high quality lenders who most directly meet their needs at no additional cost.
Want to pay off your credit card debt today? Find the best lender to help you now with Fiona.
1APY is subject to change with market conditions and variable interest rates.
Reclaim Up to $610/Year in Car Insurance
Here’s the thing: your current car insurance company is probably overcharging you. But, who has the time to look around for around a new company?
A website called CarInsurance.net makes it super easy to see if you’re getting the lowest price. All you have to do is enter your ZIP code and your age, and it’ll show you your options.
Using CarInsurance.net, people have saved up to $610 a year.
It takes just a few minutes to see how much CarInsurance.net could put back in your pocket. And the best part? Because we’re driving less, some insurers are slashing prices this month.
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