Nowadays it can be very difficult to manage daily finances, if you are thinking of buying a property, it is even harder. Due to the current economic recession, more and more individuals seem to getting deeper in debt. If you wish to avoid that financial black hole, then you’ll need to take care of your income and expenditure pretty quickly.
As well as the traditional financial advisors, there are now a number of iOS apps that offer some expert advice via your smartphones. This article looks at a few and offers you an unbiased opinion.
Mint.com Personal Finance
We start off with a real heavyweight application, this app has won the 2011 Best Online Personal Finance Software Award, and we are suitably impressed! As an iOS app it is very easy to use and has some extremely helpful features onboard. You have a very comprehensive budgeting tool that allows for hundreds of different parameters to be included at your choice. There are a myriad of reporting tools available that can turn your own financial situation into a very professional slide presentation. The beauty of this tool is the fact that it will work for whoever decides to implement it, from a large company, to the least financially astute teenager. It connects to your actual bank account and is already recognised by over 16000 institutions. If your account experiences some unusual activity, you will quickly be in the know thanks to a clever email/sms alert facility. We could talk all day about Mint.com but we’d prefer it if your downloaded it and saw for yourself! One of the best, if not the best financial app that we have ever seen.
Costco Identity Guard
This app will run on your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, you will need iOS 5.0 or later to run it smoothly. The main raison d’etre of Costco Identity Guard is to protect us from those awful online scammers that seem to be increasing in number every single day. You will need to become a member of this organisation but we think that is a very sensible thing to do considering the economic climate nowadays. As well as giving you an up to date credit score from the big 3, you will also receive multiple alerts for all kinds of possible dodgy activity on your credit records. The free application automatically warns you if your credit status has been accessed and it lets you know exactly what has occurred. If a company decide to search your credit history, you will know who they are straight away. The same goes for any credit applications using your details and any changes that take place that affect your credit rating. On top of this you will also be able to read about the latest identity theft methods that have been uncovered. In brief, this tool will keep you up to date with everything regarding your all-important credit details, and we think that you should upload this as soon as possible!
We think that you will agree, both of these free apps are going to give you a big advantage in the war against scammers and misunderstanding your finances!
Today’s co-author is Ryan Smith, works as a financial advisor for Benson Mortgages, a leading firm offering mortgages in Toronto. He’s a tech enthusiast and keeps track of the latest apps that help in planning personal finance.