With the cost of living increasing all over the world, it’s never been more important to get a grip on your finances. For those who might be falling behind a little, it can be tempting to bury your head in the sand, but that certainly isn’t productive.
Use a Money Management App
Nobody can be expected to remember absolutely everything, whether that’s for exams, people’s birthdays, or indeed when all of your direct debits are supposed to be leaving your account. The tech industry realised this and came up with the brilliant idea of money management apps.
There are all kinds of money management apps, from Plum to You Need a Budget and Zeta to Simplifi. All of them work in slightly different ways, so you might find that there’s a format that best suits you. Once you’ve found that format you can expect an app that categorises your outgoings into different groups, meaning that you can see in a simple format where the majority of your expenditures occur. Seeing this information presented in a simple pie chart means that you can clearly visualise where you need to cut back and where you can maybe afford to spend a little more. As well as this, some apps have an investment function, where you can set a budget of what you would like to invest and the app will do that for you. As with all investments, they aren’t guaranteed to make money, but with the app taking a small percentage of whatever you earn, it’s in their best interests to invest wisely.
Dedicate Certain Cards to Certain Things
Many of us manage just fine with one bank card, but there can be benefits to having more than one as long as you’re organised about it, which as we’ve discovered with the help of money management apps can be surprisingly easy. Having a dedicated card that you use for certain things can be really helpful and as long as you’re using debit cards only, there’s no danger of nasty overdraft surprises.
Deciding on which card you use for what ought to be fairly simple, but there are certain items and services that may provide certain benefits depending on the card that you use. For example, some of the best Mastercard casinos in the UK won’t accept American Express and vice versa. Vegas Slots Online has created a list of those casinos accepting Mastercard along with all of their benefits, such as the variety of games available, the bonuses that you can take advantage of and a player star review. If you’ve already allocated your Amex to your hobby expenditure then you might reconsider in this instance. Do a little research before you decide on how you’re going to separate your cards for spending and make sure you’ll be able to benefit from all of the best deals.
Round Up Your Spending
As well as money management apps, there’s another clever tool that can help you to save a little money. Some money management apps offer this tool, but so too do some banking apps. Monzo is a great card provider that was credited with inventing this tool. Every time you spend any money on your Monzo card, the total you spend is rounded up to the nearest whole number. So, if you spend $3.65, your Monzo will round that up to $4 and put the remaining $0.35 into your savings account.
It might not seem like enough of a saving to make a difference, but these tiny amounts soon add up. Think about your own average morning’s card spending. You might buy a morning newspaper at $1.55, a coffee at $2.70 and a ticket for the train to work at $7.35. By the time you’ve got to work you grab a snack from the canteen at $3.15 and another coffee to get you through the morning rush at $2.45. All of us spend differently and yours might be more or less than this, but if you were using the round up feature on any of your banking apps then you would have saved $2.80. If you do that over the course of a month you’d have saved $84 and barely noticed, not to mention the savings you’d make at other times of day too.