75% of us now use Smart Phones – Android, Windows, Blackberry or iPhones – with wireless and broadband connections to manage our daily routines. Why not make managing your personal finances one of the tasks you manage all the time, not just while sitting at the kitchen table or in your home office!
A Bank in Your Pocket
Deposit Checks by Phone
The first place to start is with your personal banking. Check your bank to see what kind of apps, if any, they support. Most banks allow you to at least check account balances while others give you the option to pay bills, transfer money, accept payments and even deposit checks. A friend of mine was showing off her Citi Bank app which allows her to automatically deposit checks by simply taking a picture of it. How cool is that and, more importantly, how much time, gas and energy does that save when she no longer has to head over to the nearest branch or ATM to do her banking business?
Other Personal Finance Apps
PC Magazine recently published a review of 3 of the best personal finance apps available for iPhone and Android devices.
Mint from Mint.com is available for iOS and Android and allows you to monitor all your accounts in real time – as long as you’re connected to the Internet. You can build and track budgets and it will alert you when you’ve exceeding spending in the categories you establish. Its web based companion site allows you to push your personal financial tracking to even greater depth with account transfers and financial forecasts. Its a minty fresh way to manage your money!
Adaptu Wallet for iPhone is only available for the iOS. It’s free now but will start charging sometime in 2012. Aside from Mint-like features to track spending, Adaptu lets you track loyalty programs (think Airlines, Starbucks and the like), forecast spending and, in general, to act as a mobile wallet through its ability to take and store photos of your important financial docs like insurance cards, business cards and the other financial clutter taking up space in our ‘physical’ wallets.
Pageonce is a personal finance tool with a very slick interface and the capability to perform transactions, like bill payments, right from your phone. It lacks an automatic Paypal interface, a hindrance, but offers the most interesting potential and its intelligent design makes it the easiest to get an at-a-glance snapshot of your current financial status.
Access complete reviews at PC Magazines article: Best Personal Finance Mobile Apps.
