Welcome together, we're gonna explore our personal finances and figure out how to improve them. Whether you're just getting started in life on your finances, or you may already have a home and a car payment and you're struggling to get credit cards under control, or you're getting in a later start in life on saving for retirement, Reducedebtincreasewealth.com is a podcast, educate those to improve personal finances, whether it's eliminating debt, or making smart investments. Mister Chuck here, this episode on talk about personal finance plan, we're going to do review or review of reduced debt plan. Then I'm going to look at what to look for in a budget app. And that's an application For budgeting purposes, review different types of apps and then I'm going to go over a summary. So that's what this episode is going to be about this week. personal financial plan is a plan where you say your short term goals, which is one to six months of what you need to save money for or to achieve in your financial life. And you set your mid term goals, which is why I think is around one year to five year plan, where you're saving money to achieve something within that time period. And then a long term goal which is typically savings for your retirement or savings for your younger children's education. The farther out the goal is, the less money you can save because you can achieve more through capital gains and Investing compound interest or if you're got long term goals such as retirement, it should be invested in the stock market based on your risk level. Also included in your personal financial plan should be some type of a budget. Next week I'm going to go over the different types of budgets, there are actually seven types of budgets you can use. And we're going to do an episode on the different types of budget next week. So if you don't have a budget, you probably don't have a personal financial plan. It's pretty much that simple. Setting up a budget creating a budget, following a budget, so that you can set aside money to achieve your different goals at different level. Remember, the shorter timeframe you had to achieve a goal the more money you need to place into that category and then Just a category can put all your money into one account, one savings account, using a savings account for your short term goals and your midterm goals, and use maybe investments, such as in mutual funds, stocks or whatever, for your long term goals. And if you have more than $10,000 in investments, you most likely should have a financial planner or financial advisor. They're the same thing. And they will help you make investments based on your risk tolerance and your goals that you're trying to achieve. So you can get there. That's a nutshell what a financial plan should be made up. And within your financial your personal financial plan. You can have a reduced debt plan, which you get more extreme on your budgeting and your main goal is to Reduce your debt and get rid of that. Remember, some debt is considered okay such as a mortgage for your home debt to buy at least one car or two cars depending on your situation. And we covered all those things in previous episodes. So if you have not listened to previous episodes, you can go back and listen to them. I have a couple of them about setting up budgets. I got a couple of them about debt reduction plans and how much you should spend on certain categories within the budget. This your first episode that you're listening to, you need to go back and listen some previous episodes so you can get a full update. budgeting is such an important part of your personal financial plan and your reduced debt plan. You know, he can have a budget you can do it on paper, you can do a spreadsheet on your computer instead. up a budget. You can have a budget on your heart on your computer at home. But I think the best thing to do is have a application that you carry with you at all times an application that you load into your smartphone, and you can set up whatever you need to set up your income, set up your expenses, and keep track of what you're spending while you're spending it. In the past I've had I personally use Quicken for my check register and within Quicken, they do have a budget plan. This was a few years ago, maybe 10 years plus ago. I did try to set up a budget using Quicken one it was on my hard drive on my computer at home. I did not carry it around with me and it didn't go through Through my check, register and do any categories, it didn't look for any numbers. I had to do all that manually and try to figure out different categories and how much to put in the categories. And of course, at the end of the month, it was say I overspent I overspent I overspent I overspent because I didn't put enough in those budget categories for what I actually need it so it says utilities. I, you know, very little control over utilities. But I made a gas I looked back, you know, maybe one month and added it up, maybe missed something such as TV, cable or something like that. So I overspent. So I've always thought that that was pretty useless. Getting in a program that tells you you overspent your budget. After you do it. What good is that? That's my personal opinion. So I figure if you have an application that's loaded on your screen, smartphone, and you use it every day. And you put in the data every day, every time you spend stuff, then it makes life easier. You can see where you're standing on your budget. And when you get towards the end of the month, you know that you're getting close to overspending in a certain category. Now, that doesn't mean you're doing anything bad. That is maybe you underestimated what you need it. So it's an continuing update of the dollar amounts until you get it perfected. So that now a Dan each month, yeah, if I put in 10% of my net income into savings, I know that it can stay there and I don't have to bring it out of savings to pay some bills that I forgot about. Because you have all that information in your app. You can do the same thing manually. It's just more time consuming. So an app most everybody nowadays has a smartphone. So having a budgeting app on your smartphone makes a life much easier. So now let's start and review some of these different apps. Now a quick word from my sponsor isotonic. isotonic is a vitamin. It's a way you take a vitamin it's how your body is built to take vitamins with isotonix, rapidly absorbed by the body highly concentrated of vitamins and minerals and maximum results. I've been taking isotonix vitamins for the last six years and I rarely get sick. I highly recommend taking isotonix vitamins. With standard tablets you have minimal assumption and diluted nutrients. I take the daily essential kit which is all the daily essential vitamins that you need for your body on a daily basis. Go to my website, reduce that increase wealth.com upper right hand corner, click on the heart, go to the website. Let us show you the future of vitamins. The first article, or apps I'm going to talk about is coming from forbes.com. The best budgeting apps in 2020. You can find a link to this article in my show notes and you can find all the article links in my show notes. Also, if you want to read the transcript, I have a transcript with my my website also. So let's go through I've reviewed many of these articles. And they all come down to about the same two or three or four budgeting apps. So we're going to cover that Start out the first one personal capital is best for advanced users who want to track advanced investments network and cash flow, which most people probably don't want to do. A personal capitals free financial dashboard offers a wealth of tools to track your finances. We like his budgeting tool because it automatically tracks all your income and expenses. Well, that's a good thing automatically can't get any easier than that. It separates expenses into spending categories, and provides graphical tools to see where your money is going. Beyond cash flow. Personal capital also attracts all your investments. Once you link your retirement and other investments account, he can see your asset allocation and analyze the expense ratios of your mutual friends and FTS. This tool includes a retirement planning tool that you can customize your specific circumstances. With the tools you can track your network, see upcoming bills, get a snapshot of your budget, review your asset allocation and evaluate your current portfolio. So if you don't have any investment, it's probably not the app for you. That, like I said, is for more advanced users, and not somebody younger and just getting started. The second app is meant and it's best for finance newbies, which would be the younger generation. Perhaps the most well known mint allows users to create budget track bills and receive a free credit score. But it's the budgeting feature remit shines the most, and asks you to link your bank loan and credit card accounts, then uses this information from those accounts to suggest budgets. for you based on your spending, classifying them into categories such as entertainment, food and dining and shopping, the best part, you'll be able to see how much you can say by cutting back your spending in a category. At the end of August meant announced the app refreshed with data driven meant sites. Again, using your actual financial information. Many sites will provide personalized recommendations from creating a first budget to debt consolidation to how to grow your investment. Fortunately, meant discontinue its build pay option in June, so users are unable to pay their bills through mint. However, they can still add their bills, track the due dates and the amounts and Mark bills as paid. Unlike other apps Mint is free to use, but it makes money by suggesting offers to As users that says new credit cards, or other investing apps, so Mint is free to use, it sounds like a pretty good one because it does all the work for you. It'll create your budget for you, and you can see what's going on. That's a, that's a good thing can't get any easier than that you have, you're gonna have to put up with some advertising, which for free, I think I could do that. And again, you still got to pay your bills, online through your checking account. And then you got to enter the information and met or if you connect through your financial institution, and when you pay the bills, it'll download directly into Matt and update and you can see what's going on. So that's good because as you go through the month, and you connect through, you know, keep updating your financial information from your credit cards, your bank account You can see what's going on. And you can make adjustments to your spending. Like if you say you got food and dining and you go out to eat two times a week, but for some reason you're going out five times a week. It will show you that you're maybe overspending and you can cut back and go back and eat at home instead of going out. Unless there's a major reason why you're doing it. Okay, the next one is why nav with you need a budget. So what that stands for best for visual learners. So if you learn by looking and seeing things, it's the app for you. aptly called you need a budget to service asked users to give every dollar a job. First, users are asked to set a budget goal such as vacation or education expense. Then they fund their goal by linking it to a personal account, checking savings, cash, credit card or line of credit. You choose to link your account your bouncer automatically import it into the why and AB that manager. Well that sounds good. Kind of does it for you. Now, when they say give every dollar a job, that's zero based budgeting, which means you have your income and you assign your every dollar to something, rent, utilities car payment, that credit card payments. Whatever you have leftover you need to assign to a savings account so that the end of the month it always ends up at zero. If you go negative that means you overspent. Finally, users are asked to create categories think dining out groceries or transportation and allocate a certain amount of money towards eats so that they aren't overspending and are saving for that vacation or tuition bill. The service claims that it saves new budgeters six hundred dollars a month and more than 6000 the first year. The only downside after a 34 day free trout YNAB charges 6.99 a month billed annually at $83.99. So that is not a free app. So keep that in mind. Albert, best for people who want to set it and forget it. Diane for an app that takes the math out of budgeting Albert would be the best choice for you. After connecting your financial accounts to the app. Albert analyzes your income spending budget and overall financial health. It use proprietary algorithms to decide how much you can safely save each month, then automatically transfer that money into Albert savings, which lives directly on the app. I don't know if I'd like that we're there. Fortunately, they use their savings account. Their bank because how much that savings counts pay, it may not pay anything like your local bank. So if it's not going to pay anything, why you put money in there, you can just use your local bank that you already have for your emergency fund. Why set up another one. These transfers occur up to two or three times per week and range from $5 to $30 per transfer. Funds held in your Albert savings account are FDIC insured up to a balance of 250,000. If you prefer to have more hands on approach with your savings, he can ask Albert to set aside a specific amount each week. The funds can be withdrawn at any time with no fees. If it's an FDIC savings account, you're limited to six withdrawals a month so beware it's not saying that in this article, but that's the federal f di C. regulations and rules no more than Then six withdrawals a month and if you do, you'll be penalized. New to the platform is Albert genius I paid premium service. Albert asked users to pay what they think is fair for genius, but I suggest a minimum of $4 a month and says most user pay $6 a month. The service allows users to text money questions to average human financial experts at any time, such as Should I buy or lease a car? Or what's the cheapest mover in LA elver also use a small rewards for saving money. The apps pays a bonus of one dollars for every hundred dollars, our genius subscribers save over the course of a year and a bonus of 25 cents for every 100 non Albert genius. Subscribers say that's like nothing special if they're not paying you any interest. So the downside was Albert is there going to force you to use her savings account? I don't Like that, and then they're going to charge you if you want their premium service you got it. It's not free. Clarity money, best for one of the quarter subscription cutters. Clarity money offers a wide range of features that benefit buggers and savers alike. Similar to other apps. Clarity money requires users to link their financial accounts checking savings, credit card investments or loans. The app it mainly creates a pie chart, displaying your finances and showing where you were spent. It will identify your recurring expenses such as Netflix account, or gym memberships, and track prices increases or reduction. The big draw is that it helps cancel unwanted accounts that are a drain on user wallets. If you've been following my podcast, you probably already went through and did a list he did a manually you He should have already done all that. If you're just getting started, well, I guess this app will do it for you. Like Albert clarity money savings allow users to transfer and save money in a non interest bearing FDIC insured account, which selects how much and how often they want to say, users able to access for free vantages to work credit from experience. One thing to note, Marcus, a brain of Goldman Sachs required acquired clarity money in April. The app is still free to use but it will be integrated into Marcus was offers no fee, fixed rate personal loans and high yield savings account. I don't like the no interest savings. That's not a good thing. Maybe he should wait until it's integrated into Marcus which you can then get a high yield savings. But I'm sure there's limits and fees involved with that also. So unless you have a lot of subscriptions, you don't know how to get rid of them. I wouldn't use that particular app. Good budget. Best for envelope system purist. So if you budget using the envelope system where you put cash and separate envelopes for certain things, then this would be the app for instead of using a physical envelope and actually putting cash in it, this budget uses that concept and pretty much does the same thing. The concept is simple, good budget takes your monthly income, and allows you to put aside portion of it into different envelopes for categories like groceries or transportation. As the month goes on, you can take money out of each envelope for each expense. stop spending in that category once you empty the envelope or before if you're smart. Good budget takes away the hassle of actually putting cash in paper envelopes and instead allows you to track your spending online or in its app. And personally I would use the app so you can see At around with you. Or you can do online. Or maybe you can do both. You can either opt for the free plan or the plus plan for $6 a month or $50 a year. With the free plan user gets 10 regular and 10 annual envelopes. Plus plan user has unlimited envelopes, and access to email support. Well, this app is great for those who like to see a breakdown where the money is going. It takes discipline to use the app successfully. There are no fancy article rooms showing you how much to say but it does help you gain control of your money. So if that you know that method is what you'd like to do, then that would be a good app for you. I don't particularly like it. And this is the article was written by Kristin Stoller, a Forbes, staff advisor. So let's go on to the next article. I got like three of these may not read them all. This is from the balanced calm best budgeting apps of 2020. I'm not going to read what they are what the details meant Best Overall, we recovered that pocket guard. best to keep from overspending. You need a budget best for eight type personalities. Wally. That's for just beginning. And m envelopes. That's for cash, cow budgeting. Good budget. That's for couples. Simple, best app tied to a bank account and personal capital best for investors. couple different ones in there Wally and Simple. Simple. When I read through it seemed like a very good budgeting app. The only downside is you have to have a checking account with Simple bank example is more than a budgeting app. It's an online bank account that replaces your old checking account that has a ton of useful budgeting features built in. When your budget and your bank lives in the same app, it's much easier to manage and keep everything under control, because you only have one place to visit to view and manage your money. So if you don't mind changing banks, this may be a good thing to do. Simple tracks your income and spending automatically and goal features to motivate your savings is trademark it's safe to spend feature tells you if you're on your budgeting track or effectors spending might derail your plans with no fees is very cool all in one banking and budgeting app. The problem is if you have to change your checking account and you got direct deposit, for your income coming from work, it's going to take some doing, you'd have to take set aside some money and set up the simple checking account first. Once that's done, contact human resource through work. Give them the information that you want direct deposit done to this checking account. If you have your some of your expenses, automatic set up the paid out of your old checking account, you got to stop that and then start it. So you got to wait through some money and the simple account, then you got to set up automatic payments and the simple checking account and hopefully have enough money in your checking account where it doesn't flow through and cause an overdraft. So you need to leave your savings set there as an emergency fund as you take your income The posits a way, you want to try to time it so everything ends at the end of the month, and that everything set up at the beginning of a month, at least for the expense part of it, he got to transfer your direct deposits maybe in the middle of the month, so you get some money in your new checking account, then go in and set up the next month payment in advance. So you can see, change it from one checking account to another checking account, when you have direct deposit and automatic payments already set up can be quite a challenge. And it's all based on timing. I want to point that out. Well, this may be good for budgeting to get over there may not be good. But if you don't have a checking account and you're setting up your first checking account, like say for one of your children, it might be a way to go. That way you can set it up get them started right having Have a budgeting app already set in there and get them started on the right track to start with. So it's well looking into and that's simple, simple, and it's tied to a bank. I don't know really know what the bank name is, I think it's called Simple bank. That's all I have about that. And then though the other one that's in here, that was different is Wally, a good budget was good for couples. I don't know what the differences there. I think you can share your budgets together, it can be on more than one app. And Wally is not the easiest app to navigate compared to others on the list, but it works well. For one thing budgeting. This app helps you track your income and expenses. We're offering you a snapshot of your remaining budget to help you avoid overspending. So while it may be good for budgeting, it says it's not the easiest to navigate and might take too Time to learn. You see most popular, the app is free to use and has both iPhone and Android version Android version is called Wally plus. One major benefit of Wally is a built in support for virtually all foreign currency makes it a better option for those who live outside the United States. I don't know how many of you live outside nice states, thinking about budgeting. And the name of this article is from the balance the eight best budgeting apps of 2020. Let's go on to the next article. And all these are in my show notes. This is from money under thirty.com. website, the eight best budgeting apps to take control of your finances. And like they have a little video here about a budget it's only like one minute it's it was pretty good overview Personal capital account about money patrol pockets Smith, Charlie, you need a budget, which recovered meant trim and envelopes, and then a summary and a criteria. So a lot of some new ones. Count about us take a look and see what that's all about personal capital we covered. Count about. If you're looking for a simple user friendly budgeting app count about is one that I definitely recommend, recommend taking a look at. Let me start by saying it's not free. The basic plan is $9.99 cents per year. But you get all basic budgeting app function except automatic downloading a banking credit card and other financial Institute. The premium plan is 39.99 per year and you get all count about services available. And for an additional $60 per year you can have a small budget invoicing capabilities. It's, you know, 9,10 bucks a year is pretty cheap. That's not bad. But I would hop out for the $40 a year premium plan to get all of its features. And why have an app if you can't use all those features. And if you have a small business, you should be using something better than this. Easy use budgeting tools. What I like about count about is it's simple, easy use budgeting app. It quickly syncs up with your financial information from thousands of financial institution, and even enables you to sync your 401 K plan. And updating all this takes place automatically and eliminating the need for time consuming manual entry. The app also enables you to personalize the configuration. This includes copes, customization of each field function and report within the app counted about tracks your bills. It even gives you the ability to approve transaction, though it does not allow you to set up recurring transaction. However, it provides a capability to schedule your payments, and even track outgoing payments. That gives you the ability to create a budget for future months, enabling you to schedule your finances ahead of time. Well, that's good. I like that. Because my number and my debt reduction plan I tell you to project out forward, this app will do that for you how good I don't know that it's a obeah learning curve there but $40 a month it's fairly inexpensive. And it seems to do it updates everything automatically. So you don't have to enter and your checking account or download your checking accounts kind of do it for you. gives us some reports which you can customize and you can project For j can see what your budgets looking like I'd like that feature. So count about. Take a look at that app. Money patrol. Money patrol uses data to help you manage your finances. You get an overview of your spending habits, as well as monitoring your upcoming bills and reoccurring charges. Support with more than 15,000 lenders with support with more than 15,000 financial institutions, you can easily add all your accounts. Once connected money patrol gets worked in monitoring all activity. there's ever an incident that might be concerning. You have alerts to keep you informed. Support supported account types go beyond checking savings. You can track your student loans, business accounts, investments, mortgages and even some types of credit cards or gift cards. budget for the future. Tracking Your spending is only a part of the equation. So, money patrol lets you see the information. You learn to set up a budget and organize your finances. So that's going to help you. How you spend your money today affects your financial future. But it can be tough to see that on a day to day basis. That's where pocket money comes in. Because you get built in financial forecasting. I like testing a few different strategies and watching the graph change. can even test out scenarios. For example, if you skip your morning coffee, and either invest or save that money, see how it will that will pay off six months a year or 10 years down the law. Well, that's a good feature. I don't know how often you use it. But you know, if I say okay, if I quit doing my morning coffee at Starbucks, and I save that money, how much will I have a year or 10 years down the road that you know might give you some motivate motivation to quit getting your coffee at Starbucks. Pocket Smith has three package, I was happy to see that their basic package is free, which is what I have at this point. But if you want to invest a bit more, which I may very well do since I'm a fan already, they have a premium plan for $9 $95 995 a month, or 750 when paid annually. This includes automatic bank feeds and transaction importing their super package include premium features for 1995 a month, less than less when paid annually. A little bit on the expensive side, if you're trying to pay down debt, do you need a $10 a month subscription? I don't know when there's other things out there. You could be using them for free. Link your finances you know does everything, Charlie. All these apps basically work the same way they link So you're checking savings credit cards with loans. And they'll you know, you have to go in and do a download or they do it automatically. Charlie's are free budgeting app, which helps with helpful tools like spending trackers can help you limit how much you spent. And at the expense category. This one actually has a lot of people I don't seem to be talking about. Charlie looks at the entire financial picture. Charlie bills itself as a personal financial management app, but it goes beyond simple budgeting and looks at the entire financial sits Switzer situation has thought and using the app, you interact with Charlie on a regular basis the app syncs your bank and credit card accounts and reviews them then lets you know where you're spending too much. And where you can say they'll provide you with notification when account balances running low or when a payment is coming due. Spend training After, he can use the app to help you get better control your spending offers a spending tracker that calculates your monthly spending patterns, helping you focus on a specific type of spending, and even helps you set limits on how much you can spend and a particular category. That's pretty good to sum everything up. If you're going to be serious about your personal finances, if you're going to be serious about reducing debt, you need to set up a budget. Whether you do it manually or use a spreadsheet on your computer, or have a budgeting app. You gotta use something. These modern budgeting apps nowadays, do a lot of that work for you and makes it much easier. I recommend and I'm not getting paid to say this count about. They have an online resource that you can log into and use Use it if you want to use it on your computer at home, and you have a download an app for your smartphones, so you can use it on the go at it seems to do everything you need it to do. And the feature I like most is you can project forward even if you can only project forward one month that will greatly help you in planning and reduce your spending. So if you see and know that you have a yearly expense coming up semi yearly expanse that you only pay occasionally you'll know it's on its way you can reduce your spending a little bit and be prepared to pay for it so you don't have to take money out of your emergency fund. And that's count about comm is their website, take a look at it and they're not paying me to promote it or anything like that. Just found it through the reviews and I think it may be a good solution for those struggling to create and maintain a budget. That's the end of another episode. I hope you found it useful. And if you'd like to share this episode with your friends, please do so. I'm open for any suggestions for improvement or for information that you would like to talk about in future episodes. You can go to my Facebook page and leave me a message more than glad to comply. To find my Facebook page go to reduce debt increase wealth.com and click on the Facebook icon to go to my Facebook website.