How Technology Can Save You Money: Best Mobile Apps for Financial Fitness

When your budget is tight, saving for your future can be especially difficult. We live in a world where the vast majority of mobile apps are designed to help you spend money, not save it, with simple “one click” checkout experiences. Fortunately, there are a few apps on the market that have actually made it a little bit easier to make saving a priority in your everyday life.

Digit

Put your savings on autopilot with Digit, an app that monitors your daily spending habits and automatically transfers funds from your checking account to your Digit savings account. According to LifeHacker, Digit uses an algorithm to analyze your income, spending habits, upcoming bills and lifestyle and saves accordingly. The app also comes with overdraft protection, so you’ll never go into the negative.

While Digit is a free app, keep in mind that the interest you earn on savings is lower than your current savings account. So, if Digit is the difference between saving and not saving, go ahead and download the app. If you are able to set up automatic monthly transfers from your checking to your savings account through your bank, you will ultimately be better off financially.

Acorns

Think you don’t earn enough money to invest in the stock market? Think again. The Acorns app is an automated investment service that redirects your spare change into an investment portfolio. Here's how it works: Acorns connects with your credit and debit cards well as your bank account. Let’s say you you use your debit card to purchase a coffee at Starbucks for $3.67, Acorns rounds up to the nearest dollar, withdraws the 33-cent difference from your bank account and invests the money into low-cost, low-risk investments. With a minimum investment of just five bucks, anyone can start building an investment portfolio right from their phone.

According to Fortune, after launching less than two-and-a-half years ago, Acorns already has 1.5 million customers who have invested $310 million. The app has become wildly popular, especially among a younger generation that prefers to cough up a smaller amount of money on a more frequent basis as opposed to plunking down a larger sum less often. A survey of the app’s customers found that users were significantly more likely to set aside $5 per day rather than $150 per month, even though they'd end up saving the same amount of money either way.

Hipmunk

If you travel frequently, Hipmunk might just be your new best friend. Hipmunk is a travel booking site and mobile app that helps users find the lowest rates on flights and hotels. Although there are already many travel booking sites such as Expedia or Kayak, Hipmunk is different in that it takes the “agony” out of shopping for flights. Hipmunk sacrifices advertising revenue in order to deliver a better user experience and lists flight options not just by price, but also by duration, number of stops/layovers and departure/arrival times.

Best off all, the site works behind-the-scenes long after you’ve closed out of it to search for price changes to recently searched flights or hotels. You’ll receive email notifications any time the price drops on a flight or hotel that you have been searching for. Additionally, Hipmunk remembers your last search so that if you exit out of the page and return the next day, you won’t have to start from scratch.