Step 3 Use Apps: 5 Ways to Simplify Your Financial Life

Our personal finances- budget, investments, retirement, insurances, credit, etc.- are one of the leading causes of stress among adults. School systems only recently started offering personal finance courses to high school students within the last 5 years, and it is not yet a leading standard of education throughout the nation. But it is something that every adult must navigate, and it deeply affects our quality of life day to day. This leads to large amounts of confusion, which results in higher taxes, significant loss of potential investment returns, lost cash flows not being put to good use, and even poor credit scores. In the midst of financial confusion, making small changes can have a big impact on your overall financial health. Here are 5 basic steps to simplifying your financial life:

3: Use Apps

Long gone are the days of balancing a check book. Growing up many of us would see our parents write down every expenditure in their checkbook to make sure that the amount they had coming in, was more than the amount they had going out. That. Sounds. Exhausting.

Luckily in today’s world we have power and knowledge at our fingertips. When it comes to monitoring our budget, our investments, our debt etc. there is a wealth of resources on the app stores. I know that each bank, lender, and retirement provider has their own website and app, and many of them are honestly amazing. But there are also a plethora of apps suited to pull all of those together. With one log in you can see your checking, savings, debt, investments, retirement, life insurance, etc. This will give you a much more holistic picture of your financial health. You just sign in to your accounts on the individual app and it will show you everything going on in each one. From there you can monitor and control your budget, track your investment growth, etc.

You will still use your individual account log ins to move money, make trades, make payments etc. But having one place where you can see it all helps you make sure your money is working for you and working together. And again, I can’t emphasize enough the endless beauty of having one username and password!