These money-saving apps and hacks will make you wealthier before 2017 is over
Money money money. We all love it. We never have enough of it. If you, like the rest of the world, swore to save more money this 2017, and if you’ve given up on New Year’s resolutions by the second week of January, we’ve got a little help for you. Below you’ll find a list of effective money-saving apps to help you tap your way to Marcos levels of stolen wealth. Or if you prefer saving money the old-fashioned way, we’ve also got a few clever life hacks to trick yourself into saving more moolah. You’ll thank us by the time 2018 comes rolling in.
MONEY SAVING APPS
In the world of financial apps, you’ve got apps that can track every single peso that belongs to you, link up to your bank accounts and credit cards, and even automatically send money to savings accounts. Sadly, the fancy stuff like linking to your online bank accounts is mostly unavailable in our banana republic. But no worries, these powerful apps can still keep tabs on your spending, generate reports, and even make budgets.
YNAB
Free trial, $50/year
iOS and Android
YNAB—You Need A Budget—is just like Mint (unavailable in our region), the daddy of all financial apps. It’s a money-saving app that tries to do everything—it's the thermo nuclear device of all money-saving apps. It comes with its own system and philosophy, and promises to “give every dollar a job.” Its powerful tools let you do things like debt paydown, and goal tracking. It also generates awesome reports in pie charts and graphs. Be still, my heart.
Bills Reminder
Free
Android
Wondering where all your money is going? Keep forgetting your bills? Bills Reminder gives you a dead simple way to keep track of all your expenses. It’s a no-brainer, and it just works.
Money Lover
Free, in-app purchases
iOS and Android
This little app does a lot of things that more expensive apps do for free. It generates reports, and there’s even a budget tracker and saving planner.
Live Expenses
Free, P299 for Live Expenses Gold
iOS
Designed as a tool for business travelers to report their expenses to Corporate HQ, this app works just as well in tracking your day-to-day expenses. The best thing about it? Instead of painstakingly inputting the details of each transaction, you can just take photos of receipts. Think of them as money selfies.
LIFE HACKS AND OTHER SAVING TRICKS
Apps are fun and useful, but you don’t need an iPhone 7, or Android N to save money. There are plenty of money-saving techniques circulating the interwebs, and they’re great at hacking your brain and taking advantage of simple behaviors to trick yourself into putting money in the bank instead of new sneakers, or a PS4. We’ve collected a few of the more popular and effective ones below:
Life hack #1: The 50-30-20 rule
Financial experts say that your spending should fall into three boxes. Box 1 (50% of your spending), should be your needs. That includes everything from rent to taxes to groceries to transportation costs. All the bad trip stuff. Box 2 (20% of your spending) should be savings. Your life insurance and your piggy bank fund all go here. Here’s where it gets interesting: Box 3 (30% of your spending) is for your wants—stuff you spend on yourself, like shopping sprees, traveling to Bora, or a steak dinner. Yasss! Finally, here is a savings method that actually wants you to buy a pair of new sneakers (or two or three), travel to Tokyo, and buy collectible toys. The 50-30-20 rule acknowledges that spending money is okay—that’s what money is for—as long as you’re putting away 20% for the future.
Life hack #2: Round up then save the difference
If you simply can’t be bothered to input your financial details into an app, here’s a little life hack that’s much easier. All you have to do is round up prices then pocket the difference as savings. Put another way, whenever you spend money, keep all of your change and put it in a piggy bank/savings account. Before long, you’ll have saved a surprisingly large amount of money.
Life hack #3: Fill your wallet with new money
Studies show that people are more likely to part with old, wornout cash. Through some strange quirk of human nature, we all tend to hold on to new bills. Who knew? So fill up your wallet with new bills and the next time you feel the urge to impulse buy some new threads, you might think twice when you see some crisp new blue bills in your wallet.
Life hack #4: Save a bill
If to you, cash is king, this simple life hack has your name on it. It works this way: 1) choose a bill, say the red fifty, or the purple 100, then 2) NEVER spend that denomination whenever it comes your way. At the end of the month, you should have a nice wad of bills that you can put in your savings account. Or if the bills you saved were the blue or yellow ones, you can throw them onto your bed and have sex while pretending to be a gangster.
This story originally appeared on FHM.com.ph.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
