As we enter the month of November, we welcome the cold weather and browning leaves. November also means the start of Financial Literacy Month! This month is all about learning the best ways to manage your finances, keep track of your savings, and make sustainable and financially secure decisions. As young women, it can often be difficult to navigate the male-dominated world of business and finances, where so many opinions try to undermine our capabilities and skills. But fear not, there are a variety of digital tools one can find online that offers true, sustainable advice and platforms for securely managing and organizing our money. Without further ado, here are five useful finance tools you should start using today to set a better future for your finances. 

Mint

Mint is a comprehensive personal finance app that allows you to track your spending, create budgets, and set effective financial goals. With this app, one can connect various bank accounts and manage multiple credit cards all in one place. There are useful tags and categorization to keep track and sort out monthly bills and transactions, making monthly finances an easy task to tackle. The app also provides insights on credit scores and reports, allowing you to make improvements for the future.The app is completely free to use, and is available on iOS and Android. 

Prism

Prism is a useful bill management app dedicated to making paying bills no longer a chore. Linking multiple bills such as water, electricity, cable, and credit card bills together, Prism provides notifications when each bill needs renewing, allowing users to schedule bill payments and create sustainable timelines for every bill. Providing a monthly snapshot of spendings and expenses, Prism is a great tool if you are looking to tidy up your bills and never forget any bills. 

You Need A Budget

As one might notice from the name, You Need A Budget (YNAB) does exactly what it says it does: create sustainable budgets to help you take charge of your own finances. Users start by creating a budget and a financial plan, categorizing expenses and earnings in simple categories. Breaking up large expenses and earnings into smaller, easy to manage sections over a period of time, YNAB encourages proactive budgeting, enabling users to save money without the fuss. The app is available across multiple platforms and is entirely free to use. 

Acorns 

Acorns is a unique app catered to those new to finances, providing easy options to manage spending and invest. Its best and arguably most innovative feature, the “round up”, rounding up every purchase made through the app to the nearest dollar, and saving the balance into an investment account. This allows the users to save up money over each purchase, growing their investments and savings. Ths app also features investment tools and budgeting gadgets to make purchases and investments a seamless process. You can download this app on iOS and Android. 

Goodbudget

A more traditional app using the envelope approach to budgeting, Goodbudget allows users to allocate each dollar from their incoming paychecks to a useful purpose, whether that be in savings, debt payoffs, or contributing to investments and bills. Preventing overspending in each category, the app encourages identifying financial priorities and helping users get ahead financially in all their endeavours. 

We hope this quick guide was able to provide some useful resources that can help you in sorting your money and taking charge of your own finances! Everyone has a different way of organizing their money, but the ultimate goal is always to save for the long run and make sustainable, responsible financial decisions that’ll positively influence your life.

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