Top 5 finance apps you should be using
Our finance guru tried out the following essential apps and has this to say about them…
CompareGuru compares some of South Africa’s top finance apps to help you control your spending. The winners are easy to use, and seamlessly integrate all of your cards and accounts.
They say July, August and September are the longest financial months of the year and we all know the uneasy feeling of having to ration until payday.
Long gone are the days of keeping a stack of till slips to tally up with a calculator. These days, it is wiser to opt for a more technically advanced method.
Welcome to the great era of apps – and finance apps are a growing marketplace in South Africa.
Our finance guru tried out the following apps and has this to say about them…
- 22Seven
.
By far the best is Old Mutual’s 22Seven (Boss your Money) which allows you to sync any bank account or even reward card to keep track of all your debits or credits.
Sporting a beautiful design, easy integration with accounts, and external related financial services, this app makes it easy and also quite fun to track your incomings and outgoings.
Essentially, it provides you with a holistic and detailed overview of your daily, weekly and monthly spending.
I downloaded this app because my partner and I share monthly spending money on one credit card, and I don’t have access to the balance. With this app, I was able to add my partner’s bank card to my interface and now I can see how much is being spent and how much is available on the card.
The app also shows you a ‘spend’-ometer indicating your average spending and how much you have spent to date.
.
22Seven will also split up your spending into various subcategories, eg, eating out, cellphone, bank charges, etc, to show where the bulk of your money goes. In this way, the app will pick up trends in your spending habits that help you make informed decisions.
In addition to adding bank and reward cards, you can also add your own personal notes on loans (eg, I owe Dad R1 000).
What is particularly great about this app, other than the fact that it is modern, crisp and beautiful, is that you can also link your investment accounts. The drop-down option includes everything from 10X investments to Coronation Fund and Easy Equities.
The only downside for me was that after adding my partner’s bank details our mortgage reflects twice. Additionally, with your mortgage in the mix, it can get a little depressing when you see a few grand in the plus and a few million in the minus!
Without sounding too prejudiced, every single South African needs to download this app. They also have a very insightful blog which you can access here.
If for any reason 22Seven isn’t ‘app’-ropriate, MoneySmart have released their very own budgeting app (still in Beta testing), allowing you to connect your accounts.
- Stocard or Wallet
.
If you had to oversimplify what good household financials mean, it would come down to staying organised. This is what Stocard (Android, etc) and Wallet (Apple App Store) help you to do. After all, loyalty cards allow you to save quite a bit when you tally up all your cash backs.
Stocard works with a bar-code scanner that allows you to scan your cards and they will then upload automatically on to the interface.
You can also manually upload any cards that aren’t listed in the options menu by typing in the card’s number. The only problem is that not all the store assistants know what to do with a virtual card, and may need to type the number in.
.
Wallet goes one step further, allowing you to keep your credit, debit, store cards, boarding passes, movie tickets, coupons, reward cards and more in one place. The only catch, of course, is that you need an iPhone, as it is based off the Apple architecture.
With Wallet, you can use passes on your iPhone to check in for flights, get and redeem rewards, get into movies, or redeem coupons. Passes can include useful information such as the balance on your coffee card, your coupon’s expiration date, your seat number for a concert, etc, according to Apple.
- Sanlam Intelligence
.
After giving Old Mutual so much airtime, it’s only fair that Sanlam gets a nod too. Sanlam intelligence is your on-the-go Financial Times, providing insight, videos and articles around the latest financial ructions.
The biggest plus is that the articles are made for mobile, and they are both well informed and accessible. This is your one-stop shop for the latest financial news and updates.
- Glacier by Sanlam
.
The affluent financial market tends to enjoy a little more attention when it comes to technology. However, Glacier by Sanlam is by no means an exclusive App, but rather one that aims to educate both high-net-worth investors and the public about their investment and retirement portfolios.
Users love this streamlined app, which got ratings as high as 22Seven, and if you are not looking to invest at present, you can use the integrated financial news stream to stay up to date.
- Jozi Stock Market
One of the biggest positives of apps is that they are open to any creator, big or small, and, therefore, Jozi Stock Market is a product of entrepreneurial minds.
Developed by Zwide Heights Software Development, this app is both proudly South African and insightful. In essence, it syncs with all the JSE updates, showing the daily move for listed companies, funds and commodities.
It also includes a handy list of forex updates. Topping this off is the fact that the interface is smooth and responsive.
These apps will help you to monitor and control your spending and improve your investment habits a lot better than ye old piece of paper.
Brought to you by CompareGuru
