Since very few public schools have mandatory finance classes, it’s normal that you might not know a lot about investing or budgeting! College may be your first taste of being financially independent and having to pay bills and keep track of your finances without Mom or Dad around to answer your questions. It’s important that you start making time to teach yourself to be financially responsible! Here are some simple apps that can help you segue into being a financially responsible adult.
1. Mint
Mint has skyrocketed to popularity among college students. All you have to do is download it and connect it to your bank account, then Mint tracks your spending in real time. The app also automatically generates budgets, based on your income in spending patterns, that you can edit as you feel appropriate.
2. Level Money
This app will calculate your income and spending once you connect it to your bank account. Once it has that information, it’ll generate spending limits by the month, week, and even day, if you’d like. It’ll also tell you how much you should save, then you can set up auto-save, which automatically moves money into your savings accounts (either an amount you set or the leftover money from your budgets).
3. Acorns
Acorns allows you to easily invest money in low-risk stocks. This app will round up your purchases to the nearest dollar, so if something is $3.25, then $.75 will be invested in a portfolio that you choose, based on pre-selected stocks. On average, users invest between $20 and $200, but you can also invest lump sums higher than that, if you’d like.
4. Venmo
Venmo isn’t exactly a banking account, but it makes splitting bills easier. You can split anything on Venmo, just by sending your friends a request paying them for whatever you owe. The money can remain in your Venmo account, or be connected to your bank account so you can easily transfer the money.
5. Bank app
Finally, just make sure you download your bank’s official app. This way you can always keep track of your checking and savings accounts and you can look out for any weird activity and make sure everything is in order.