Did you struggle to pay your 31 July tax bill?
At Robson Laidler we are always looking for innovative ways to help improve the lives of our clients and make them savings so when HMRC comes knocking you are well prepared for the pinch.
We’ve been doing our research and have picked out four useful banking apps that can help ease the pain of your next tax bill.
Most of these can be used in conjunction with each other too – excellent!
Budgeting
The first one on the list is for budgeting. Most banks are starting to add this feature into their apps but what is cool about this one is you can add multiple accounts from different providers so you can track your whole income and spending. This is particularly useful when you spend on different credit cards to receive the perks and have current accounts in joint names too.
Money Dashboardis a really powerful app that automatically pulls data and categorises spending automatically so you can see where you can cut back. Of course you can create your own categories if you wish. The level of analysis is superb! You can see it in colour coded graphs, charts or numbers so there is a visual for whatever type of person you are.
The default is to show you this month vs last month but you can also create a budget to help you achieve your financial targets. Once the budgets are set up and you start to change the way you spend then there is even a function for predicting the future to see how long it will take to get there.
I highly recommend you have a look at this if you want to cut back on your spending.
https://www.moneydashboard.com
Saving and Investing
The next few apps are all to do with saving cash but these do it for you automatically. They monitor and analyse your spending for a week or so to spot trends in your spending habits and when they spot an opportunity it will collect a few pounds and save it for you. The magic with these are that you don’t really notice the money being taken.
For example if you usually stop for a coffee in the morning and let’s say you were running late and didn’t have time the app would spot this and still take the money you would normally spend but move it to a savings account. Your habits haven’t changed and your balance would usually be a couple of pounds lower.
Whilst this app won’t make a huge difference over night, leave it to work its magic for 6 months and you will be surprised at how much it accumulates. The interest rate given is a whopping 3%!! And for every friend you recommend that signs up you get an extra 1% or £10 cash. Win win in my opinion.
Working in a very similar way to Chip, OINKY automatically calculates spending habits and takes what you can afford. Unlike Chip it can automatically be transferred to investment platforms which may offer a better return than the interest rates given by banks. This is quite a good little feature if you want to start saving for a house by linking it to a help to buy ISA or equivalent.
Most banks are now offering the option to round up your expenses to the nearest pound but not all of them. This app links to several bank accounts and you can round up all expenses to the nearest whole £ in one swipe. When setting it up you can choose the level of risk you want to invest in. This is the only app that has a charge which depends on the amount invested so be sure to check this out before investing!
Find out more: https://www.moneyboxapp.com
We hope you will find these apps useful.
For more information on how technology can help save you time and money contact our Cloud client manager Nick Wilson directly: nwilson@robson-laidler.co.uk