5 apps SA youth can use to track and save their money

Tech-savvy Gen Z and millennials – unafraid of having their entire lives in a small black box called a smartphone – are using this knowledge to take control of their savings and investment destinies.

Unlike the older generations, the youth are downloading easy-to-use apps as a smart way to keep track of their money while ensuring necessary financial information is one click away.

Here are five apps that young people are using to track their money:

1. Spend Tracker

The Spending Tracker app is available on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Amazon App Store and the Windows Store. The app allows users to track their income and expenses giving them full control of their finances.

App features:

Overview of spending where people can see where the majority of their money has gone to
Interactive finance reports
People can choose to track their money over different periods including yearly, monthly or weekly.
2. 22Seven

A free budgeting and investing app developed by Old Mutual, 22Seven helps people track their spending across all accounts. People can create a personal or business profile on the app and the app is open to everyone to make use of, not only the bank’s clients. With the app, people link bank accounts, credit and store cards, investments and loans.

App features:

Creates budgets based on your spending.
Helps you invest your money.
Assist you in meeting your financial goals.
3. Wallet

Wallet is a free app that acts like a personal finance manager by allowing users to track their finances, get weekly spending reports and even plan their shopping.

App features:

A blog that offers people advice on their finances.
Bank accounts can be synced with the app to track transactions.
Budgets that can help users plan and save money.
4. iSaveMoney

The iSaveMoney app is a free app that people can use to create a budget, organise their income and track their expenses. The app works on both smartphone and tablet Android devices. People can use the free version or pay to access the premium version of the app.

App features:

Financial analytics
Budget charts
Financial data can be synced and backed up on Google Drive
5. Goodbudget

The Goodbudget app makes use of the envelope method. With this method, a person’s income is divided into different categories and the total allocated amount of money for each category is put in an envelope.

People will then have to make conscious decisions before spending their money because the user will have to remove the money from the envelope before making any purchases.

Instead of physical envelopes, Goodbudget has created digital envelopes on the app that will help people track their spending.

There is a free version of the app and a version that people will have to pay a subscription fee for.

App features:

Users of the app can chat with each other.
Resources such as podcasts and articles to help people track their money.
Reports that people can analyse to track their spending trends.