Tag Archives: financial literacy

10 Mobile Apps for managing money and improving Financial Literacy

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By Jasmine Melikyan

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Nowadays managing financial incomes, investment accounts, and tracking your expenses are simplified due to mobile apps. They provide a more precise picture of earnings and spending so that one can forget about pen and paper to write down all the financial information and sometimes even get messed with numbers.

Everything goes digital and becomes mobile-friendly, and budgeting is not an exception. With 4.78 billion unique mobile users who can easily plan their financial resources via apps, saving them time, these provide a vivid picture of what expenses they can allow themselves and what not, making these applications easy-to access financial trackersthat can keep you in check anytime. The functions of this smart software might sound unusual to the older generation, for whom the only true way is the hand-written notes on the paper; however, they will enjoy it once they try.

Here are 10 mobile apps for managing your money and improving your financial literacy. You need only to give it a shot!

1.) PocketGuard

PocketGuard was launched in 2014 to help people better manage their money. It assists you with several different financial issues.

Once you link your financial account to the app — credit cards, investments, loans, etc. — you can see the big picture of where you stand and what you have at the moment. Due to professionally developed features, you can follow and manage your individual transactions with the app. PocketGuard can take care of your money, reminding you how much you have left in your pocket. The app creates an individual budget form for you based on your income, spendings, bills, or goals. It will help you to better understand your financial situation and spend your money more wisely.

2.) Mint

Mint is a free online platform with financial planning and tracking tools. The app can be used by different devices. Mint is ideal for people who want to be informed about their budgeting, transaction, bills, etc. The app is regularly updated with new and useful features; however, the absence of account reconciliation can make the app unusable.

3.) YNAB

YNAB is a financial application that can be used across iOS and Android operating systems, iPads, desktop computers, Apple Watches, and the Amazon Echo system. The goal of the application is to consider long-term expenses to prevent unexpected spendings. YNAB categorizes transactions, displays financial reports. It is quite a popular app for investors.

4.) Goodbudget

Goodbudget is a money management and expense tracking tool that helps you to stay on top of your finances and bills. It automatically syncs across Android, web, and iPhone and helps you to schedule your transactions or edit your budget as needed. Subscribers get 7 years of transaction history and personal email support for every case.

5.) Honeydue

Honeydue is the perfect app to solve money-related arguments between couples. They can attach their account details and share information about account balances and spendings. The application supports thousands of financial institutions across five countries. Honeydue uses the best practices of the industry to provide you modern and helpful tools and protect your financial data and identity.

6.) Robinhood

Due to the Robinhood app, you can make unlimited commission-free trades in ETFs and stocks, as well as purchase cryptocurrencies with Robinhood Crypto. Robinhood provides fractional shares, which means you can invest in thousands of stocks with a small amount of money.

7.) Ellevest

The goal of this application is to close gender money gaps. It was created especially for women, but clients of the opposite gender are also welcome. Continue Reading…

How to teach your children good financial habits

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Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Teaching your kids sound financial habits when they’re young can help them learn to make wise choices about their money, and ease their reliance on you later.

Alison Tedford blogs about parenting at Sparkly Shoes and Sweat Drops, and at home is a dedicated mom who teaches her eight-year-old son Liam about finances, among other life lessons. We spoke with Alison as well as Jeannette Brox, CFP®, a senior financial consultant with Investors Group in Toronto, who’s affectionately called “The Money Lady” by her clients’ children.

The value of effort versus reward

To help instil a sense of the value of money in Liam, Alison enlists Liam’s help as she works on her blog and manages her social media channels, and ensures that he understands the financial value of each activity. “When he wants something, we tell him it’s the value of a blog post, or a Facebook Live video,” she says. “That way, he understands the value of the item relative to the effort he needs to put into it. Then he can make a judgement call as to whether the money should be spent or not.” When a larger contract comes in for Alison, they discuss how to use the money as a family.

This principle of making money choices can be adapted to your child’s age and situation. For example, a new iPad might be equivalent to 20 “regular” toys. Or, if your child receives an allowance, you can help them understand the length of time it’ll take to save for what they want and what they might need to give up in the meantime. It all adds up to an important money (and life) lesson about short-term compromise to reach long-term goals.

Jeanette Brox, CFP, Investors Group

In Jeanette’s practice, she gets her clients’ kids to start saving monthly at a young age. “It becomes meaningful for them,” she says. “When they get older, they understand the power of money accumulating instead of blowing it on stuff.”

She uses the same “save early and often” approach for children of different ages, although the situations will be different. “A six-year-old is excited when they’re saving to contribute to something they want. When they finally get it, they have pride of ownership.” She’s also helped kids save up for things they may want in their teenage years, such as a car, and advised teenagers who are buying sports equipment to get it off peak season to save money.

Jeanette also encourages kids to save for their own post-secondary education. “Even if parents contribute to an RESP, there may not be enough money to cover all of their university or college expenses.” And she recommends that children cover the cost of their own first year of school. “It makes them more responsible to have made that financial commitment,” she says.

Problem-solving helps form sound financial habits

Alison engages in proactive problem-solving to teach her son responsibility, even in situations unrelated to money. “For instance, it’s a common parenting challenge to have kids come to you with homework that didn’t get done that now has to get done in a short period of time,” she says.

Instead of jumping to do the task for Liam when this happens, Alison points him in the right direction by asking him to troubleshoot how he can help himself and to analyze what got him into the situation in the first place. “We look at contingency planning for the next time, such as setting reminders, tracking deadlines and so on.” Continue Reading…

How to pass on Money values to your kids

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By Matt Matheson

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

(Part 2)

When we had kids, both my wife and I discussed how to be intentional about teaching them about money. We’ve read books, articles, and looked at resources online.  We wanted to be sure that they knew what a healthy relationship with money looked like in the areas of faith, family, and work ethic. We wanted them to know what a truly wealthy life looks like.

Our plan to do this was to model handling our money responsibly. And we wanted to give them real-world opportunities where they could begin to make financial decisions on their own, at first in a supported environment, and later on, independently.

With our first child, our daughter Gemma who’s getting ready to turn 5, we’re in stage 1 of teaching her to be a wise manager of her money. She’s being supported, taught and encouraged to make good choices with her money. She’s also being given lots of opportunity to fail with money. Also known as non-catastrophic failure, it is an essential element to learning, and one many kids are being robbed of by overprotective parents.

So how are we doing it? By teaching her the basics of how to give, save and spend…in that order.

Give

Gemma has been on commission for about four months and it’s been going quite well.  Every Saturday she gets paid $1.50 in six quarters. Some people may think that’s cheap, but I prefer frugal. 

My wife decorated three old loose tea containers with fancy wrapping paper and glitter letters to store her bounty.

The first thing we do when she gets paid is put 25₵ in the Give container. As people of faith, we tithe a percentage of our income to our local church and other charities.  We want to instill the value of generosity and gratitude in our children, and so before we’ve spent or saved, this money goes into the Give fund.

Recently, we went out and used her money (she has stockpiled $4) to buy some gifts for an Operation Christmas Child shoebox. Before we went out I showed her a short video and we talked about how some kids don’t have much money, and how we can give to them.  It was awesome to see her picking out the items for the box and growing her giving muscles right before my eyes.

Save

The next place money goes is to her Save container.  It gets three quarters, the most of any jar.  Before she’s touched any cash to spend, this “invisible money” disappears into her saving fund so she doesn’t even miss it.

We want to impress upon her the value of delaying gratification. We want her to experience the joy you get from passing on the temporary good feeling of spending now, for the amazing feeling of satisfaction and self-control you have when you buy something you’ve been saving up for.

Right now, she’s not saving for a car, university, or a down payment on a house.  We’re not that crazy.  She saves for larger purchases that she wants but can’t buy on impulse and that we’re not going to cave in and get her on a whim.

A Teachable Moment

A few weekends ago, she and I were hanging out and she let me know that she had seen a Spirit Riding Free toy that she wanted to buy. (For those who don’t know, it’s a Netflix show, which is pretty solid for little kids. Continue Reading…

Money lessons for my newly engaged daughter: She’s 4 years old

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By Matt Matheson

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

My daughter is engaged.

Before you congratulate me, don’t.  I’m not happy.

It’s not that my prospective son-in-law is not a nice guy.  I mean, no one is ever good enough for your daughter, but he’s a solid kid.  Comes from a good family with good values.  I’m not totally sure what he wants to do with his life, but who among us knew exactly what we wanted to do when we were that age?

She says they’re best friends, and that’s definitely important.  I know every father who marries off a daughter probably feels this way when things get serious between his “little girl” and some new kid on the block, but they just seem so young.

They’re 4.

No Laughing Matter

That’s right. friends, last week my daughter announced she was getting married … at 4.

I know I should laugh and think it’s cute, but it actually kind of touched a nerve for me.  I mean, she’s only 4 and I know, Lord willing, that I’ve got a lot of years left with her before she strikes out on her own. But it made me realize that I don’t have as much time as I thought. It made me think that the time I do have, I need to be using wisely with her.

When we had our first child, I was chatting about parenting with a friend of mine who had kids in their teens.  He said that almost all the teaching and parenting he had done happened before 5. After that, he said, your job was to support and encourage your children.

I’m not sure I totally agree with him on that, but I will say that most of the impact you have on your kids will happen when they are young. That is, without question, true.

Big Dreams

As my wife was relaying to me the particulars of how I would be in the Guinness Book of Records for having the youngest child ever married and I was calculating the cost of the wedding, she told me a few things that stood out as far as the impact we’ve had on our daughter.

First, she is her mother’s daughter in so many ways.

Just like my wife, G knows exactly what she wants.  Apparently, she and the new fiancé have already discussed getting a dog and a cat.  They’ve decided on sleeping arrangements which include a bunk bed. She wants three kids and a house that is “a little bit cool.” And they want a van, because of the sliding doors.

For me, this all seems a bit strange.  Not the bunk beds — that makes total sense to me if I think like a 4-year-old — but just the level of dreaming she has done.  We’ve taught her, somehow, to dream about her future.  I’m not sure exactly how we accomplished this. My wife and I talk about our future plans a lot, what our hopes and dreams are, and maybe that has rubbed off on her.

I’m glad she has dreams. I know they’ll change (I hope the cat never materializes) but I’m glad she feels safe to dream.  I want to make sure she never loses that, and to encourage her to think big and not limit her expectations of what life offers.

A Wealthy Life

Second, this conversation reinforced that what we are teaching her about money is sinking in.

As she and her new flame were discussing what they were going to spend their money on, he remarked that he was going to spend all the money on “popcorn and candy.” My daughter asked matter of factly, “Why do you want to spend all your money on that? You’re not spending MY money.” Continue Reading…

Do men and women have different Savings Habits?

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By Danielle Kubes

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

In an online survey about savings habits, financial comparison site Ratehub.ca reports that although Canadian men and women save almost the same amount of money, men have a greater level of confidence in their financial planning.

Inspired by 2014 Statistics Canada data that says Canadian women have lower financial literacy scores than men and were less likely to consider themselves “financially knowledgeable” (31% of women versus 43% of men), Ratehub.ca set out to discover if there truly is a gender divide. 

The company digitally surveyed a random sample of 1,087 Canadians in November, with respondents self-identifying their gender.

“Our survey revealed that while men and women differ in aspects of their financial planning, at the core, their personal finance goals and concerns are nearly identical,” the report says.

Both genders have similar financial goals

Indeed, both genders report almost the exact same financial goals. At the top of list of priorities is retirement, followed by travel and then having an emergency fund.

Both men and women prefer to save and invest in registered accounts, especially the registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) and tax-free savings account (TFSA). What they choose to invest in within these accounts — guaranteed income certificates (GICs), exchange traded funds (ETFs), stocks, or other products — is unknown.

Yet men and women diverge most in how confident they are that they’ll have enough money to retire: less than half of women, 41%, say they’re confident compared to over half of men surveyed, at 56%.

Odd, because both genders save almost the same amount of their salaries, with women saving 26% and men 29%.

The gap could potentially be explained in how able they are to grow those savings through investing. Eighty-five per cent of men invest their money, while only 76% of women do.

Of those that do invest, less women than men self-manage their investments, potentially indicating another worrisome lack of confidence in their financial knowledge.

This is supported by the original Statistics Canada data, which found women were less likely to state they “know enough about investments to choose the right ones that are suitable for their circumstances.”

Confidence doesn’t mean financial knowledge

But does confidence translate to actual financial knowledge? Apparently not. When Statistics Canada quizzed Canadians who rated themselves financially literate, one in every three women failed, while one in every four men failed. Continue Reading…