3 Financial Tools to Fall in Love With
KEY POINTS
- Many people struggle to manage their finances, and it's nothing to feel bad about.
- Some online tools can help you get the hang of everything from budgeting to taxes to bill pay.
- Here's how Truebill, Mint, and TurboTax could help you build financial knowledge.
A little bit of help can go a long way toward reducing the stress of financial management.
According to research from the Global Finance Literacy Excellence Center, 63% of Americans are financially illiterate. If you're not confident in your financial knowledge, you're in good company, and it's nothing to feel ashamed of. Fortunately, there are many free online tools to help users learn more about managing their finances.
Here are three user-friendly financial tools that can help you track your spending, save more money, and ensure Uncle Sam gets paid on time.
1. Truebill: Cancels unwanted subscriptions and negotiates bills
Truebill is a mobile app that can help you stay on top of your spending and meet financial goals. One of its top features is helping users identify and cancel unwanted subscriptions. In fact, Truebill has canceled over 1 million subscriptions on behalf of its members.
It can be easy to sign up for paid subscriptions and forget about them, and that could put an unwanted dent in your checking account each month. So signing up for a service like Truebill could help you organize and cut back on your subscription clutter.
Truebill also can help users lower their bills. This premium service gives Truebill's negotiators permission to get the best rates for their users. Plus, their concierge service helps get refunds on overdraft and late fees, save on cellphone or cable bills, and find better rates for auto insurance. Truebill's goal is to handle the people part, so users don’t have to deal with it.
2. Mint: Helps you stay focused on financial goals
Mint is one of the most downloaded personal finance apps. It's designed to track spending and create a financial plan -- and it even monitors users’ credit scores. Mint also automatically calculates personalized spending insights for users, providing recommendations on where they can save more money.
Users can connect their financial accounts and calculate their net worth in real-time. With Mint, you can also create alerts for payment due dates and set status updates on your monthly budget. Mint also provides financial coaches to help users know where they can improve and what they should do next.
3. Turbotax: Helps make taxes easier
Taxes can be stressful, but using a streamlined tax software can make the process a bit smoother. TurboTax makes the list as one of our top online tax preparation software platforms. TurboTax guarantees 100% accurate calculations on tax returns and searches for over 350 tax deductions. Plus, the service e-files users’ taxes to get tax refunds more quickly.
TurboTax and Mint are both owned by Intuit, so they offer users seamless integration. That means you could use Mint to keep track of tax-deductible transactions. Then, after filing taxes through Turbotax, you can get notified through Mint when your refund arrives.
These three tools offer just a few ways to help get a leg up on your finances. If you're looking for more resources, check out our full list of the Best Financial Literacy Apps for more ideas.
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