With so many aspects to personal financing these days, from short term loans to mortgages, all of the information around you can be a bit overwhelming. Most people who feel that way usually do because they don’t utilize the full range of tools available at their disposal to simplify their financial lives. There’s a lot that can be done to make your budget easier to keep track of, but it’s up to you to take the initiative and get started with using most of those solutions in the first place.
Online Banking
The simplest thing you can do is to enable online banking on any of your accounts that support it. This will provide you with an immediate overview of your finances, letting you know exactly what’s going in and out at any given moment. In addition, it will allow you to handle some payments more easily as opposed to going to the bank in person.
The only downside to online banking is that it can create some potential security problems if you’re not careful. You should take precautions to secure your account and use all forms of extra security that are provided to you. From 2-factor authentication, to facial recognition and more – modern banks can be quite advanced in this regard. Talk to your bank if you’re not sure where to begin – they will surely have some tips to get you started, and may even already have some recommendations based on your account specifically.
Budget Tracker
A good budget tracker can open up your eyes to some problems in your life that you may not even be aware of. If you’ve never used one before, you’ll be amazed at all the information it provides right at your fingertips. With most budget trackers, you can even go in even more detail, analyzing your trends in specific periods, breaking them down by day, even hour.
This can be very useful when it comes to setting up a long-term budget, as it can show you exactly where you have issues with your finances and will even give you hints on how you can address them. The rest comes down to following up on those tips. Keep in mind that a budget tracker knows only as much as you tell it, so it won’t be able to predict any factors that are related to external accounts and so on.
Do your best to consolidate all relevant information in one place to prevent these types of problems. Many budget trackers come with direct integration with many types of online banking and payment account services, so you just have to do a few clicks to get things set up, and you can then leave it running and forget about it.
Automatic Receipt Scanning
Many people use receipts as part of their budget tracking. They are also useful when you want to ensure that you can return something at a later point. However, keeping all of those receipts can become a nightmare quite fast, even if you have a dedicated binder for them. One of the easiest solutions is to use an automated receipt scanner. Those are commonly available for smartphones these days, and they can go a long way towards making your finances even simpler and more manageable.
With one click of your smartphone, you’ll be able to keep track of every new expense in your budget, and add those receipts to your vault. Later on, when you need to access something, it’s as simple as looking up its name. You don’t have to do any annoying digging through piles of old receipts until you’ve found the one you were looking for. You also won’t have to deal with things like paper degradation, loss, and more. This small tool can be a huge factor in simplifying most people’s lives, and many don’t even realize it.
Centralized Account Tracking
If you have multiple financial accounts, keeping track of them can quickly spiral out of control if you’re careless. This is a common problem for people who keep opening new credit lines, online payment accounts, and so on. On top of making things more complicated, this is also a huge security risk that you can’t underestimate.
There are solutions out there that can keep all your accounts in check from one centralized spot. Those can be a bit difficult to get used to at first, but once you’ve been using something like this for a while, you won’t want to go back to the traditional style of doing things. A centralized account tracker can do a lot to help you keep your information accessible from one place. But it has to be a trusted application properly authorized by all banks you’re connecting it to. Otherwise, it becomes an unnecessary security risk.
Keeping your finances in check is not as hard as most people think. It comes down to following some basic principles, and ensuring that you’re using all tools available that can simplify the process for you. The rest comes down to personal discipline and a little bit of tech savviness. You don’t have to be a computer expert, but you should certainly keep yourself informed enough to be able to recognize quality offers that can benefit you.