by Solange Lopes | Mar 17, 2018 | Make More Money |
While you may love it when money piles up in your bank account, managing it to last and grow despite the onslaught of expenses you may face is challenging. If you add to it quite the busy schedule, keeping up with family, friends and the (not so) occasional social media binge, and you’re easily financially in over your head…
However, keeping track of your budget doesn’t have to make you wish for a root canal instead. Actually, successfully handling your finances in general may be right within your smartphone’s reach. As a Certified Public Accountant and a budget-conscious shoe-lover, managing money has always been on my radar. However, after marriage, a couple of kids, a busy career and business, I’ve had to find ways to streamline my money management process, while still paying close attention to my coins. That’s where my smartphone comes in.
Here are 7 of my most favorite apps to help you manage your money, minus the stress, overdraft charges and financial diets:
I can’t rave enough about my favorite digital saver friend. If you tend to “forget” to save, or just need more motivation to do so, this app will change your life! It basically monitors your spending habits, and puts away money for you in a savings account based on your financial patterns. It’s so refreshing to log into Digit and realize how much money you’ve saved, without even really trying!
Mint
You may have seen this app listed just about…everywhere! The simple reason for this is that Mint is simply one of the best, and most intuitive, budget apps out there! It helps you stay on top of your bills, all in one place. What I really like about it is that it’s personalized for you, and even allows you to get your own free credit score.
Acorns
Not sure how to invest? The Acorns app helps you save more by rounding up your expenses, and sending the extra change to an investment fund. It’s a great (and mindless) way to save and invest, especially when you have no time to do so.
Pocket Guard
Sometimes you just need someone to tell you how much you can spend without breaking the bank! The Pocket Guard app does just that. It will show you how much money you can actually use, after taking account of your bills, savings and spending goals.
YNAB
The YNAB app is your budgeting friend. It will import your transactions for your bank account, and helps you categorize every dollar you spend. This is more for the committed savers among us. While it does require an investment of $83.99 a year or $6.99 a month, after an initial free trial, it will help you deal with your money in a productive and efficient way.
Gas Buddy
If you commute quite a bit, then the Gas Buddy app will help you track the cheapest gas stations nearby. All you have to do is put in your location, and wait for the least inexpensive gas stations around you.
Honeyfi
For the couples around, the Honeyfi app is a collaborative tool that will help you and your partner stay on the same wavelength when it comes to your finances. It allows you to create a household budget, as well as link your individual and household accounts to the app.
Bonus:
Joy
Want to spend and save with joy? That’s what the Joy app can help you do. It uses a psychology-based approach to assist you in saving money. This in turn allows you to build a more positive, and happier, relationship with your money.
Which are your favorite financial apps for working women?
To your success,
The Corporate Sister.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Solange Lopes | Oct 25, 2017 | Career
If you’ve ever found yourself wishing for more hours in the day, then you know that time is one precious commodity. Even more than money, time allows us to pursue our goals, live fulfilling lives and ultimately fulfill our purpose.
Not managing your time effectively can prevent you from accomplishing your goals, whether it’s through procrastination, distractions or endless planning. This in turn creates less balance, more stress and a general sense of frustration in our lives.
While a number of distractions are caused by apps, there are some out there that can actually help us manage our time more efficiently. Here are 7 apps that can help you create more time through the power of organization and focus:
- Workflow
Do you spend too much time on the same tasks every day. Workflow can help you create shortcuts so you can batch a number of tasks on your phone instead. It helps you create customized workflows to perform tasks such as pulling directions for an event, for instance. There are over 200 actions and integrations with and between apps such as YouTube, Uber and Facebook.
- Wunderlist
Does your to-do list look like a gigantic pile of deadlines, half-confirmed meetings and other open items? If so, Wunderlist can help.
This to-do list app actually helps you collaborate with friends, family and colleagues by allowing you to share your goals, assign tasks, due dates and reminders. It keeps your family, friends and team in the loop, while helping you remember important deliverables.
- Rescue Time
Spending too much time online? Rescue Time analyzes your online activity, and provides you precious feedback as to where you spend your time online. This is a great way to uncover the activities that are making you waste time, and actually block them.
You can get alerts when you spend too much time online, while also helping you focus on spending your time more effectively.
- Timely
Do you tend to under-estimate, or over-estimate, how long certain tasks are going to take you? Timely is a great tool to help you plan your week ahead of time, as you estimate how much time it will take you to complete your tasks. You’re then able to compare your own forecast with the reality and adjust your schedule accordingly.
It’s a great tool to keep you and your team on track, while holding you accountable to complete your goals.
- Pocket
If you’re a fan of saving links and content online, Pocket will save you enormous amounts of time. Instead of being thrown off by a great piece of content, this app allows you to save it so you can read it later.
It stops you from getting distracted, while making it easy and practical to save new content.
- Break Free
Break Free is another app that lets you control your digital life by helping you understand how you spend your time on your phone. This app monitors how much time you spend on the apps on your phone, and sends you a reminder when you exceed your “allowable” time on any of them.
- Cozi
If you have a hard time getting your family life organized, in between getting the trash out, dropping off the kids to soccer or shopping for groceries, then this app is for you. It stores all your information in one place, including your to-do list, calendar, journal and shopping list, which can be shared with the whole family.
Which apps do you use to manage your time more effectively?
To Your Success,
The Corporate Sis.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Solange Lopes | Jan 18, 2017 | Career
We all want to be more productive. As in do more in less time, and still be able to sit somewhere with a good book and some form of carb-filled snacks for a minute or two…
Except the more we think about being productive, the more to-do’s start creeping up on our list. And while technology can keep us pretty busy most of the time, here are 7 apps that can boost your productivity this year:
Evernote
Aka my “backup brain”. This app lets you save pretty much anything to it, from draft notes to web links, that you can organize into notebooks and tables of content.
Calendly
Worried about automating your scheduling? This app allows you to save time by avoiding email and phone tag, and making it easy to improve your meetings and interactions with consumers and colleagues.
Zapier
Zapier makes it easy to automate tasks between web apps. Whether it’s scheduling your social media posts, or sending automated emails, this cloud-based application can be used to create connections, or zaps, between over 300 applications.
Feedly
Worried about keeping up with the news? This app is the single place to find and read all the news you need to think, plan and educate yourself. I love the fact that these news are available in various categories, like career, business, writing, etc, too…
Wunderlist
If like myself, you’re a big fan of to-do lists, then this app is for you. Just consider it your go-to when it comes to getting things done! Whether you’re managing projects, planning events or sharing to-do lists with your family, this is the perfect tool to keep your life in sync.
Sanebox
Ever felt like you could use some serious help cleaning your email inbox? That’s exactly what Sanebox helps you do, by learning what’s important to you and filtering out what isn’t. Like a personal email assistant in an app…
Hound
Ever wished you could just say what you need and get it right away? Well, now you can with the Hound app…You basically just ask for stuff, like today’s weather, or to send a text, or to navigate to a certain address, and bam!, you get it! By combining speech recognition and language understanding, this app understands both context and detail. And gives you what you really really want…
What apps help you be more productive?
To Your Success,
The Corporate Sis.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Solange Lopes | Nov 23, 2016 | Working Mom & Woman Tips
Whether you’re hosting Thanksgiving this year, or attending a Thanksgiving family gathering, you know that this time of year always gets busy. Which also means any help you can get is more than welcome, especially when you’re running around at the last minute trying to make the traditional family dessert, or figure out how to entertain your guests…
This is where technology, especially apps, come in to play. As a busy working woman, you can now use that smartphone you’re carrying around everywhere as a virtual Thanksgiving assistant. Here are 7 apps you can use to pull off the best, and most stress-free, Thanksgiving ever:
This free app will help you plan you your Thanksgiving Day menu in a swipe, or find amazing recipes to make and bring to any gathering. From meats to desserts to side dishes, you can find a large selection of delicious recipes to try. If you’d rather go by theme, then you can check out the menu section for recipe ideas grouped under Southern or Modern dishes for instance.
Here’s another free app that collects all the great recipes from your favorite Food Network stars. Even better, it has a whole section for Thanksgiving, including meal plans from renowned chefs like Giada, Sunny Anderson and Bobby Flay. Video tutorials are even included, and there’s even a section for leftovers!
Not sure which wine to pair with which Thanksgiving food? There’s an app for that, and it’s called Hello Vino. The app suggests different types of wines for different types of Thanksgiving foods, including turkey, ham and even side dishes.
Worried about making lasting memories of this Thanksgiving? Try this free app, which offers 15 cute holiday-themed photo frames to place in your pictures. It’s a wonderful way to make lasting memories, while impressing your guests in the same token…
Happy Thanksgiving Holiday Decoration Ideas
Running out of ideas to decorate your home for Thanksgiving? There’s an app for that. With more than 20,000 pictures to inspire you, you can turn your home into a holiday-themed abode in no time.
Is your family more into going out to eat for Thanksgiving? No problem. This free app helps you not only reserve and manage restaurant reservations, but also have access to hotels all around the world. You can turn this whole holiday thing into a delicious getaway in no time! Bonus: the app provide you with rewards too!
Want to send someone a Thanksgiving card? This app has plenty of choices to pick from. You can now send a quick card to anyone to remind them you’re thinking of them on the holidays…
Which Thanksgiving apps have you been using?
The Corporate Sis.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Solange Lopes | Oct 13, 2016 | Career, Working Mom & Woman Tips
Work, work, work! Sometimes all there seems to be for working women is a whole lot of work. Work at work, work at home, work in our relationships, work in our businesses! And while a lot of credit should go to all these working women warriors who get so much done in so little time, there’s something to say about working smarter instead of working harder. That’s where technology, and more specifically, apps come in. Because you know, if it exists, there’s got to be an app for it…
I have to say, as moderately technology-savvy (which is an improvement in my book) as I am, I love my apps. Especially when they can help make work, life and everything around, easier to manage, track and enjoy too…
And since I’m always on the lookout for new apps to take something or another off my plate, here are 7 of my latest favorite, mom-approved, working-woman-vouched, apps to add the “easy” factor to work, life and everything in between:
This one app is a staple in my list of absolute must-have apps. If you like lists, and remembering things, and storing articles, this app will be your go-to. This is where you can save quick notes, images, audios, and sync them across all your devices at once. You can also make use of references, and its strong search feature, which allows you to retrieve information you need in record time! It’s perfect if you run a business on the side or full-time, or if you just like to keep your information in one safe place right at your fingertips.
ShopSavvy
You know the feeling of buying an item full price from store A, and seeing it in store B at…half the price (after the return period at Store A of course). Well, this app will save you some of that price comparison struggle, by allowing you to track sales at your favorite stores. Its uniques barcode feature will also let you scan whatever item you want to buy, and find out if you can snag it somewhere else at a bargain! And voila….
So you and BFF went for tapas, and now she kinda owes you 30 bucks, but asking for it would be kinda awkward…Well, now you can split the check, and avoid all the confusion (especially if the tapas were accompanied by some pretty colorful margaritas) with this app.
I have to say, after becoming a mama, my good ol’ times of grabbing a book and lounging on the couch are far and few in between. If you don’t have as much time to browse through your literature favorites, but still want to enjoy a book or two on the go, Audible is for you! You can listen while driving, running errands or cleaning the house (now who says you can’t do chores and get smarter at the same time?)….
Listen, you gotta keep your mind on your money, and your money on your mind! That’s where Mint comes in, for busy working women who still want to keep track of their money! You can use it to organize your finances, pull your bank accounts, credit card bills, expenses and investments, all onto one easy to navigate platform.
This female-focused app offers more than 100 workouts designed by Nike master trainers themselves. And if like me, you’re ready to use any excuse not to work out, this app is for you! All you need is your smartphone, sneakers and a picture of that dress you’ve been saving since last year….
I’m not a big fan of unclean public bathrooms (who is?), and unfortunately, after babies, your bladder isn’t as tolerant as it used to be. Hence the need to find suitable bathrooms in unfamiliar areas! Which is exactly where this funny, but oh so useful app, comes in! SitorSquat not only shows you bathrooms in the area, but also rates them by order of ahem…cleanliness!
What other apps have made your life easier?
Love,
The Corporate Sis.
Like this:
Like Loading...
