Everybody wants to be rich and to lead an easy life. Even if you don’t want the riches on your own, the chances are that you want the right to be wealthy.
Fortunately, this is we’re here to let you know that there are really just three essential pillars to becoming wealthy. We’ve highlighted these below.
Table of Contents
3 Essential pillars to becoming wealthy
Step 1: Earn Money – It seems simple, but if you don’t make any money, you can’t expect to build wealth. Surprisingly, this is the least important of the three measures, since creating wealth has nothing to do with how much you make. Instead, it has a lot more to do with Measures 2 and 3.
Step 2: Spend Less Than You Earn (save) – This is where most people fall short of growing their net worth. They work hard to make money (Step 1), but then they spend all or most of it without putting aside anything to grow.
This step can be the least rewarding because you have to sacrifice immediate pleasures in order to build for the future. However, this step is by far the most crucial to building wealth. If you need proof that this approach works, take a look at some of the richest people in the world, all of whom are notoriously frugal.
Step 3: Invest – Once you’ve successfully spent less than you’ve earned, you now have money put aside and can start to grow your net worth by investing it in places that will allow it to grow and produce dividends.
You can read on our post – Best Strategy of Investing or can also take a look at so many Robo advisor investment apps that certainly will help you such as Wealthsimple, M1 Finance, and Wahed Invest (Get $10 bonus by using my referral code: abdabd55)
As most people struggle the most with Step 2, we’ve assembled a list of 9 money-saving apps that can help you find success.
All of these apps will help you track how much money is coming in and how where it’s going out. This is our list.
Money-Saving Apps You Need To Have
9. Acorns/Stash
We’ve lumped these two apps together because they are pretty similar and both very useful. Acorns and Stash are both apps that track your spending, round your purchases up to the nearest dollar, and then invest the difference in an indexed ETF.
This is the modern-day equivalent of collecting your spare change in a jar but they take it one step further by investing your money instead of letting it just sit in a jar on the counter.
Sign up for Acorns today!
8. Organizze
Of the many budgeting apps out there, Organizze is one of our favorites. Organizze makes it really easy to keep track of your expenses and see where your money is going each month.
The reason that we prefer Organizze over other budgeting apps is that everything is done manually.
This makes you mentally aware of how much money is coming in or going out each month.
7. Clarity Money
With the Streaming Wars heating up and many other companies switching to a subscription-based model, Clarity Money is a great tool to have in your arsenal.
Clarity Money not only helps you track your spending but will also track any subscription expenses you have and helps you cancel any unwanted ones.
If you find this app interesting, this app has rebranded as Marcus Insights.
6. Your Banking App
If you’re the kind of person that hates having a cluttered phone screen then you might try just tracking expenses through your banking app.
Most banking apps will have detailed statistics on your income/expenses each month. Since this is where all the action is happening anyway then it makes sense to check it out instead of a 3rd party app.
In the Bank of America app (above), you can see that they give a detailed breakdown of monthly expenses as well as a Cash Flow feature. This way you can get a good idea of whether you’re net positive or negative over a longer period of time.
5. Spendee
While your personal banking app is great for individual expenses, Spendee is great for tracking the expenses of 2 or more people. This app is favored by couples, families, roommates, etc. that share certain expenses because it allows you to share an account and upload multiple sets of information. It is also popular among travelers who often use different currencies as it allows you to create multiple Wallets.
4. You Need A Budget
Their tagline goes “if you have your phone on you (and we know you do) then you have your budget”.
YNAB lets you handle all of your finances in multiple places.
This app is perfect for people who work on multiple devices (computer, iPhone, smartwatch, Alexa, etc.) because their app works from all of them!
3. Sofi
SoFi has more beef to it compared to most banking apps.
SoFi lets you track your spending and finances, earn high interest on your cash, save fees on ATMs that accept Visa, invest in stock (and automate your investing), as well as buy/sell cryptocurrencies.
It’s no wonder that SoFi is one of the top-rated finance apps with 4.8/5 stars and almost 10,000 reviews.
2. PocketGuard
One of the biggest advantages of using PocketGuard is that they allow you to link all of your accounts into one app.
We mean all of your debit/credit cards, checkings, savings, investment accounts, and cryptocurrencies all in one place.
One of our favorite features is “In My Pocket”, which automatically tracks your monthly bills and lets you know how much will be left over to spend after bills are paid.
1. Intuit Mint
Last but not least on our list is Intuit Mint. Mint is similar to SoFi in that it is one of the most trusted and popular personal finance apps on the market.
They allow you to do everything when it comes to your finances. The biggest differentiator between Mint and SoFi is that Mint really puts an emphasis on security.
It can be a little nerve-wracking to hook up your bank to a 3rd party app but Mint does everything they can to make sure your information is secure.
We hope that you find this list helpful and that at least one of these apps will help you with the most difficult pillar of personal finance: saving money.
Remember, there are three steps that are essential to becoming wealthy: earn money, spend less than you earn, and invest the difference. Master these 3 pillars and you’ll go far!
