The concept of planning for the long term future is something everyone wishes they started earlier. The reality is that life is busy and will always involve a full plate of urgent tasks. This tends to put long term planning on the backburner. Before you know it, ten years goes by and you’re kicking yourself for not getting it together.
Fortunately, we live in a time when technology takes our tight schedules into account. There are all kinds of apps and programs out there designed to make the finer details of long term planning quick and easy to set up.
Here are three apps that should definitely be on your radar.
1.Acorns
It’s no secret that not many people carry cash with them these days. In fact, last year, India decided to get rid of most of its cash! U.S. Bank recently took a survey of over 2,000 Americans and found that 46% of respondents say they use cash less than eight days every month. With most people using debit and credit cards, the whole idea of keeping a piggy bank with loose change seems to be dying practice. As many will attest, having a couple hundred extra dollars in change every few months is a very pleasant surprise.
Acorns takes the concept of a piggy bank to the next level and combines it with fractional share investing. With a quick setup that links to your bank account, the program will round up all of your transactions to the nearest dollar and automatically invest that change across 7,000 stocks and bonds.
Each Acorns profile is comprised of six ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) including:
- Large companies
- Small companies
- Emerging markets
- Government bonds
- Real estate
- Corporate bonds
The mix of these ETFs is designed to optimize your returns for a given risk factor, which can range from conservative to aggressive.
Getting started on Acorns can be done in a matter of minutes and you can start with as little as $5. For accounts with balances under $5,000, the service costs $1/month. For accounts above $5,000, the service costs $.25/month. Download the app on iTunes or Google Play and start investing your spare change now!
2.After
As you enter the stage in your life when you are creating significant wealth, expanding your financial portfolio, and starting a family, it’s never too early to start thinking about how you will pass everything to the next generation. Most people don’t even begin wrapping their minds around the subject until it’s too late. This will inevitably create all kinds of confusion and second-guessing of preferences.
After is a simple program that enables you to transfer your wishes to family and relatives to avoid unnecessary scrambling (God forbid).
In addition to providing a platform to sort out the essentials, like banking information, pension funds, and insurances, you can create a diverse time capsule of priceless content. This can include documentation of your feelings, insights, memories, and more through text, photo, and video.
The process is easy. Once you create an account, you can select three trustees to receive your last wishes. Then, you are able to fill in those profiles with all the information you see fit. Once you have everything set up, you can choose when this information gets delivered.
After uses AES encryption to ensure everything you create stays secure. Download for free on iTunes.
3.Mint
When it comes to finances for the long term, you need to start yesterday!
As you grow older, it seems like there are more and more monthly bills that pile onto your increasingly crowded plate, especially once you start having kids. If you don’t have a reliable budget to stick to, it’s incredibly easy for money to slip through the cracks and payments to be missed. Even more, it’s WAY harder to save for the future.
From the creators of TurboTax, Mint is a fantastic app that allows you to manage your money without a slew of complicated spreadsheets. Based on your income and expenses, you can create personalized budgets while tracking/paying bills on a defined schedule with alerts. The system also checks your credit score and gives you a number of tips for how to improve it. When you have a defined budget, it’s much easier to set aside money for the long term. Experts say to start with 10% of your income, then gradually work your way to 20 and 30.
Setting up your account can be done in a matter of seconds. All your valuable data is secured with 256-bit encryption. Download for free on iTunes and Google Play.
Your Turn
Investing in the future is something everyone needs to take very seriously. When you are young, it’s easy to overlook this with all the obstacles involved in getting started with a career, a family, homeownership, and everything else attached to transitioning into an adult.
However, planning for 10,20, and 50 years down the road should be an equally important aspect in this process. Thankfully, there are plenty of user-friendly programs at your fingertips to make it easy.