Saving money is a difficult thing to do, no matter who you are or how much you bring in each month. At present, this is unavoidably due to the rising cost of living for everyone in the country – but it is also an evergreen concern, particularly for the great many of us who are less financially literate than we’d like to be. But the tech revolution is still underway, and has some extremely useful answers for us. How can we use tech to save our money better?
Banking and Lending
Tech is everywhere, and has naturally been folded into banking and lending processes as a new normal – giving institutions and individuals alike more control over financial dealings. This is great news if you have found your savings progress frustrated by debt, as it is far easier now to get accepted for debt-relieving financial products via tech portals. The accessibility of debt consolidation loans makes it simpler for you to satisfy your lenders, and to chart a swift path to affordable saving.
It is just as easy, if not easier, to open new savings accounts for your savings mission. Independent and alternative app-based banks can offer competitive interest rates on savings, letting you maximise how much your savings generate interest for you.
Spreadsheeting
The first and most immediate way you can engage with tech to help solve your financial quandaries, though, is with spreadsheeting. The act of saving needs to be a structured one, supported by intricate knowledge of your own financial situation. Randomised and ad-hoc saving is not sustainable, and could lead you to eventually spend more than you’ve saved.
Using Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel or some other spreadsheeting app available to you can allow you to more accurately track your income and outgoings. Using this data against your regular monthly costs gives you the knowledge necessary to cut back in key areas, and lets you plot out a sustainable savings plan.
Budgeting Apps
Your budgeting spreadsheet is just one tech tool, though, in a complete tool-set of tech-assisted systems and utilities you can use to maximise your savings and better control your overall finances. For instance, there are purpose-built apps you can download for your phone, which track and organise your expenditures according to categories and amounts each day. Some are twinned with financial products like current accounts, making the tracking of your spending practically automatic.
Alternative banking apps can also sequester some of your money automatically, whether immediately splitting your income into relevant expense ‘pots’ or creating a ‘piggy bank’ which receives rounded-up pennies from your card transactions. All these little changes can add up to big savings.
Using AI
Finally, it is impossible to talk about financial technology without acknowledging AI. Most of our interactions with AI at present are through language-learning models like ChatGPT; which ChatGPT is limited in scope, it can nonetheless perform useful and basic tasks on your behalf – such as simple financial calculations and basic rules-of-thumb for saving. If you’re struggling to envisage your route to long-term financial stability, ChatGPT could be a useful initial guide.
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