On average, a person spends anywhere from five to six hours on their phone. More than a few of us would admit that we don’t spend all of those hours productively, but our iPhones have become hubs of useful services and platforms over the last 10 years.
With the introduction of open banking, financial applications were able to reimagine the way we interact with our money, offering holistic money-management and budgeting features. Timekeeping, education, and eCommerce applications have also allowed people to grow their skills and build businesses on the side of full-time jobs. With smart meters, we can even control and monitor the way our homes or vehicles work, all from the convenience of our phones. In fact, with only a couple of free-to-use apps on your iPhone, you can transform your phone from a great gadget into a whole lot more.
Discover the possibilities
Thousands of people are using their iPhones to manage their monthly bills. However, while paying off bills might have become easier with functions like Apple Pay or Paypal apps, the actual bills themselves were, well, still bills. Some of your largest monthly fixed costs, like mortgage repayments, can be lowered or altered through mortgage comparison and advice platforms which offer free insight and alternative rates, potentially shaving hundreds of pounds off of your mortgages.
If you’re considering purchasing your first home, there are also excellent calculators available if you’re in the UK – one being Trussle’s mortgage in principle calculator. This is where you can gauge accurate estimations on what you’d actually be able to afford, thereby avoiding any unfriendly rates once if you were to approach lenders directly. Equally, energy bills can be reduced by opting to use different suppliers through apps like Uswitch or bulb.
Tucking Extra Away
Saving is all about commitment to a goal, but some savings platforms available on the app store are pretty remarkable in what they can offer you in helping to save sums of money consistently and sustainably. Some of the best include Raisin, Cleo, Emma, and Starling, which offer a simple, free way to consolidate and dig into your spending, while also building savings goals.
Growing Ambitions
Investing is another route you can easily take, entirely from your iPhone. Previously, you might have needed to confer with your bank or use some of the professional trading platforms – a little intimidating and time-consuming if you’re only looking to do some casual or limited trading, anyway. However, the boom in retail trading apps, spearheaded by Freetrade in Europe and Robinhood in the U.S., means users can easily start making basic trades via a general investment account or more tax-friendly options like Stocks and Shares ISAs.
The beauty of these apps is the way they simplify trading to allow a beginner to get started. Equally, you can also access apps like Moneybox or Wealthify, which offer complete portfolios and automatic deposits (for example, rounding up a purchase to the nearest pound and sending that extra cash to your portfolio).
Without a doubt, iPhones have taken our ability to interact and manage our finances to an entirely new level. What’s encouraging for consumers is the shift in priority that these third-party services providers. Their goal, simply, is to make their platform as user-friendly and engaging as possible. Historically, financial services were closed-off and typically jargon-heavy.
With a literal sea of bright new businesses reaching us through apps rather than across desks, those barriers to access have fallen down. In those few hours a day we interact with our iPhones, it’s nice to know that we can build a better financial future for ourselves in the process.
