In this video, Dominique Broadway welcomes viewers with a New Year’s greeting and outlines his personal finance resolution to better manage money using mobile apps. He presents six apps he uses daily: PageOnce, which offers early personal finance management, bill payment within the app, and customizable alerts; Mint.com, praised for cash‑flow visualization, budgeting, and its acquisition by the makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax; DailyCost, a minimalist daily expense tracker that encourages mindfulness about spending; LearnVest, which combines a Mint‑like Money Center with goal‑setting priorities and a library of personal‑finance articles; and finally Credit Sesame and Credit Karma, free credit‑score monitoring tools that provide access to Experian and TransUnion data respectively. Throughout, Dominique emphasizes each app’s key features, practical benefits, and how they collectively help users stay in control of their finances. He closes by inviting contact via email, social media, or a website form and wishes viewers a financially prosperous new year.
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Happy New Year, everyone! So I know most of us have already set our New Year's resolutions, and one of the things that's usually on the top of most people's lists is to manage their money better. So what we want to talk about today is some of the apps that I use on a daily basis, every single day, to help manage my money and to help make sure my credit score is in line and just I have an overall grasp of everything that's going on. So I'm going to talk about 6 apps that I use every single day. Actually, in my iPhone here, I have a section in my iPhone entitled money, money and credit management apps. So I have a section with all of these apps in there, and I also keep other apps such as, you know, the banks that I use, etc. But the first app I want to talk to you about today is PageOnce. So PageOnce is is actually one of the first people that came out, or one of the first personal finance management apps that was around. They were actually around before Mint.com. However, they're not as known, but they're just as good. And the main difference between PageOnce and a lot of the other apps is that it has the ability to pay your bills from inside of the app, and it also gives you alerts. So for example, you can set up to have alerts when, let's say, your investment account went up 5% or went down 5%, if a bill is due, if you get hit by a finance charge from one of your credit card providers or any other account, or if you, or if you get a direct deposit from someone and then, or a check gets deposited, it will also let you know. When the check is cleared. Let's see, in addition to that, PageOnce also has the ability for you to link all of your accounts and see your, see all of the values of your accounts and all that good stuff, just like a lot of the other personal finance apps. But the ability to pay your bills within it and the ability to have all those alerts set up is one of the main reasons that I keep it in my pile of apps. So the next app I wanna talk to you about is mint.com. So I know most of you probably have heard of mint.com. I think Mint.com is very good when it comes to cash flow management. It allows you to see all of the income that's coming in each month versus your expenses. And as most of you probably know, understanding your cash flows is very important to just having control of your, of your finances in general. So in addition to being able to see all of your income versus your expenses, it also gives you a really good snapshot of all of your current assets. All of your current liabilities, all of your assets, not just your bank accounts but also your investment accounts. And it also allows you to keep track of your budget. So you can go onto mint.com or onto the app and actually create budgets. And when you open the app, if you're over a certain budget— over a certain budgeted limit, it will let you know, which is very cool, very useful. To me in staying on track with the budget that I set for the month. So that's mint.com. Also, Mint was recently purchased by the makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax, which I'm sure most of you are also familiar with. So they have a higher level of security than a lot of the other personal finance apps, and they also have access to more financial institutions as well. So the next app I want to talk to you about is DailyCost. Now, DailyCost is amazing. It's probably the most simplest of all the apps that we're going to talk about today, but it's very useful and it can literally change your perspective on money and also change your perspective on just monitoring and really watching your cash flow and your daily spending. So like I said, the name of the app is Daily Cost, and basically how it works, it's so simple. You go in and literally just jot down or type in exactly what you just purchased. So example, you just went to Subway, you go in, food, $6. And it's really funny because one of my, one of my good friends used to do this, and he would keep track of it into, in his, the notes section of his iPhone. So I used to think it was a pretty tedious task as we'd be out, and after you make a purchase, he would literally stop and put it in his phone. And we're like, what are you doing? And he had a long track record of everything that he was spending, so he always knew his exact account balance. And actually, that's, it's a genius idea because it gives you the accountability factor to to know, okay, I'm about to have to put this into my app or into my notes. Do I really need to purchase this? If I look back on this purchase tomorrow, am I gonna remember it? Was it important? So I think Daily Cost is really good and it can truly help you change your perspective on money and how you spend it. In addition to that, because you are able to keep track of how much you spend every single day, you're able to keep a log and you're able to go back and see Okay, I spent $100 this day, I spent $50 this day, and it's really cool because if you know you're making $150 a day and you're spending $175 a day, obviously this is how your budget and probably how, you know, your cash flow is tight at the end of the month. So I think this can just kind of give you an overall sense of, you know, where your money is really going. Okay, the next app, LearnVest. LearnVest is a really cool app. Um, it does a lot of things at once. So LearnVest has a Mint.com component that they call Money Center that you are allowed to link all of your, excuse me, bank accounts and assets and liabilities within so you can still see your overall picture of your account, of your financial situation at all times. But they also have a section called Priorities which allows you to go in and set your priorities or your goals. And link your various goals or priorities to a certain account, and then it allows you to track your, your, your progress with reaching that priority or goal through the app, which is pretty cool. So I think it's really good as far as setting some of your financial goals. In addition to that, LearnVest is known for having really good personal finance articles, but not just about, you know, the fiscal cliff or about how to do this or how to do that, but more people explaining, you know, their personal finance situations and, and how their personal finance situations affected them, which is really cool. So within the app, you're able not only to manage your money, set goals, but you're also able to read really cool articles in the palm of your hand. So I think that's pretty cool. The last two apps are actually A credit management app. So just as important as it is to stay on top of your budget, manage your cash flow, it's also very important to know your credit score at all times. So just like how someone says, hey, what's your address? Or what's your date of birth? Or how old are you? You're able to tell them instantly. You should be able to know your credit score at all times. You know, hey, what's your credit score? 720. Not that anyone needs to know, but it's good to know that you have that information at all times, and it really helps you feel in control of your, um, you know, just your finances in general. So the last two apps are Credit Sesame and Credit Karma. So Credit Sesame and Credit Karma basically do the same thing, but gone are the days where you have to spend $14.95 a month just to monitor your own credit score, your own credit report and score. So when I found these apps probably about a year ago, I got rid of all the credit monitoring services that I previously paid for because these two apps literally allow you to have your credit score in the palm of your hand at all times and your credit report. Not each, both of them don't give you necessarily a detailed credit report, but it's a really good overall scope. And one of them does give you more detailed as far exactly what, you know, the balance due on a certain credit item and what the creditor is, et cetera. So Credit Sesame, like I said, it's a free app that allows you to access your credit score at all time. Now, as you know, there's 3 major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Credit Sesame allows you to access your credit score through Experian at all times. So Credit Sesame monitors Experian, and then Credit Karma monitors TransUnion. Equifax does not have an app out yet, but I'm sure that they will have one out soon based on the fact that the other 2 major credit bureaus do. So those are all the apps that I use literally on a daily basis to stay on top of my finances. They let me feel super in control of everything that's going on. So hopefully they'll help you into the new year and as you go throughout this year and hopefully accomplishing your goal of taking more control of your finances. So this is Dominique Broadway signing off. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to Email me, Facebook me, tweet me, or fill out the contact form on the website. So I hope and wish everyone will have a blessed and financially prosperous new year, and I'll see you around.
