Apps And Sites For A D-I-Y Approach To Money Management

The market for professional financial advisors is not dying any time soon. However, technology has transformed the money management space as well. Your finances are today literally on your fingertips. Here are a few popular sites and apps that can help you manage your money on a day to day basis; some of them even offering integrated financial planning and portfolio management. Take a look:

FOR: PORTFOLIO TRACKING AND MANAGEMENT

Sites/Apps: ET Portfolio, Perfios Money Manager, MyUniverse, InvestPlus and RupeeX

What they offer: All these sites (some have apps too) put all your investment data-- equity, mutual funds, commodities (gold, silver, etc.), fixed income investments (fixed deposits, post office savings schemes) and even real estate—on a single dashboard and allow you to track and manage them simultaneously. A few of them such as Perifos, RupeeX and MyUniverse are also budgeting tools and you add the expenses of the whole family or the other earner of the family, while keeping it separate for each member. The sites also give regular alters and personalized portfolio reports along with recommendations on ways to optimize your portfolio.

All of these sites have some USP. For instance, ET Portfolio has real time reports and stock price updates, auto-generates stock dividends, splits & bonus and lets you create custom alerts and watchlist that are crucial for you. Moreover, it has an in-built tax calculator. In simple terms, if you put in all your details, it will calculate your tax liabilities, including capital gains and auto generate your form 16 report for you. MyUniverse lets you transact—pay bills, buy or sell investments and file your taxes—directly from the site.

Most of these applications also help lets you link bank accounts, brokerage accounts and credit card statements to your portfolio. So, every time there is transaction, the change automatically reflects in your portfolio.





FOR: LONG-TERM FINANCIAL PLANNING

Site/Apps: ARTHOS, Arthayantra




What it offers: The tagline of the site says “A CFO for everyone”. While most portals that support online investing provide you with generic analysis, ARTHOS claims to be one-of-its-kind. It is based on a proprietary PFLM, or, Personal Finance Lifecycle Management concept. This platform promises an integrated personal finance approach—plan-execute-manage (PEM) from a single platform. The site maps your income and expenses, insurance needs, risk appetite, current financial conditions, credit worthiness and future goals. At the end it gives you your Personal Finance Quotient, or, PFQ score, which denotes the personal finance readiness of an individual on a scale of 0 – 1000. A lower score (0-600) means your finances are in a bad shape while a high-score (800-1000) means you are managing your money very well. Anything in between 600-800 means you need some corrective step to improve your financial well-being.

The financial analysis is free but the advice is a paid service. The website offers three plans-- Basic (Financial Health Check) Plan, Elite (Financial Security) plan and Elite Plus (Complete Financial Freedom) Plan.

The basic plan includes expert opinion on improving your savings, optimizing assets and liabilities (current and long-term) and corrective measures for your finances. The Elite plan includes additional advice on potential emergencies, smart tax planning, setting and prioritizing of future goals, identifying money leaking financial products and fixing past financial mistakes. The elite plus plan comes with real human assistance and you investing under an expert’s supervision. The plan also gives you access to a real time goal tracker.

Price: Basic (Financial Health Check) Plan- Rs 499, Elite (Financial Security) plan—Rs 4999, Elite Plus (Complete Financial Freedom) Plan—Rs 9999

Available on: Website

FOR: SPECIFIC GOAL-BASED PLANNING

Site/Apps: Bigdecisions.in


What it offers: Our financial planning is most often goal based and this website plays up this aspect to make decision making easier. The portal that has six decision tools—retirement planning, child’s education, home (rent or buy), refinancing loan, life and health insurance—which helps you to access your need and make more appropriate financial decisions or product choices. Mind you, these are not simple calculators you find on almost most finance-related websites. These tools have some really cool features that involve a lot of math and algorithm at the backend. Take the retirement planning tool. Any ordinary retirement calculator will just tell you how much to save every month to meet your future expenses. This website goes a step further. If you think the saving required is too high at the moment, it asks how much you are comfortable saving per month to start with and then shows you how much this needs to increase every year so that you might meet your ultimate savings goal within a set time. If you are still not sure and have doubts, the site will route you to a human financial planner for assistance, which obviously, is a paid service. The USP is its simple and interactive interface—slider input method and graphical explanations. The downside is only six tools are available as of now. Also, at a few places the options are restrictive. For instance, in the rent or buy tool, the website assumed that the interest lost on upfront payment or security deposit can’t be more than 15%. Not necessary that all of us have our savings in a bank deposit. If the money is, say in a structured product like ELSS, it can easily earn much more.






Price: Free

Available on: Website

FOR BANKING

Site/Apps: Your Bank’s App




What they offer: Happy with your net banking service? Well, it’s time try the app now. Most banks have one these days. These apps will cover savings bank, demat, credit card and loan accounts. Get the app for your primary account and a variety of transactions from services like balance and demat account enquiry, mini statement, cheque book request, stop payment to fund transfer, bill payments, mobile and DTH recharges using the IMPS, or, Immediate Mobile Payment Services. You can even make donations or book travel such as airline tickets, train tickets and bus tickets.

Price: Free

Available on: Android, iOS





FOR TAX COMPUTATION:

Site/Apps: MyTaxIndia

What it offers: Developed by Quintet Solutions, MyTaxIndia mobile app has easy to understand graphics and data can be entered with simple slider options. The app lets you easily switch between male, female and senior citizen tax slabs and has provisions to include all deductions under Section 80C/80CCC/80CCD along with medical insurance, RGESS, interest on house loan separately. However, there is no place to include other common deductions such as Section 54, that is, capital gains deductions, interest received on bank accounts and post office (up to Rs 10,000). Also, this is more suitable for salaried individuals.

The USP is the ‘tax split’ option, an interesting and easy to understand graphical illustration of your tax-break and final liability post all investments, deductions and rebates. You can even save this tax data (of unlimited users) for a later time and export screenshots and data at a single click and have it mailed to your inbox.

Price: Free

Available on: Android 2.1 and up, ipad and mac