News & Interviews

You can’t manage what you don’t track; how apps help declutter

Kinjal Vernekar

In today’s world, mobile or computer apps have become an integral part in our gadgets. Whether it be in public transport or just standing in the queue waiting for our turn, we are entirely glued onto our phones, spending hours browsing through our social media or playing games. How many of us actually take time out from our schedule to have a look at our finances?

Talented advisors Vivek Madlani and Sam Abrika joined the Great Big Indian Money Show panel to inform us of modern-day apps that facilitate finance management for us.

Vivek Madlani is the CEO and co-founder of Multiply AI, UK’s first fully automated financial advisor platform. Their app automatically connects customers to the right products of investments, savings, pensions or life protection, advises them on the right amounts at the right time.

Already existing apps like Interactive Investors and Hargreaves Lansdown are mostly meant for strong-minded individuals. “They have a DIY format where you need to have a strong idea of how much you want to invest and in what you want to invest. They are not going to help you figure that out.” However, Multiply AI attends to their customers by understanding their current level of debt and getting them to update that on a regular basis.

Sam Abrika is the CEO and co-founder of Nova Money, which is the UK’s first personal gamified finance app. Their platform makes money more fun to manage and tries to make the user experience more engaging with their gamified designs to track your finance and to stay on track so as to reach your saving goals.

Sam reveals that the average credit card debt in the UK is about £3,000 per person. “People have been overspending. They might see a positive balance on the current account, but they are accumulating debt on the credit card.” The simplest way to manage your wealth is to follow Nova Money’s wealth equation: “What you save= what you earn – your costs.”

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The basic difference between investment and trading is the time duration. Sam explains: “Investment is believing in the long-term and ignoring the short-term noise. Trading is short-term oriented. The goal is to make money out of the short-term noise.”

Vivek goes on to educate us on the workings of ISA: “It is a tax efficient box where you can put your investment, ETFs or stocks and shares into and any money you withdraw out of that is tax free.”

According to Vivek, the key points to keep in mind while managing finances are to organise, be clear about your finances and to split them into day-to-day finances versus long-term finances.

Once the pandemic comes to an end, Sam suggestion is to know your numbers. “Know how much you save per month, look at the impact of your daily habits and how they will impact your long-term financial goals.”

Some apps suggested by experts for expense tracking:

  1. Nova Money

  2. Plum

  3. Cleo

Apps that help with long-term investing:

  1. Multiply AI

  2. Interactive Investors

  3. Hargreaves Lansdown

Apps that guide through stock trading:

  1. Freetrade

  2. Nutmeg

And, Google Sheets and Excel can be used to manually manage your income.

*Please Note: Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. All investments can fall as well as rise in value and you can lose some or all of your money. Additionally, this article does not constitute an investment recommendation.

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