Whether you could use some help managing your email inbox, keeping your spending under control or maybe just earning a higher interest rate on your savings, there are new tools that can make money management easier. Armed with the conviction that consumers are hungry for different types of financial services, especially ones that leverage the convenience of smartphones and other technology, entrepreneurs are experimenting with new offerings. Here are five of the most popular and useful:
1. Unroll.Me. If you get dozens of emails from retailers and other types of mass mailings every day, many of which tempt you to spend money, then this tool is for you. It scans your email for you and makes it easy to either unsubscribe from such mass mailings or redirect them into a once-a-day “Rollup” email, which neatly summarizes all those pesky emails. (You can also select the time of day you prefer the Rollup email delivered.) “Then you get just one promotional email rather than 50,” explains Jaimee Minney, spokeswoman for Unroll.Me.
You have to provide your email address (and after five free unsubscribes, the tool prompts you to share your Unroll.Me activity on social media to continue), but Minney says security on the tool is tight. “We don’t keep your password on file, and if you change your password, it still works,” she says. Unroll.Me earns money by selling advertisements that go in the daily Rollup email.
Over 1.2 million people now use Unroll.Me, and Minney says that growth is poised to continue. “Commercial emails are increasing year over year, and it’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem,” she says.
2. MaxMyInterest. When Gary Zimmerman sold his apartment to work overseas, he stashed the proceeds in his bank account. He soon realized not only was he above the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit, leaving his money potentially at risk, but he was also earning close to nothing in interest. He started spreading out the funds to different banks, keeping accounts below the FDIC limit at any single institution, and also seeking out the highest interest rate possible.
After managing the money with the help of a spreadsheet for several years, he realized he had made an extra $40,000 by being such an active manager of the bank account funds. He wanted to continue reaping those rewards without spending so much time moving the money by hand, and that’s what gave him the idea for MaxMyInterest, which automates that manual process. “I realized this wasn’t just a solution for me, but a lot of people would benefit,” he says.
“It’s effectively free money, so it’s a massive opportunity to earn cash,” he says, adding that given how much money Americans keep in cash, they could collectively earn an extra $50 billion in interest a year if everyone pursued this strategy. While high-net worth individuals with a lot of cash have the most to gain, Zimmerman calculates that a person with $50,000 in savings could earn an extra $450 a year with the tool, while someone sitting on $200,000 would keep an extra $2,200.
MaxMyInterest doesn’t disclose its number of users, but Zimmerman says the average customer in the system has about $700,000 in cash, and amounts range from $50,000 to $5 million. The company also has plans to expand, starting with helping users collect all their 1099 tax forms. “We’re trying to make online banking much simpler,” he says.
3. Moven. This debit account calls itself the “anti-budgeting” app that helps people make smarter spending decisions. “We wanted to create an experience where people could be in control of their money and build better behaviors,” explains Alex Sion, co-founder of the app.
Users can see their remaining funds after each purchase, and purchases can be made with mobile payment technology, so you don’t need your wallet. “It’s giving you real-time feedback,” Sion says, unlike a credit card, with which you might review your purchases weeks after making them, if at all.
After launching in March 2014, Sion says app users have been growing at about 100 percent each month, with tens of thousands of customers now in the U.S. Partnerships with banks are also extending the app’s reach and are expected to help the number of app users reach 4 to 5 million by the end of this year.
4. Prism. Tyler Griffin wants to make it easier for people, especially millennials, to pay their bills each month. He co-founded the app Prism, which helps people pay their bills on time each month without having to sign up for automatic payments, which can lead to overdrawn fees if there’s not enough money in a checking account. “You don’t have to remember when bills are due. We figure it out and present it in a visual way, so people have the tools to pay bills as they want,” he says.
The app connects to users’ bank accounts and bill paying accounts; payments are posted in less than an hour, he says. Automatic safeguards also help users avoid both late and overdraft fees. The app currently pays about $500,000 in bills each day, and 40,000 people are using the free product every month.
5. Level Money. When Level Money co-founder Jake Fuentes graduated from college, he had $33,000 in student loan debt and $11,000 in credit card debt. He wasn’t happy with the financial tools he had at his disposal to help manage those debts. “We’re surrounded by money management tools that for lots of people are way too complicated. We take all that information and simplify it down to its essence,” he says. Managing your money should feel as simple as opening up your wallet and seeing how much cash you have left, he adds.
Level Money attempts to do that by connecting to your accounts. The app then reviews your expenses, recommends a savings rate (for most people, it’s around 7 percent of income) and advises you on how much you have left to spend. If you walk into a grocery store, the app might inform you that you have $23 left to spend today and $67 for the week.
“What we’re trying to deliver is confidence,” Fuentes says. “We think we can deliver a sense of peace and Zen about decisions and take away the sense of stress and anxiety that exists around money for a lot of people.” Most customers are millennials, he says, and the company, which launched in October 2013, was recently acquired by Capital One. The app has been used by about 750,000 people.
Coming soon: New apps on the horizon promise to add even more convenience to our digital lives: The Saveful app, now available on Saveful.com, sorts through products to showcase relevant discounts after taking any sales, coupon codes and shipping fees into account. Another app, Digit, plugs into your accounts to review your spending patterns and looks for ways to redirect money into savings where possible.
As long as entrepreneurs hunt for ways to disrupt the traditional financial industry by offering more customized products that make it easier to save, consumers stand to benefit. “The financial space has been dominated by legacy institutions for a long time,” Prism’s Griffin says. “Consumers are going to be pretty delighted over the next two to five years with products coming out that make finance not so scary, not so intimidating and are very aligned with their needs.”
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