ACCORDING to the federal government’s Women Understanding Money report, 95 per cent of women know nothing about any company that they invest in and 25 per cent of women have no savings for retirement.
In response to this lack of basic financial literacy, a friend and I wrote a book, Flirting with Finance (FWF) to teach women the basics of finance using shopping and dating analogies. I’ve also made vlogs, blogs, newsletters and articles in order to help women understand their finances more.
The original FWF provided many website references to help women understand where to find (often free) resources they could use to understand their finances more.
Now I am going one step further, noting useful iPhone apps for finance and noting the websites that are also attached for those who don’t have iPhones.
The first site is called www.toodledo.com and the matching iPhone app is also called Toodledo. In FWF we wrote about setting goals and the necessity of having an action plan with a timeline. With Toodledo you can set goals and put action items on a timeline to a plan. You can synchronise your tasks across a variety of other programs, such as Microsoft Outlook. There are free and paid versions available, with slightly different features depending on your requirements. The free one has a lot of great options.
In FWF we mention a great free budgeting website is www.fido.gov.au. But there is also an iPhone app available called iXpensIt, which can be used to record photographs of your receipts. It helps you to see where your expenses fit into your budget and synchronises with your computer. There is also another app called FYI Mileage, which you can use as a logbook method of claiming trips and it exports directly to iXpenseIt.
For taxation information you can visit the ATO website a d review the tax tables and calculators available at www.ato.gov.au. There is also a useful iPhone app called My Tax where you can work out PAYG tax and superannuation contributions. Once you have your vehicle costs from the FYI Mileage app (above) you can check which methods are best for calculating your car expenses. The My Tax app was designed by a tax accountant.
For information about shares, the book mentions many sites, including www.bigcharts.com for graphing, Yahoo! Finance and other finance sites. There is a fabulous iPhone app called Portfolio Live and it provides amazing graphs you can design yourself, as well as news headlines, portfolio tracking (including cash held in different currencies) all in one place.
I cannot vouch for the long-term accuracy or cost of any of these apps, but all the tests I have run have worked and the prices of the apps were low when I purchased them.
If so, click here to buy our book or visit the iTunes App Store to download the iPhone apps.
By Virginia Graham, www.modelmortgages.com.au.
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