Most Americans worry about their finances, especially those who are about to retire or are already retired. Being free of daily financial concerns may be quite liberating. At the same time, worrying about whether you will outlive your money may make every day a source of distress. A financial planning provides a detailed picture of your present financial situation, your financial objectives, and any plans you have made to achieve those objectives. Details on your cash flow, savings, debt, investments, insurance, and any other aspects of your financial planning life should be included in good financial planning. Considering this, it makes it essential to have a thorough financial planning picture at any age to ensure that your spending and saving will result in a worry-free retirement and an independent senior life. There are many online financial planning tools available to assist you in achieving your objectives, and we’ve chosen some of the finest.
15 Best Online Financial Planning Tools in 2022
Even if you’ve always been a conscientious money manager, these tools may save you hours of time-consuming pen-and-paper labor and provide real-time information on your checking, savings, and investment accounts. Take some time to learn about what these instruments can do for your peace of mind if you’re serious about safeguarding your financial planning future.
How does financial planning work?
Financial planning is a continuous process that can assist you in meeting your short- and long-term needs while also saving for things like retirement. It can also help you lessen your stress related to money. Making a financial planning is crucial because it enables you to maximize your assets, ensures that you achieve your objectives, and provides you with the assurance you need to handle any hiccups along the road. Either you or a professional financial planner can create a financial planning strategy. Thanks to online businesses like Robo-advisors, it has never been cheaper or easier to get help with planning your finances.
What makes financial planning crucial?
Having a plan for your money may give you more confidence when dealing with problems like a recession or historically high inflation. According to Charles Schwab’s 2021 Modern Wealth Survey, Americans with written financial planning have better investing and saving practices. A greater proportion of individuals with plans have emergency funds of three months as compared to those without plans.
A financial planning may also assist you in achieving your long-term objectives after you’ve taken care of your immediate requirements and short-term objectives, a financial plan may also assist you in achieving your long-term objectives. With careful estate planning and smart investments, for example, you can make sure that your loved ones get your money.
1# AARP Retirement Calculator
To evaluate your financial condition, the AARP Retirement Calculator is a fantastic place to start. It responds to fundamental queries like “Am I saving enough?”, ” how long will my money last?”, etc. You can determine your future financial planning foundation in just three simple actions. The calculator doesn’t give you constant, in-the-moment advice, but it’s a great way to evaluate your situation and figure out which daily online financial planning tool might be best for you.
2# Social Security Retirement Estimator
The Social Security Retirement Estimator is an official tool from the U.S. Social Security Administration that can help you figure out how much you will get from Social Security based on how much you have earned in the past.
Because people in their twenties and thirties are more likely to have their income change, this tool isn’t very useful for them. However, if you’re about to apply for benefits, the estimator might help you learn what to expect.
According to the projection, current payroll tax receipts will only support Social Security at a rate of $0.77 per dollar by 2033.
3# FlexScore
The focus of FlexScore is simplicity. FlexScore gives you a single number from 1 to 1000 that shows how financially stable you are as a whole. This is better than giving you a lot of numbers, scores, or grades. The free service also provides options for you to raise your rating, giving you an incentive to revise your life insurance plan or rebalance your investment holdings.
4# Mint
The most well-known financial management and monthly budgeting tool are probably Mint. The free service compiles data from all of your financial accounts, including checking and savings; investments; credit card, and mortgage debt; and is supported by targeted advertisements based on your financial spending patterns. You can make budgets and even get alerts when your account balance is low or when you’re getting close to the spending limits you’ve set for yourself each month.
5# Buxfer
Buxfer offers consumers a means to monitor their monthly income and spending, much like Mint does.
Even your current Google or Facebook account may be used to register. You will be able to keep tabs on and budget for routine spending as well as make larger-scale plans, including trips. If your friends and relatives use Buxfer, you won’t need to go to the bank or ATM to transfer money for shared meal costs or other repayments.
6# MoneyStream
The advantages of budgeting tools and bill-paying systems are combined in MoneyStream. MoneyStream analyses historical data to forecast the amount of cash that will be accessible in the future, in addition to offering an overview of your financial situation. Additionally, it adds due dates for your bills to your calendar, making it simple to remember to pay your gas or phone bill on time.
7# Credit Karma
As its name suggests, Credit Karma is a tool for managing your personal finances that focuses on your credit score. It offers completely free credit scores, reports, and notifications to help you keep an eye on your credit while also giving you an overview of your overall financial situation and details on a number of accounts. It also gives credit forecasting, which helps you figure out how a possible action would affect your credit score.
8# ESPlannerBASIC
ESPlannerBASIC is a straightforward financial planning application that provides comprehensive information on the health of your personal finances. It was created by a professor of economics at Boston University. Learn how much you should spend, save, and cover each year in retirement to maintain a consistent quality of life without taking out loans. When deciding when to retire, apply for Social Security benefits, or downsize from your present house, you can use ESPlannerBASIC.
9# Covester
Covester offers a fresh perspective on how to manage your investing resources. The website hires a pool of portfolio managers with excellent credentials. Then, based on your investment goals, it matches you with a portfolio manager and copies the trades that the manager makes for your account. Covester, which guarantees complete transparency, provides the whole record of trades made by each manager, who puts his or her own money into each portfolio. By providing access to emerging talent in the financial industry, Covester gives your portfolio the chance to catch onto a future star without paying sky-high fees.
10# Betterment
Users of Betterment have the chance to challenge conventional investment models. The automated trading-based investment service gives clients access to exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have low costs and few of the fees that come with traditional investing. Betterment recommends a diverse portfolio of ETFs that it rebalances on its own throughout the year based on what you tell it about yourself, your income, and your investment goals. Even end-of-year losses are sold off to reduce the tax liability on capital gains.
11# FutureAdvisor
FutureAdvisor provides automated investment management services that focus on ETFs that have a wide range of investments and don’t charge commission fees. When you use automatic rebalancing, your money is always being watched to find ways to reduce risk and increase returns. This gives you peace of mind.
12# Financial Guard
Financial Guard enables you to integrate your many portfolios and monitor them from a single online platform, much like online financial planning tools like Mint or Buxfer, but with a more concentrated focus on your assets.
Financial Guard evaluates every one of your assets and provides an overall performance rating along with suggestions for raising the score. You don’t need to relocate your investments in order to use the service.
13# Guide Financial
The thing that makes Guide Financial stand out is that only financial advisors can access it, not individual customers. Nevertheless, it gives customers of financial advisers a platform to see their whole financial situation, from receiving notifications about reinvesting an unexpected windfall to gauging the effects of regular payments over time. If you want to combine online resources with expert, in-person assistance, you might want to search for a company that uses Guide Financial to integrate man and machine…
14# My Virtual StrongBox
It claims to be the electronic equivalent of safe deposit boxes. In reality, it offers clients a safe cloud-based option for important papers like tax records, wills, and other financial data or sensitive documents like medical records. My Virtual StrongBox is a practical and secure way to help with online financial planning instead of using out-of-date physical copies or trusting the limited security of most cloud services.
15# Financial Planning Association
Some of these online tools for financial planning work with financial advisors, while others are meant to be evaluated and used on their own. And you might still need some one-on-one help, especially if you are just starting to plan or if your financial situation has changed in a big way recently. The Financial Planning Association is a great online tool for finding knowledgeable people to guide you through accomplishing your financial objectives. It goes without saying that security worries are there with every new foray into the digital world. If you’ve spent most of your life manually balancing your chequebook or going to the bank to check your account balance, it might be scary to send information about your accounts to different online planning tools.
Due to the frequent news reports of account thefts and data breaches, each of these products publicly advertises its comprehensive digital security measures. It’s also important to keep in mind that the majority of these products have read-only access to your accounts, meaning that you cannot withdraw or move money from them but may view summary information about your financial condition. Nevertheless, the enormous advantages of real-time data and forecasts provided by these potent instruments can enhance your financial planning with the desired security and simplicity. When you discover the ideal tool, you might never again wonder how you survived without it.