{"id":10993,"date":"2023-11-13T16:12:21","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T10:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/the-best-apps-and-tools-for-managing-your-money-online\/"},"modified":"2023-11-13T16:12:21","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T10:42:21","slug":"the-best-apps-and-tools-for-managing-your-money-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/the-best-apps-and-tools-for-managing-your-money-online\/","title":{"rendered":"The best apps and tools for managing your money online"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ad_1]\n<\/p>\n

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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer<\/em> No. 14, your guide to the best and Verge<\/em>-iest stuff in the world. (If you\u2019re new here, welcome, you\u2019re my favorite, so happy you\u2019re here, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer<\/em> homepage.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I also have for you a rundown of the best tools for managing money, new gadgets from Valve and Humane, way too many writing apps, new stuff from ChatGPT, and much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As always, the best part of Installer<\/em> is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What have you been reading \/ watching \/ learning \/ doing that everyone should know about? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer<\/em>, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Big week in the Installer<\/em>verse! Let\u2019s get to it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Drop<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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  • The Steam Deck OLED<\/strong>. <\/strong>Valve did a Nintendo! Which is to say, it took its already very good console and made a bunch of things about it \u2014 the screen, the fan, the battery life, the processor \u2014\u00a0a little better. I\u2019m definitely going to end up buying this thing.<\/li>\n
  • The Humane AI Pin<\/strong>. <\/strong>Every gadget company has been asking the same question for the last few years: \u201cwhat comes after smartphones?\u201d So far, it\u2019s\u2026 smartphones. Humane\u2019s first AI-powered device doesn\u2019t immediately strike me as the next big thing, but I can\u2019t remember the last time I was so excited to actually try a new gadget. Is this the future? Is it anything? <\/em>Who knows!\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n
  • GPTs<\/strong>. <\/strong>You can now create your own ChatGPT with whatever knowledge, character, and style you want, and it only takes like five minutes. I\u2019m much more bullish on these smaller, more specific AI tools than I am the One True AI Machine idea, and I think these are going to be huge. (Also, seriously, kudos to OpenAI for brute-forcing the phrase \u201cgenerative pre-trained transformer\u201d into the mainstream.)<\/li>\n
  • Planet Earth III<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong> <\/em>The first episode of the third entry in the world\u2019s most epic documentary series is out now in the US, and there are a bunch more episodes to come. The drone footage, the natural sound, the things the producers are able to do underwater and in the sky, it\u2019s all just awesome to watch. (Also, stay tuned for some fun Planet Earth<\/em> stuff coming to The Vergecast soon.)<\/li>\n
  • Aftermath<\/strong><\/em>. <\/strong>A new publication from some great video game reporters who are already off to a strong start covering Zelda<\/em>, the Steam Deck, Overwatch<\/em>, and much more. I love a good website, and so far, this is a very good website.<\/li>\n
  • Final Cut Pro<\/strong>.<\/strong> Every once in a while, Apple likes to remind Final Cut users that it remembers they exist and does in fact care about them. The big winner this time (and this year in general) is the iPad app, which got a bunch of handy keyboard shortcuts, workflow tricks, and a useful voiceover tool.<\/li>\n
  • The Marvels<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong> <\/em>A Marvel movie that both rewards superfans and manages not to confuse everyone else! What a concept! This movie has been somewhat divisive, but The Verge<\/em>\u2019s Charles Pulliam-Moore dug it, and I\u2019m excited to see this one.<\/li>\n
  • Documents by Readdle<\/strong>.<\/strong> The Files app on iOS devices is so bad. Its organization makes no sense and moving stuff around is too hard. It\u2019s just bad times all around. Readdle\u2019s app has long been a better option, and it got a big update this week \u2014\u00a0which includes an inbox that just dumps all your files into one place. It\u2019s messy and perfect.<\/li>\n
  • Elon, Inc<\/strong><\/em>. <\/strong>I\u2019m not at all sure that a weekly podcast about the many chaotic goings-on of the world\u2019s richest person is something I even want in my life, but Bloomberg is doing it really well. It\u2019s chatty but thoughtful, and even the first episode covers a lot of ground.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n

    Group project<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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    Last week, I asked you to share what systems you use for managing money. With the news that Mint was shutting down (which, ugh), I think a lot of people were left suddenly looking for a new way to easily keep track of their budget and spending. I figured y\u2019all might have some good ideas. (The Verge<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>Barbara Krasnoff also put together a list of Mint alternatives, and it\u2019s a really good place to start.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    Once again, you came through! I got a ton of emails, texts, and mentions with good ideas for apps and systems for making this all work. Also, a lot <\/em>of people who are very cranky with Mint, and trust me, I feel you on that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    One note before we get into it: you should, of course, be careful about where you manage your money and financial information and to whom you give access to any of that data. Many of the apps we\u2019re about to talk about are popular and highly regarded, but you should always be cautious with this stuff. My credit score also once got dinged because I had signed up for too many personal finance apps \u2014 true story \u2014\u00a0so there are lots of reasons to be thoughtful here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    Cool? Cool. Let\u2019s run through some of your ideas and findings:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    • YNAB<\/strong> is the big winner. <\/strong>YNAB, which stands for You Need A Budget, was the overwhelming most popular recommendation I got this week. Folks liked that you can sync all your accounts and cards, that it\u2019s an independent app you pay for instead of being bombarded by ads and credit card deals, and that it has a specific set of principles and systems you can just pick up and start using.<\/li>\n
    • Copilot<\/strong> is the other go-to. <\/strong>Copilot is much more polished than YNAB, and people love the app\u2019s design, its dataviz tools, and just how easy it is to interact with. It\u2019s only for iOS and Mac, which is unfortunate, but as finance apps go, it seems to be unbeatably fun to use.<\/li>\n
    • There are a lot of apps worth a look.<\/strong> Other apps you recommended, in rough order of popularity: Qapital<\/strong>, Buddy<\/strong>, Empower<\/strong>, HomeBank<\/strong>, Expenses<\/strong>, Quicken<\/strong>, EveryDollar<\/strong>, Nudget<\/strong>, Ledger<\/strong>, and Dime<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/li>\n
    • Don\u2019t sleep on spreadsheets.<\/strong> I heard from a number of people who said they\u2019d tried the apps and built the systems but ultimately landed on a good ol\u2019 spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets for tracking their spending. Especially for folks who just want a rough \u201chere\u2019s what I have, here\u2019s where I want it to go\u201d outline, you can\u2019t beat the \u2018sheet. (Is that a thing people say? I\u2019m going with it.)\u00a0<\/li>\n
    • Templates are your friend!<\/strong> A few people recommended Tiller<\/strong> as a way to make the Excel and Google Sheets setup a little cleaner and more automatic. This Notion template<\/strong> got some love, too.<\/li>\n
    • The manual way can be the way\u2026 but it\u2019s more work. <\/strong>Some of you love having custom-built systems that you can tend to for a few minutes a week, and there\u2019s certainly no beating \u201cit\u2019s just a file on your computer that you own.\u201d But almost everyone who recommended this strategy also said it\u2019s a lot of work and can be too easy to give up on.\u00a0<\/li>\n
    • Or maybe just use your bank. <\/strong>A lot of banks now offer budget tools from right within your banking app, so you can manage your money right next to where it lives. (I hear good things about SoFi\u2019s features on this front.) If you do most or all of your banking in one place, a few folks said this is the way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
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      Personally, after reading all your notes and doing some research, I\u2019m going to give Copilot a run. I\u2019ve tried YNAB in the past, and it\u2019s great, but I just did a bad job keeping up with it. I\u2019m also going to make an epic 2024 budget spreadsheet and see how far that gets me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

      Screen share<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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      Kevin Nguyen, a deputy editor at The Verge<\/em>, warned me when I first asked him to do this that he had four different writing apps on his homescreen. To which I said: sold, bring it on, we love an obsessive homescreen setup.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      Then Kevin followed up and said, \u201cOh, sorry, it\u2019s actually five writing apps.\u201d Kevin gets it. Here\u2019s Kevin\u2019s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      The phone: <\/strong>iPhone 15 Pro (already lightly scratched my screen).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      The wallpaper:<\/strong> My background is actually my partner, but she would be mortified if I posted a photo of her here, next to a bunch of apps, so you guys just get Toshiro Mifune.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      The apps: <\/strong>Years ago, I read this interview with novelist Donna Tartt about her writing process. I assumed, as a famous person of letters, she would have an elaborate, possibly pretentious system \u2014 at least an especially fancy leather Moleskine. It turns out she just kept four different notebooks: cheap ones, sporting different Beatles album covers, each serving a different purpose. I forgot what each was for, but it was something like \u201cRevolver <\/em>is for characters, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em> is for plot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      I don\u2019t know if I was channeling Tartt when I decided to regularly use a rotation of five<\/em> different writing apps. They are iA Writer<\/strong>, Google Docs<\/strong>, Bear<\/strong>, Apple<\/strong> Notes<\/strong>, and Scrivener<\/strong>, and they all have more weaknesses than strengths. Each feels like it\u2019s been designed for a fairly specific use case. But that\u2019s not really the point. I know that when I open iA Writer, it\u2019s to try and get words down as quickly as possible. Docs is for revising and fidgeting. Bear is for thoughtful notes. Notes is for garbage notes (I really hate that app, but it also syncs our household grocery list). Scrivener is its own beast, built from the ground up for real sickos (authors).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      I\u2019m sure five apps that do essentially the same thing sounds like a nightmare to some people. But for me, writing and editing is a messy process, like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. Or I guess, in this case, five different bottles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      Non-writing apps: <\/strong>Wallet, Google Authenticator, Photos, Camera, Google Maps, Settings, Clock, Chase, Arc (the iOS app is fairly incomplete, but it will sync with your sidebar, so I\u2019ll open a bunch of tabs, then read those links on my phone when I get on the subway), Slack, Hello Weather (my salvation since the death of Dark Sky), Pins (I use Pinboard to save longform stories, and I meticulously tag them with the kind of notes you might expect from a features editor), Letterboxd <\/strong>(quietly the best social app and a great way to triangulate what\u2019s out, streaming, or in theaters \u2014 if two or three friends have all logged an older film recently, it probably means it just hit Criterion or there\u2019s a revival at IFC).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      As always, I also asked Kevin to share a few things he\u2019s into right now. Here\u2019s what he sent back:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      • Surround<\/em> by Hiroshi Yoshimura<\/strong>. <\/strong>This recently released ambient record was originally made to be the music of\u2026 prefab homes? But it reveals so much on closer listen: shimmering drone, swirls of pleasing synths, a touch of humor. Still, if you\u2019re lazy like I am most days, you can just put it on while you work and let it wash over you.<\/li>\n
      • Same Bed Different Dreams<\/em> by Ed Park<\/strong>. <\/strong>I\u2019m halfway through Ed Park\u2019s long-awaited second novel, and so far, it\u2019s a funny, genre-busting saga that is deeply obsessed with Korean history. For fans of anyone who is wanting a big, immersive read who is usually daunted by a big, immersive book.\u00a0<\/li>\n
      • Anatomy of a Fall<\/strong><\/em>. <\/strong><\/em>I reviewed this courtroom thriller when it premiered at New York Film Festival, and now you can catch it in select cities. A dark, twisty murder mystery that surrenders itself to a much richer set of questions than your usual whodunit. The best thing in theaters at the moment! (And in general, I recommend going to the theater. Replace your screen time with the biggest-possible-screen time.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n

        Crowdsourced<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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        Here\u2019s what the <\/em>Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you\u2019re into right now as well! Email <\/em>installer@theverge.com<\/em> with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we\u2019ll feature some of our favorites here every week.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cThere\u2019s a website called RetroAchievements<\/strong> that adds trophies to old-school games. It\u2019s a great excuse to go back and play games from your childhood or games you never got around to playing.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Nick<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cFluttermind, the Moonring<\/strong><\/em> dev, hasn\u2019t ported the game to Mac yet, but I did discover some of their other games, and I\u2019ve started to play Spellrazor<\/strong><\/em>. It\u2019s a very interesting haunted arcade game.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Drake<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cJust finished The Kids of Rutherford County<\/strong><\/em>, the new podcast from the Serial<\/em> folks, and it was great. Reading Adam Grant\u2019s new book, Hidden Potential<\/strong><\/em>. Not done yet, but it\u2019s excellent so far, especially for someone like me who struggles with imposter syndrome.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Nick<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cCastro<\/strong>, my favorite podcast app. I appreciate the way that it treats episodes more like emails so I can queue, save for later, or delete them individually. After using it, I can\u2019t move to any other podcast app.\u201d \u2013 Mike<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cFound the show Detroiters<\/strong><\/em>. Really fun 30-minute comedy starring Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson, with their sensibilities.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Travi<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

        \n

        \u201cI\u2019m playing a game called Chants of Sennaar<\/strong><\/em> right now, and it is unlike any other puzzle \/ logic game I have played. You wake up in a tower with different classes of people on each level, and they all speak different languages (and obviously, you don\u2019t know any of them). You try to learn each language through context from people or environment. It is super chill but challenging.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Bahadir<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cI stumbled upon the Beli<\/strong> app for tracking and discovering restaurants, and it is by far the best option for that sort of thing, far better than a crowded Google Maps or noisy FourSquare. It has a lot of potential in its ability, and you get to keep discovering features as it learns about your preferences.\u201d \u2013 Rich<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cI have recently gotten into the 60 Songs That Explain the \u201890s<\/strong><\/em> podcast. I am definitely not an early adopter here but am loving the deep dives on the songs paired with just the right amount of sarcasm and history.\u201d \u2013 Antek<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cI\u2019m pumped for the finale of Scavengers Reign<\/strong><\/em>! Really enjoyed the season with fantastic planet symbiotic flora, Aeon Flux<\/em> adult animation \/ themes, and not everyone is making it out alive.\u201d \u2013\u00a0BG<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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        \u201cFor over 15 years I have made a regular pilgrimage to Kriegs.net<\/strong> to check out the wallpaper that he puts out consistently by the start of the month. The design is usually themed to the season and comes with the option of a calendar in the image. I don\u2019t know if this is a widely known resource, but it has always felt like a little secret that only I know about, which I am now willing to share.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Jonathan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

        Signing off<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
        \n

        This weekend, pour one out for Tumblr, one of the most interesting social networks on the internet, which appears to be in trouble. It\u2019s not dying, but it\u2019s not\u2026 not<\/em> dying, you know? Whatever happens next, this state of affairs is a bummer for a lot of reasons, including that Tumblr promised to work with ActivityPub \u2014\u00a0which would have been a big win for the fediverse \u2014 and I think is still maybe the web\u2019s best and most versatile posting tool. Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic (which owns Tumblr), spent a bunch of time this week answering people\u2019s questions about the future of Tumblr, and it paints a sad but interesting picture of what it really takes to build a better social network. It\u2019s all making me root for Mastodon even harder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        [ad_1] Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 14, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you\u2019re new here, welcome, you\u2019re my favorite, so happy you\u2019re here, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)\u00a0 I also have for you a rundown of the best tools …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}