Yahoo Finance 5 Tools to Manage Your Money in Retirement
A lot of emphasis is placed on saving and investing money for retirement. But once you retire, you'll have to spend a considerable amount of time managing your money. Saving money involves building up a large enough nest egg to live comfortably in retirement, but managing your money is about making it last as long as you need it to.
Once you retire, there are at least four factors that will affect your retirement investments: inflation, swings in the financial markets, large and unexpected expenses such as medical bills and the potential of outliving your money.
Intelligent investing will go a long way toward avoiding problems in any of these areas. But managing your money wisely will be just as important. That starts with having a budget in retirement. There are a variety of resources to help you budget, often free of charge. Here are five of them worth considering.
1. Mint. Mint is a popular free budget software package. It's an all-in-one financial application that allows you to easily manage your money and pay your bills on a single online platform. Mint also allows you to check your credit score for free.
Mint pulls all of your financial information into the platform, allowing you to see the big picture of your financial situation in one place on a continuous basis. You can add accounts, credit cards and bills to see what you owe and when payments need to be made. You can also track your spending patterns and investments.
Mint also has more than 20 kinds of alerts to notify you of fees, remind you to pay bills and warn you if you're going over your pre-determined budget. They will also send you a summary of your spending and saving so you know exactly where you stand.
2. You Need A Budget. YNAB is a budgeting application that enables you to track and automate your budget. Unlike Mint, it isn't free, but it offers a free 34-day trial. The app runs on both Windows and Mac, and has a mobile app feature as well. YNAB has a wealth of information and tools on the site, including classes about personal finance topics.
3. Personal Capital. Personal Capital is a registered investment advisor that offers a free online dashboard. The dashboard tracks investments, including asset allocation, holdings and fees. It also offers budgeting software through its cash flow tool, which allows you to drill down into your expenses, enabling you to track your spending by various criteria including category, merchant and date. The investment platform has a 401(k) fee analyzer, mutual fund fee analyzer and tax optimization. The tool also allows you to view your upcoming bills, including your last payment made, the minimum payments due and the total balance outstanding.
4. Quicken. With Quicken, your income and expenses are automatically downloaded from your bank and credit cards into the application. Expenses are tracked and categorized. The software automatically sets up budget goals based on what you've spent in the past, then allows you to customize your plan and track your progress. You will also be able to see upcoming paychecks, bills and payments to help you avoid late fees.
5. Mvelopes. Like other budgeting software packages, Mvelopes tracks all of your income and expenses in one application, and allows you to retain specific details of your spending patterns. They also offer a mobile app so you can track your budget on the go. Mvelopes uses the familiar envelope system of budgeting, although in electronic format. They also offer money4life coaching, which is a custom budget program that includes live phone support, one-on-one coaching and programs to help you save money.
Rob Berger is the founder of the personal finance blog the Dough Roller.
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