What are the financial apps on my phone? I get asked that often. I am very pro-technology (being a developer myself). And I do believe that technology plays an important role in your journey of financial freedom. From helping you create content for primary and passive sources of income to researching investment options, technology plays an important role. I use a mix of mobile apps and web apps for my investment needs. In this blog, I will share the mobile financial apps I have on my phone.
Welcome to my blog series – ‘In Pursuit of Financial Freedom‘. This is the 6th post in the series and if you have not read the earlier 5, I highly recommend giving them a read –
- Why is investing your money necessary?
- The basics – Do this before you start investing.
- What are the different investment options in India?
- Mutual Funds – How do I select one to invest in?
- Credit Cards: Their role in your financial freedom
If you are the traditional kind who is paranoid about using mobile apps for your finances, turn away. This blog isn’t for you. Nothing I say will change your mind. And I can’t guarantee protection either. I haven’t made these apps. But I have used them personally. And I trust them. And if we use technology as a tool, it will only help us grow.
So, here are the financial apps that I have on my phone –
1. Kite –
Kite is an app by Zerodha that I use for investing/trading in shares. It is one of the easiest apps I have found to use from a User Experience perspective and has some great features that are unique to their platform. I switch between its web app and the mobile app depending on what device I have with me. And both the web and mobile apps are great to use. If you don’t have a Zerodha account yet use this link to create one.
2. Coin –
Coin is another app by Zerodha that I use for investing in Mutual Funds. Mutual Funds currently form the bulk of my investments and Coin is perfect to explore and invest in them. It has some amazing features like easy setup, pause, stop, or update of SIP, auto step-up of SIP and so much more. They have over 2000+ Mutual Funds available to invest in and since these funds are direct and not regular, zero brokerage charges are applied. If you are interested in finding how I select a Mutual Fund to invest in, read this blog post. For using the Coin app you will need a Zerodha account and you can open one here.
3. Smallcase –
I have been raving about the smallcase concept for a while now. It is a wonderful app to find a middle ground between stocks and mutual funds. I have given a brief about it earlier but a smallcase essentially creates portfolios of stocks depending on sectors or volatility and is a great way to buying stocks. The app also provides SIP options for investing in a case which is quite useful.
4. CoinSwitch –
I have tried multiple crypto trading apps. CoinSwitch is the one I am currently using. The app is still quite new but it has a very easy-to-use interface as compared to the other apps I have tried. And I will continue using this until I find a better alternative. It does have a lot of popular cryptos available for trading including Bitcoin, Ethereum, DogeCoin, Polygon, Ripple, Litecoin, and many more.
5. Cred –
I use Cred for tracking my credit card payments. It pulls all my credit cards together and it has a hassle-free way of making credit card payments. In return, it offers Cred points which can be used in the Cred store to get discounts on some products. The app has one of the best UI I have seen in any app yet. And it has been adding a lot of new features like mutual funds tracking, rent pay, etc.
6. TickerTape –
I have only recently started using the TickerTape app. It has a lot of great features like stock analysis, performance forecast, Market Mood Index, etc. It also has a paid subscription model for extra features that I plan to explore in the future.
7. IndMoney –
It gets difficult to track your money when they are invested in so many different places – stocks, mutual funds, EPF, PPF, FDs, real estate, bank accounts, etc. I was looking for a solution that would show my ‘net worth’ across all of these avenues and IndMoney is the best I have found so far. It has a solid backing so I trust sharing my info. Most of the info is auto-tracked but you can also manually add them. It is also slowly becoming a one-stop-shop for managing all your finances because it also tracks insurances, allows you to invest in funds directly from the app, and also has amazing features like investing in foreign equities like the US stock market, etc. If you haven’t tried this app before you can use my invite code to start exploring this.
8. GPay –
This is my UPI app choice among the sea of apps available. For some reason, I have never liked PayTm and any other wallet apps that now support UPI. Google Pay is very seamless to use. A lot of street vendors and shopkeepers already accept it. I don’t think I need to explain a lot about Gpay. Most of you should already have it by now.
9. WazirX –
This is another crypto exchange app I had tried for a while. It is also one of India’s oldest and has some great features. The only problem with its app is that it is not very user-friendly. And I slowly started to phase this app out until all my funds are moved to CoinSwitch. WazirX recently announced the launch of India’s first NFT marketplace which makes this platform even more exciting and I am hopeful the NFT market will explode in India. It also has a decent web app which CoinSwitch is lacking.
10. Wise –
I use Wise (formerly known as Transferwise) for international remittance. Banks charge exorbitant transaction fees. This app has lower fees and I have been using this for a few years for transferring money from my US account to my India account or for transferring college fees to my brother in Germany. To be honest, I haven’t explored a lot of other apps in this space because I have been very content with this one.
11. Varsity –
Varsity is another app from the Zerodha portfolio of apps. This one doesn’t need a Zerodha account though. If you are interested in learning about the technicals of the stock market, this is a great starting point. The app has interactive courses and tests that help you track your knowledge. I highly recommend this as it has some really great resources.
12. Uphold –
This is a very recent addition to my list of apps and honestly, I don’t use it much. Recently I started using Brave Browser because it respects user’s privacy and disables all the auto trackers by default. It also believes that content creators and ad viewers should be rewarded directly rather than through ad networks like Google. So it basically pays you to watch ads. It is a blockchain system and you are rewarded with BAT (Basic Attention Token). The BATs you earn in a month can currently only be moved to an Uphold wallet so I had to install this Uphold app to transfer the tokens from the browser into a wallet. I haven’t explored any other features of this app.
13. Other financial apps –
Apart from the apps above, I use some other apps like banking apps – HDFC bank and BOFA. I also an app from the time I hired a financial advisor. I don’t use his services anymore and manage all my investments myself but I still have some money invested so I use the WealthElite app to track my old investments.
Quick Reference Links for these Financial Apps –
Conclusion –
I am sure this list will keep changing as I explore more apps and services. I will keep this updated or write a new post every year / 6 months. But as of today, June 2021, these are the financial apps that I have on my phone. What’s on your phone? Let me know in the comments below. And press the bell icon to receive notifications whenever I publish a new article.
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. All the apps that I have shown here are from my personal experience that I use on a day to day basis.
