Money Management

Money advice from older Americans may be outdated and not applicable today. 

Often, older adults like to lecture young people about how they manage their money. Many young people feel that the majority of older folks sound out of touch, because old-school advice doesn’t always apply in today’s expensive world. Here’s why young people are tired of your lectures about saving money.

1. Young people want to live fulfilling lives

More young people are looking to change the narrative about what life should look like and are taking more steps to prioritize their needs to live a more fulfilling life. Instead of constantly hustling at work and never enjoying downtime, they want to take a break from their busy schedules to do more with their friends and family and experience the world around them.

Many older Americans like telling younger generations to stop wasting money on expenses like dining, entertainment, shopping, and travel. But most young Americans realize that depriving themselves of fun won’t improve their financial situations. However, spending some of their income on fun improves their well-being and makes life more enjoyable. So it’s worthwhile for young Americans to consider their wants and values when deciding how to spend and save money.

As money and mental fitness coach Melissa Mitt noted, “Knowing your values is extremely important when you’re starting your personal finance journey. For example, if you want to cut back on your spending and your initial reaction is, ‘I go out to eat too much,’ what if you LOVE going out to eat? Drastically cutting into that fund may make you resentful and delay progress. Looking into a different phone or insurance provider could be the solution instead. Another tactic is to create a list of your wants and rank them. Whatever is highest on the list gets funded first, and so on.”

2. Living costs continue to rise

Young people are finding it especially difficult to navigate rising living costs. Everything from gasoline and food to utility costs continues to increase. When you have minimal (or no) savings in the bank, it can be hard to get ahead when you’re already struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. As living costs continue to rise across the country, it only gets more challenging for young adults to set aside extra money in a high-yield savings account.

3. Many young people enter adulthood with debt

It can be challenging to save money and prioritize other financial goals when you begin your adult years with significant debt. Many young adults have debt from education expenses that impacts their ability to put extra money toward savings. Instead, they’re putting a large chunk of their income toward debt payoff and are forced to delay their savings goals.

4. Saving to buy a home takes much longer

Many young people have dreams of becoming homeowners, but the path to get there is now more of a challenge due to rising home prices. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median home sale price in the United States in Q4 of 2022 was $467,700.

For most young people, saving enough money for a down payment takes a long time — many struggle to afford increasing rental costs, which continue to skyrocket. While younger Americans may hope to buy a house someday, rising housing costs delay their dreams.

Average home prices used to be more affordable in years past. In 2000, the median home sale price was $165,300. In 1980, the median home sale price was $63,700. Additionally, home prices have increased much faster than wages.

According to Real Estate Witch, when accounting for inflation, home prices have increased by 118% since 1965, while median household income has increased by just 15%. Looking at these stats makes it easier to see why young folks are struggling to buy homes.

The financial landscape is constantly changing

If you’re giving well-meaning financial advice to the young people in your life, keep in mind that the world is constantly changing. What worked for you financially may not apply at all today. No matter your age or situation, there’s no one right way to manage your money. Check out our personal finance resources for helpful money management tips.

These savings accounts are FDIC insured and could earn you 14x your bank

Many people are missing out on guaranteed returns as their money languishes in a big bank savings account earning next to no interest. Our picks of the best online savings accounts can earn you 13x the national average savings account rate. Click here to uncover the best-in-class picks that landed a spot on our shortlist of the best savings accounts for 2023.

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 Read More 

Customers now have one fewer option to choose from. 

Store-bought coffee is one of those things I tend to prioritize in my budget. While I know that brewing my own at home will result in a much lower credit card tab, the way I see it, buying my morning coffee is an investment in my mood and productivity. So it’s worth splurging almost daily, especially since I make a point to keep other living costs of mine, like my mortgage, fairly low.

Meanwhile, my go-to spot for morning coffee is none other than Dunkin’. Since it’s on my way home after walking my kids to school, it’s easy and convenient for me to pick up a coffee before settling down at my desk to work.

Now normally, I’m the type of person who likes to keep her coffee simple. While some people might enjoy fancy lattes and different flavors, my usual Dunkin’ order is pretty straightforward: regular coffee with milk, nothing else.

But every so often, I’ll get a hankering for something a little different. And recently, on a visit to Dunkin’, I found myself in the mood for a Dunkaccino, which is basically like a coffee and hot chocolate blended into a single drink.

I was surprised to see that the Dunkaccino wasn’t on the menu but chalked it up to my local Dunkin’ being a smaller location. But then I did some digging, and lo and behold, it appears as though the Dunkaccino has disappeared off of the Dunkin’ menu for good. And some fans may not be happy about that.

Do you miss your favorite drink already?

The Dunkaccino was a mainstay on the Dunkin’ menu for more than two decades. But CNN reports that it’s officially been eliminated as a menu option.

This news isn’t totally shocking. It’s conceivable that the Dunkaccino was not the chain’s most popular or profitable drink. And it’s common for fast food chains to alter their menus and remove items that don’t tend to do well with customers.

What’s surprising here, though, is that the Dunkaccino stuck around for such a long time. So some fans may be really bummed about its disappearance.

Alternative options to consider

If you’re bemoaning the loss of your beloved Dunkaccino, you should know that if you’re willing to get creative, you might manage to replace it. For one thing, you could always order yourself a Dunkin’ hot chocolate with a shot of espresso. That might mimic the flavor nicely.

Similarly, if you’re willing to put in a little work at home, you could make yourself a half-cup of hot chocolate and a half-cup of coffee, and then stir them together. Doing so might also save you a lot of money compared to the cost of buying your morning beverage at Dunkin’ or another chain.

Of course, just because the Dunkaccino is gone for now doesn’t mean it won’t make a comeback. A Dunkin’ spokesperson told CNN that there’s a chance it will return in the future. But for now, you may need to explore other options for getting your hot chocolate and coffee fix in the same cup.

Alert: highest cash back card we’ve seen now has 0% intro APR until 2024

If you’re using the wrong credit or debit card, it could be costing you serious money. Our experts love this top pick, which features a 0% intro APR until 2024, an insane cash back rate of up to 5%, and all somehow for no annual fee.

In fact, this card is so good that our experts even use it personally. Click here to read our full review for free and apply in just 2 minutes.

Read our free review

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Maurie Backman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 Read More 

Beware the runaway bicycle. 

I lease a 2021 Toyota Corolla Hybrid because it boasts an affordable price tag, gas efficiency, and a high safety rating. For context, I drive like every pothole conceals a drunk toddler prepared to crawl in front of my car when I’m not looking. Safety is important to me.

When my lease expires in 2024, I expect to swap my hybrid for an electric vehicle. Since Tesla is leading EV cost declines and safety improvements in North America, they’re top of mind. The price tag looks expensive, but I’m willing to foot the bill for the perks coming in 2024 and beyond.

The future of EVs looks more polished than the cherry-red hood of my Corolla. Here’s why my next car will definitely be an electric vehicle.

Cost declines

This year, the folks at Tesla scribbled over the price tags on their most popular vehicle. A standard Model 3, Tesla’s most affordable car, dropped around $4,000 in January 2023 to about $43,000. Tesla dropped the price of its Model 3 Performance by $8,000, a steeper slide.

That’s not to say EV prices are trending on a flat, downward slope. If anything, it’s more like a spiky mountain range of peaks and valleys. Inflation, supply chain issues, and tax credits have all taken turns yanking the price tag one way or another. But the recent $7,500 EV tax credit has dropped the total cost of EV ownership across the board.

Cheaper batteries have driven down the cost of manufacturing quality electric vehicles. Battery costs decline about 16% a year, and the battery makes up a big chunk of vehicle manufacturing costs — about 20%-30%, by some estimates. As EV technology advances, the price of today-quality vehicles will likely fall off a cliff.

Less range anxiety

Range anxiety is a real issue. A colleague who drives a Tesla addressed the hidden costs of electric vehicles, and the fear of being unable to find chargers is one of them. That said, a few things make range anxiety a non-issue:

Home charging: I live in a house and am happy to splurge on an at-home charger to charge my EV overnight.Bigger charging network: Tesla has boosted their supercharger network from 1,700 in 2020 to over 4,400 in 2023. Tesla has begun letting other EVs use superchargers, and it plans on doubling its superchargers by the end of 2024.

By the time I consider a new vehicle, there will be more charging options. I’m also fortunate in that I drive little and live in a suburban household instead of an apartment complex. If I want to install a solar roof or home chargers, I can. It’s something to consider before purchasing an EV.

Low hassle

Electric cars require less work. They’re easier and cheaper to maintain than conventional cars.

Maintaining an EV is cheaper: They have fewer moving parts to screw up. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, EV maintenance costs clock in at about $0.061 per mile, while gas-powered cars clock in at $0.101 per mile. That’s fewer trips to the mechanic and a 30% discount on upkeep.

Fueling an EV is cheaper, too: Edmunds.com data pegs the cost of driving a Model 3 Performance at $97/month compared to $238/month for an average midsize car in California. Electricity is much cheaper than gas. EV drivers pocket the difference, saving thousands of dollars.

Auto insurance isn’t cheap, though. Insurance companies charge a premium for covering high-price cars. That said, Tesla insurance may help offset that by offering discounts to Tesla drivers. And the best car insurance companies offer drivers the most bang for their buck.

High safety ratings

Teslas are the safest cars out there. In 2018, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) lauded the Model 3 as one of the safest cars ever built. The current model scores perfectly in all categories, including frontal crash and rollover. Honestly, it’s a bit overkill, but it soothes my ever-present fear of being assaulted by a runaway bicycle.

It’s difficult to ignore the perks of driving an electric vehicle. So, why do it? Cost declines and better charging make EVs more attractive every year. They’re easier and cheaper to maintain than gas-powered cars like my Corolla. Plus, their simplicity makes them safer to drive.

Teslas aren’t the only EVs on the market. They might not even be the best value. For example, the best EVs to drive forever might just be the ones that hold onto their value the longest.

If you can comfortably afford the elevated upfront cost of buying or leasing an EV, it’s worth considering. EV total cost estimates vary, but trends look positive for drivers. The cars have shifted from protecting the environment to also protecting your wallet, and I’m here for it.

Our best car insurance companies for 2022

Ready to shop for car insurance? Whether you’re focused on price, claims handling, or customer service, we’ve researched insurers nationwide to provide our best-in-class picks for car insurance coverage. Read our free expert review today to get started.

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Cole Tretheway has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 Read More 

AI replaces tasks, but jobs remain. 

January 2023. My company’s Slack channel notifies me of new messages. My coworkers have finally broached the topic we’ve been tip-toeing around for weeks.

What’s up with ChatGPT, the new AI technology that everyone’s talking about?

Rumors abound. Supposedly, ChatGPT can write whole articles at the click of a button. Will it — gulp — replace us? Our editors hop on the Slack channel to address our concerns. Turns out, we aren’t being sacked and replaced by bots. Phew.

You don’t have to look far to find people convinced that AI will take over American jobs. After all, AI is proving capable of doing things we previously thought impossible.

Generative AI like Stable Diffusion creates beautiful, unique art. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT write hilarious short stories, pen full-length articles, and lie to your face. They offer cheap services and replace tasks performed by working Americans.

Does that sound bad? It’s not — not entirely, anyway. There’s more to the story.

While AI will probably put your job in danger as it is now, don’t hang up your suit jacket just yet. Despite the so-called “AI Revolution,” the future of work looks bright. In fact, AI is already giving people superpowers in the form of super-productivity.

We’ll get to all that in a second. First, we should probably address what’s going on in the AI universe. What’s got everyone so hyped up — and freaked out — about artificial intelligence?

The rapid rise of text-to-image generators

In September of 2022, something strange stormed the internet. Scrolling my Twitter feed, I noted dozens of accounts posting images of astronauts and cats. Weird, but OK. The internet is an odd place.

Because I’m a tech nerd who likes weird Twitter memes, I kept scrolling.

Turns out, those photorealistic images were computer-generated. A company known as OpenAI released software called Dall-E 2. Dall-E 2 let people feed it prompts like “astronaut” or “cat eating a banana,” and Dall-E spat back pictures based on those prompts.

I’ve commissioned art before. I’ve typically paid between $20 to $150 per image. A single project takes gig artists weeks to complete. Dall-E claimed it would generate free, high-quality images for me in seconds.

I was skeptical. But in November 2022, a competitor platform called Midjourney burst onto the scene, offering its own text-to-image generator. The images blew me away. They were beautiful, stylized landscapes that resembled professionally drawn concept art. Sure, the AI had a weird habit of sticking flowers everywhere, and it smeared faces into horrific caricatures.

But it was less than 1/100th the cost of human art. I quickly subscribed to the $30/month service.

Since then, more text-to-image generators like Stable Diffusion were released to the public. Millions of users churned out high-quality images for pennies. The world took notice.

OpenAI releases ChatGPT

In 2023, the company behind Dall-E released ChatGPT, a deceptively simple chatbot built on top of something called a large-language-model (LLM). Here’s how it works: You type text into a search bar, and ChatGPT spits out a totally reasonable-sounding response.

Here are some requests ChatGPT can and will fulfill:

Explain quantum physicsList three recipes for chocolate lava cakeTell me a silly story about penguins stealing from Inuit people

The internet exploded with examples of people chatting, arguing, and even flirting with ChatGPT. People loved it. ChatGPT grew at light speed. It took ChatGPT 40 days to acquire 40 million daily active users. For comparison, that same feat took Instagram 355 days.

Concerns were raised. Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, even released a blog post outlining how the company is taking steps to ensure AI doesn’t screw up humanity’s future.

Like text-to-image generators, ChatGPT is cheap. In fact, the basic version is free. Which raises the question: Will cheap AI tech like Midjourney and ChatGPT replace human jobs?

Will AI replace our jobs?

Noahpinion and AI researcher roon, two well-known bloggers, wrote a compelling piece on the future of work. They offer a framework for thinking about the future of AI. Here are some interesting takeaways worth noting:

Technological revolutions have happened in the past, and people still have jobs.AI replaces tasks, not jobs.The AI Revolution will boost productivity by giving regular people superpowers.

Technological revolutions cause panic. People feared that computers, or industrial robots, or AI would steal their jobs. But we have all those, and people still have jobs. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the current unemployment rate at just 3.4%.

So here are some good reasons not to panic yet.

AI can make people better at their jobs

On the podcast How I Built This with Guy Raz, Sam Altman predicted that AI will replace involuntary human labor, starting with knowledge workers and ending with blue collar jobs. Such a future seems far off, however. More important to many American workers is the present.

The truth is, artificial intelligence has been around for a while now, quietly taking over human tasks. AI software has automated bookkeeping tasks like analyzing transactions and filing paperwork. Budgeting apps use AI tech to help us budget without consulting a financial planner. Some debt payoff apps even save us money by analyzing how much we spend in real time.

AI is nothing new. But it’s true that recent AI toys seem way more capable than the stuff of yore. Here are five big tasks being replaced by AI right now.

1. Coding

AI coding assistants like Ghostwriter and GitHub Copilot automate coding tasks for software developers. Users estimate the assistants save them between 25% to 75% of time spent coding, much of it on repetitive tasks like searching error messages.

2. Writing and editing

ChatGPT and JasperAI write emails and articles at the click of a button. I use Notion’s AI assistant to help me brainstorm short stories. And I subscribe to Grammarly Premium, an editing service that uses machine-learning algorithms to improve my writing.

3. Image generation

Text-to-image generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion allow anyone to quickly make unique images for pennies. Vana lets users upload photos of their face and get back stylized profile pictures they can post to their socials.

4. Customer service

Ecommerce platform Shopify has harnessed ChatGPT API for better customer service. What that means is buyers on the Shop app can request things like “mens size 11 bouldering shoes” from a chatbot. It’s easy as a conversation.

5. Insurance underwriting

Insurance company Lemonade uses AI to underwrite insurance, assign policies, and respond to claims. It says that AI technology is the secret to its success, citing the Lemonade app’s high App Store rating as proof that the technology works.

These jobs all still exist. AI has not taken humans completely out of the equation; it’s just made workers more capable and given consumers more options.

AI is replacing tasks, not jobs

Calculators didn’t replace mathematicians — they just made doing math easier. Computers did the same thing. What mathematicians actually do with their time has radically changed, but they remain in demand. So do writers, programmers, and artists.

For now, anyway.

It’s entirely possible that eventually, better chatbots will replace writers, and machines will code everything, and the demand for human artists will all but vanish. Some jobs, like food delivery, may be disrupted more than others (self-driving cars have come a long way).

On the other hand, AI gives people superpowers. It automates boring or repetitive tasks like negotiating your bills. It helps regular people manage money while they learn higher-level skills like financial literacy. AI lets people focus on interesting, valuable, or complicated work.

AI is already creating new jobs

In 2023, Scale.ai hired the first ever “Prompt Engineer.” The job required the Prompt Engineer to skillfully navigate large language models like ChatGPT. Other companies soon followed suit.

It’s reasonable to assume that as more businesses adopt AI technology, more unique jobs will be created, opening the door to never-before-seen professions, just like the rise of the internet enabled jobs like “full-time blogger” and “influencer.”

Prepare for the changing job market

Real talk: Nobody really knows exactly what’s going to happen with AI. Experts give conflicting opinions, and that’s frustrating. People want certainty, and the future of AI is murky.

What you can do is take steps to prepare for a changing job market impacted by all these advances in AI technology (and the advances to come). Here’s how.

Experiment with free tools

Be proactive. Try using free, AI-powered tools to put your mind at ease and give you a sense of the current state of AI technology. If you haven’t poked around basic ChatGPT yet, I recommend it. You can easily log in with your Google account. Midjourney offers new users a free trial.

Learn new skills

The world is changing faster than ever. Staying abreast of changes to the job market can help you stay one step ahead of possible threats to your work. Pick up hard skills that broaden your job opportunities.

Coding teaches you how to solve problems. Replit teaches you how to code basic Python for free. I’m (slowly) taking their course right now to better understand how software actually works.

Prompt engineering sounds fancy but is really just human-to-AI communication. Playing with tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT teaches you how to effectively communicate with AI models.

There’s no silver bullet, no online course, that will guarantee your job security. In fact, the act of learning may be more important than any specific skills you pick up. Learning about new technology teaches you how to adapt and stay flexible in a changing job market.

Make AI work for you

As AI tech becomes more capable, the job market will continue to change. AI tech has replaced humans in certain tasks and given them superpowers in others. Like all disruptive technology, it forces us to rethink how to best go about our day jobs.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We are more than capable of getting AI to work for us. After freaking out about ChatGPT, I gave it a whirl. Turns out, it’s good at brainstorming headlines. That makes my job easier, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

New jobs will come online, and new AI-powered tools will surface that give regular people superpowers. Prepare for a changing job market by experimenting with free tools and flexing those learning muscles. It’s an exciting time to be alive.

Alert: highest cash back card we’ve seen now has 0% intro APR until 2024

If you’re using the wrong credit or debit card, it could be costing you serious money. Our experts love this top pick, which features a 0% intro APR until 2024, an insane cash back rate of up to 5%, and all somehow for no annual fee.

In fact, this card is so good that our experts even use it personally. Click here to read our full review for free and apply in just 2 minutes.

Read our free review

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Citigroup is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Cole Tretheway has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 Read More 

Why sit out on something that can help you build wealth? 

Imagine walking into a room and finding your significant other kissing a virtual stranger. Worse, they’re on the floor. You’re immediately sure that your SO is cheating, and you’re furious. In a matter of moments, you make a series of life-changing decisions. It’s not until an ambulance arrives that you learn the truth. Your significant other was performing CPR on someone who’d collapsed and stopped breathing.

And that’s the problem with only knowing part of the story.

As humans, we’re hardwired to make decisions on the fly. After all, our ancestors didn’t have all day to decide whether to run as a pride of lions moved in their direction. To survive, we’ve learned to make quick and conclusive decisions. That very human habit can be good, saving us from unhealthy impulses. But it can also be bad because once we’ve made a snap decision, it can be hard to go back and rethink the situation.

A greater risk

Investing is all about ups and downs. When things are going well, you’re far less likely to hear anyone complain. When the market is on its way down, whining becomes the common language of investors worldwide.

If all that whining and uncertainty has convinced you that investing is dangerous, we’re here to offer a different perspective. We’re here to tell you that not investing may be your most dangerous financial move. Here are three reasons why.

1. Retirement is going to be expensive

If you’re saying “no, duh” at this point, stick with us. When we say expensive, we mean that you will run into expenses you may not have planned for. According to a study by RBC Wealth Management, the projected lifetime healthcare costs for a 65-year-old couple who retired in 2021 is a staggering $662,156.

Of course, that won’t all come out of your pocket at once, and a portion of that $662,156 will go toward insurance premiums, but it’s still a chunk of change.

Chances are, you won’t build up a large enough savings account or earn enough investing in certificates of deposit (CDs) to cover the expense. Historically, the kind of growth you will need comes from a diversified investment portfolio.

2. You’re missing out on the good stuff

This morning, I decided to look at my Solo 401(k). I’m unsure if I groaned out loud when I saw the balance or if it was in my head. Almost immediately, though, these stats from Hartford Funds came to mind:

Between 1928 and 2021, investors experienced a bear market 22% of the time. A bear market is when investments lose 20% or more in value. On average, stocks have lost 36%. Sounds awful, right? However, the next stat makes up for the losses and then some.Between 1928 and 2021, investors experienced a bull market 78% of the time. A bull market is when investments gain 20% or more in value. More impressive is that stocks have gained an average of 114% during bull markets.

If you’re not investing, that means you’re missing out on the market when it’s up and down. If you’re sitting it out, your money has no chance of making the gains we’ve seen since the 1920s, and you’re not taking advantage of all the bargains you can find while the market is depressed.

3. You’re underestimating yourself

The biggest hurdle for many new investors is making that first buy. It feels so complicated, so foreign. We’ve all been there.

According to Warren Buffett, risk comes from not knowing what we’re doing. Familiarizing yourself with one investment term at a time is a great way to get started.

When I first began, I made a list of investment terms I needed help understanding. It was on a piece of notebook paper and looked a whole lot like a Piggly Wiggly shopping list. I had things like:

BondsAsset allocationExchange-traded fundsIndexMarket capitalizationPrice-to-earnings (P/E) ratio

The list was much longer, but you get the point. I did not fully understand a single term, and that was okay. I was determined to learn about them one at a time, and that’s what I did by seeking out the most straightforward explanations I could find.

I don’t know when it started to sink in, but after a while, the things I read made sense, and a picture of how investing works began to form. By the time I was contributing money to an IRA, the terms felt familiar.

I know the list sounds corny, but one thing I fear is not being able to take care of myself financially. And I realized that building wealth was off the table if I was unwilling to learn enough to take the mystery out of investing.

I still make mistakes, and I sometimes have to change course, but that’s because investors never stop learning. No one knows it all.

Avoiding the market because you’re sure you’ll lose all your money is like assuming your significant other is kissing some rando at a party. You won’t know the truth until you get all the facts.

Our best stock brokers

We pored over the data and user reviews to find the select rare picks that landed a spot on our list of the best stock brokers. Some of these best-in-class picks pack in valuable perks, including $0 stock and ETF commissions. Get started and review our best stock brokers.

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Dana George has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 Read More 

Being able to deposit checks from anywhere is amazing. 

When I was a kid, a lot of the cartoons I watched promised that by the 2000s, we’d all be driving around in flying cars and making video phone calls. That second part came true, at least. But even though I don’t have a flying car (yet), I do have a tiny computer that fits in my pocket and is more powerful than the computers used to get humans to the moon during the Apollo space program. And it lets me manage my finances quickly and easily.

If you haven’t explored your bank’s mobile app yet, you’re missing out. Or maybe you’ve just skimmed the surface, using the app to check your balance occasionally while you’re on the go. A lot of people really love their mobile banking app; in fact, two-thirds of the respondents to the Chase Digital Banking Attitudes Study from late last year said they can’t live without it. Here’s a look at some ways you can truly get the most from your banking app.

Lean on the convenience

Mobile banking apps are just so darn convenient. Wondering what your checking account balance is while you’re sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store, about to run in for a few things? It’s easy to find out.

You can also deposit a check in your account anytime and from anywhere. Just follow the directions in your app, take a photo of each side of the check, and watch the money hit your account in a few days, no trip to the bank required.

Your mobile banking app might let you pay others quickly and easily if your bank has a partnership with a payment service like Zelle. This will also save you a trip to an ATM (or having to write a check).

If you receive a new debit card (or a new credit card, if you have accounts with a big bank that offers them) in the mail, you may be able to activate that card right in your banking app. This is often faster than calling the phone number on the back of the card and plugging in the card number.

Rely on the security

Banking apps offer a lot of security features that can help keep your money safe. Speaking of your credit or debit card, if you discover your card’s gone missing, you can likely report the loss or freeze the card (or both) in your banking app. With debit cards especially, the sooner you report the loss, the less likely you are to be on the hook for any fraudulent charges on your account.

You can also take advantage of multifactor authentication while using the app itself. If you opt in for it, the app will require at least two kinds of verification to prove it’s really you accessing your account. This could consist of inputting your name and password and then also entering a code sent via text message to the phone number on file in your account. It’s a good idea to activate this if you’re given the option by the app, and ensure you’re keeping your app updated and using a strong password for the most secure mobile banking experience.

Take advantage of the financial insights

The best banking apps offer the chance to really dig into your spending and easily see where you might be spending too much. Many people struggle with budgeting and everyday money management, so it’s a good idea to take the help where you can get it.

If you’re putting cash into your savings account to meet a big goal (such as buying a home), your banking app can provide updates on your progress and might offer opportunities for how to increase your savings. This could be by rounding checking account purchases up to the nearest dollar and putting that cash into your savings for you.

Mobile banking apps are a great way to manage your accounts and get the insights you need to meet your financial goals. If you haven’t tried your bank’s yet, I recommend downloading it and seeing how much it might help you.

These savings accounts are FDIC insured and could earn you 14x your bank

Many people are missing out on guaranteed returns as their money languishes in a big bank savings account earning next to no interest. Our picks of the best online savings accounts can earn you 13x the national average savings account rate. Click here to uncover the best-in-class picks that landed a spot on our shortlist of the best savings accounts for 2023.

We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Discover Financial Services is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends JPMorgan Chase. The Motley Fool recommends Discover Financial Services. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 Read More