It’s barely been a month since the iPhone update which allows people to download applications written by 3rd-party developers, and there are already more than 1,000 to choose from. Here are a few of the more promising entries in the field of Personal Finance:
Loan Shark
It’s unreasonable to expect that a person, when presented with a loan offer, can glance at the numbers and determine whether the salesperson is trying to rip them off. If it hadn’t happened to a friend of mine, I might’ve chalked this scenario up to simple paranoia, but it does happen. Thankfully, what with the Internet empowering us all, it happens less and less.
If all you’re looking to do is check the math on a loan offer, there are other ways to go about it. For example, you could point your mobile browser to CalcNexus’s Auto Loan Calculator and get an answer pretty quickly. The major advantage to the Loan Shark iPhone app is that it saves loan details to a Favorites screen so you can compare offers from different banks.
It also shows amortization tables and works as well for credit cards and home loans. For my money, in this case US$4.99, that’s a lot more convenient than carrying around a notepad and a pen.
Save Benjis
At some point (for me this happens weekly), you’ve been in a store, looking at something you probably want to buy, and you thought to yourself, “I could get this cheaper somewhere else.” Save Benjis answers your doubts for you in a matter of seconds. Best of all, it’s free, so you have nothing to lose if you want to give it a try.
Pick & Choose – Groceries
“Okay, I’m at Target. What was that other thing I needed to buy?” The analog lifestyle solution to this conundrum was always to keep a shopping list on the fridge and take it with you. But more often than not, I’m coming straight from work, or I forgot the list at home.
You may have noticed by now that I have a sort of contempt for paper records. Anyway…
This app has a built-in database of over 1,500 grocery items, so you barely need to type anything. In fact, I think I’m going to buy this app right now.
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10:56 am (reply)
ok, I am continually becoming more convinced that I need an iPhone… my mom just got one and I don’t have one! What is the world coming to? :)
1:40 pm (reply)
Very cool. I just got an iPhone and like Save Benjis a lot (along with Pandora, and AOL Radio…). I’ll have to check out the other two.
Now, if only I could find a good To Do list…
Randy
2:40 pm (reply)
@Randy – I’ve heard absolutely incredible things about a to-do app called “Things” (http://culturedcode.com/things/iphone/). I don’t have an iPhone, so I haven’t tried it out. But it looks really cool.
4:13 pm (reply)
I like the idea of the grocery list app. I would like to see a site that creates a grocery list from recipes you choose on the site. that would be awesome!
11:39 pm (reply)
Pick & Choose is pretty cool. I got to use it at the grocery store this week. It sorts your list by “category”—roughing approximating to aisles in most stores—and when you touch an item it drops off your list immediately. Also if you come across something that isn’t in their database, you can save it as a custom item without any trouble (it just doesn’t get sorted into “aisles” like other items). Other finance-related apps I use:
1. A Personal Assistant – the iPhone version PageOnce.com. Not solely finance, but I set it up with credit cards, mortgages, utility accounts, etc. to track everything in one place. There’s TONS of info you can track with this.
2. Spend – Simple budget tracker. You enter the amount for each category for the day, week, month or year, and then enter transactions by category. The program tracks how much you’ve spent in each category and how much you have left (both in a dollar amount and in a percentage).
10:16 pm (reply)
If the prospect of downloading actual applications to an iPhone is attractive to you, I would mention that before the end of the year, some pretty slick phones will be coming out utilizing the Android platform, which is open source (Linux based for those who care). The proliferation of third party apps (like REAL applications) appears to be amazing. Just my .02 …