So, get ready to grab that smartphone, tablet, or laptop and use these strategies to help you take charge of your financial life with confidence.
A Note About Going Online
Americo Senior Life understands that some seniors may be apprehensive about going online for anything related to their finances. While Americo makes it easy to get life insurance online, you may be a little concerned when it comes to your finances and the internet. Fortunately, we have you covered. You can apply the same safety steps we outlined in our article 6 Online Shopping Tips for Seniors when using certain apps to help manage your finances.
1. Create a Budget
Before you do anything else, take a good look at your finances, what debts you have, your expenses, and your income. Getting organized is the first step to creating a budget. Thankfully, there are a variety of apps for seniors that make creating and maintaining a budget simple, secure, and easy. Here are three good examples:
Mint – a proven app for setting a budget and sticking to it. Mint tracks and organizes your transactions, lets you know when payments are due, monitors your credit, and more.
Honeydue – is designed to help couples manage their money together. It’s a free app with in-app purchases for additional features and provides a great way to save and manage your money.
PocketGuard – is a simple-to-use app that helps you create and stay on budget. It tracks how much you spend each month and even finds offers to help you lower your bills.
Regardless of how you create and manage your budget, it’s important to remember not to sacrifice the peace of mind that affordable life insurance for seniors provides. It’s definitely something you always want to keep in your budget.
2. Debt Management
If you have credit card debt or debt from other loans, there are a variety of helpful approaches for paying down the amount you owe. The previously mentioned Mint app can help you create financial goals for your debt and track your progress. Some additional considerations for debt management include:
- Create a debt payment plan to prioritize your debt
- Pay more than the minimum amount on debts with the highest interest rates, then make minimum payments on everything else
- Consult a financial advisor first to see about using retirement funds to pay off debts
- Make adjustments to your lifestyle to save money and apply that to debt payments
3. Increase Income
Perhaps the simplest answer to taking charge of your finances is to increase the amount of money you have coming in to handle them. Aside from delaying your retirement or going back to work, there are a lot of ways to earn additional income from home, including:
- Freelancing in your field of expertise
- Becoming an online tutor
- Taking in a boarder by renting out an empty room or renting empty space in a garage for storage
- Downsizing your possessions by selling things you don’t need or don’t want to maintain anymore or moving into a more economical home
Just like how life insurance for seniors can help protect your peace of mind, taking a few simple steps can help preserve your financial peace of mind. And, while today’s technology does make it easier for seniors to take advantage of a variety of ways to manage their finances, the best and first thing to do is use the internet for more research.
If you have any questions about getting life insurance online or are interested in learning more about our solutions for senior plan life insurance, please feel free to contact us. We’re here to help.