What kind of technology can you use to help yourself with a budget? It's Jon from Financial MD, welcome to today's Didactic Minute.
There are so many apps out there and probably more coming and have been for the last 15 years since the iPhone came out that can help you to actually create a budget, track what you're spending, stick to a budget maybe -- all of these things are things that we call automated external disciplines or AEDs. So, for you physicians out there or first responders, not an automated external defibrillator; it's automated external disciplines. And so, what these essentially do -- and there's different categories of these: cash flow, budget, automatic savings like acorns -- we've talked about that before; but today, I want to talk about what things are out there to help you with technology to maybe create a budget and stick to a budget and the first thing that we say in all of our resident lectures is you have to know what you're spending before you can realize what to do next.
One of the big things I'm a fan of is Mint. Now, this is timely because Mint is going to be shutting down. Mint was acquired by Intuit who owned QuickBooks and Quicken and all that stuff and so they're going to shut it down and what we've actually been recommending to people is something called Monarch Money and we'll put a link in the comments so you can quickly get to that and check that out -- that's probably the closest substitute. Some of you guys may be using Rocket Money. I don't think it has the full capabilities, but Rocket Money will actually help you maybe negotiate and reduce some bills -- we can talk about that in another video. But check out Monarch Money, that's a good one. YNAB -- Y-N-A-B -- is another app if you need to budget. EveryDollar by Dave Ramsey but I think you have to pay for that to link up your accounts. So those are a few options to help you with your cash flow and your spending because I don't care how much money you make; you need to know where your money is going. And I'm not telling you to pull back or throttle or stop spending things. Maybe you don't need to, but you have to know first whether you do or you don't, and then knowing what to do. We do this concept called reverse budgeting with our residents which, actually, we do with our attendings as well. So, shoot us a question. I told you we can send you that spreadsheet that we help with that on. But that's the technology that I would recommend. I'd say Mint, but that's going to be phasing out. So check out Monarch Money. Check out your bank. Most banks are actually really good at at least categorizing your spending. But what we want to see is some kind of app that categorizes your spending and alerts you. So, post in the comments below. I'd love to hear what apps you guys use. Maybe it's something we haven't heard of that we can share with the community and then what other features does that app have and maybe you just use an Excel spreadsheet; maybe just use your bank. But shameless plug here -- the Financial MD app does a handful of that as well and combines it with some personal financial goals and goals planning and all that other stuff as well. So, check that out as well. Check out the Financial MD app. Just search Financial MD on the App Store. It's free. We don't make any money on it so there's not really a shameless plug here, but that's another one that we believe in and we've created. So, hope that helps. Shoot us a comment or message if you've got questions or want to get some other tips or just chat.
Again, this is Jon with your Didactic Minute. We'll see you next time.
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