There’s an app for almost anything these days. New apps are popping up all over the place, especially in the financial technology sphere. Since millennials have started to rely more on online technology, it would make sense that new apps are being invented to cater to their needs. Of course it is everyone’s goal to save money whenever, and however they can. Many people turn to the internet to answer their questions and solve their problems. For millennials, downloading an app to save money makes the most sense. “The finance industry can’t expect this generation to log off and head into brick-and-mortar offices. “There is certainly the potential to help solve pain points by doing it in an app, because we are pretty much addicted to our phones, and a lot of us are even banking primarily on our phones instead of a computer at this point,””[1] says Erin Lowly, the founder of a finance blog and book series. As the world becomes more digitized, so does money management.
Many apps offer the promise of saving you money, however, from a small monthly subscription fee of $1.99 and up. One aspect that is very important to note; this is real money. Often times when processing numbers on a phone, and being able to buy and sell at a click of a button, it’s easy to forget that this is real money. Large sums may be sent away at a click of a button, without fully realizing their worth. “The pitch behind many of these apps is that saving can be so easy that you don’t even notice the money is gone—but anything that purports to significantly improve someone’s financial life should be noticeable.”[2] These apps may rely on you forgetting about your monthly subscription and taking that small sum from your bank account every month. It becomes counter-intuitive to even start this subscription, if in the long run the user ends up losing more money than they gain. “Robinhood has been described as “recreational gambling,” and for good reason: It gives investing an appified, gamified makeover to the point that it’s easy to forget that in this app, you’re using real money—your money.”[3] Users must be cautious when placing their money in apps, and be aware of the financial risks that they are taking. It’s easy to advertise the significant gain that a user can get from investing just $10, but at the end of the day, the risks may outweigh the gains.
[1] McHugh, M. (March 2019), The Deep Vault of Millennial Fintech Apps, Retrieved from The Ringer https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/3/1/18244979/millennial-finances-money-apps-digit-fintech-investing Accessed on March 20, 2019
[3] Ib.