Apple highlights three financial wellness apps that help marginalized communities

VaporStain said:

The bigotry of low expectations.

Ten bucks says this is one of the recently-banished chuds resurrected.

This is nice to help people, but this is not going to solve the problem people having with money management. 

Knowing your credit score does not solve anything and those who find out now they have a bad credit score and no one will lend you money is too little too late, it could take years to repair years of bad decisions. 

Most people have no ideal what a budget is or how to live within a budget. Part of the problem of living in the wealthiest country in the world is everyone looks around and wants what everyone else has around them. No one seem to be willing to go without things they do not have money to afford and all we hear today this is because of some sort of "ism" as the reason people are not better than they should be or do not have what someone else has. Today, only 30% the people had any sort of saving , most people have more than 10K in credit card debt, 

My dad taught me a very simple rule of money do not spend what you do not have in your pocket, that was in the days of cash, today spend what you do not have in checking account, and only use a credit cards to facilitate a simple transaction (ie not having to pull out check book). I taught both my kids these simple skills, and my daughter adopted her own if you have $20 only spend $9 and put away the $1 of the $11 you get back in change. She did this since she was small and one day we found a stash of $1 bills she was keeping if was a significant amount she did not spend over the years of having money gifts and working.

maestro64 said:

This is nice to help people, but this is not going to solve the problem people having with money management. 

Knowing your credit score does not solve anything and those who find out now they have a bad credit score and no one will lend you money is too little too late, it could take years to repair years of bad decisions. 

Most people have no ideal what a budget is or how to live within a budget. Part of the problem of living in the wealthiest country in the world is everyone looks around and wants what everyone else has around them. No one seem to be willing to go without things they do not have money to afford and all we hear today this is because of some sort of "ism" as the reason people are not better than they should be or do not have what someone else has. Today, only 30% the people had any sort of saving , most people have more than 10K in credit card debt, 

My dad taught me a very simple rule of money do not spend what you do not have in your pocket, that was in the days of cash, today spend what you do not have in checking account, and only use a credit cards to facilitate a simple transaction (ie not having to pull out check book). I taught both my kids these simple skills, and my daughter adopted her own if you have $20 only spend $9 and put away the $1 of the $11 you get back in change. She did this since she was small and one day we found a stash of $1 bills she was keeping if was a significant amount she did not spend over the years of having money gifts and working.

And your solution to people having bad money management skills is....?  Go back in time and get their parents to raise them smarter?

A few apps are unlikely to move the needle on financial literacy a huge amount, but they'll might help a bit.  Credit scores can be rebuilt with effort, and having an app that tells you how to do that sounds like a good thing to me.  I already have a credit score monitoring app (not the one in the article) that gives me month reports, just for a bit of peace of mind.  I don't check it all that often, but maybe I should.

crowley said:

maestro64 said:

This is nice to help people, but this is not going to solve the problem people having with money management. 

Knowing your credit score does not solve anything and those who find out now they have a bad credit score and no one will lend you money is too little too late, it could take years to repair years of bad decisions. 

Most people have no ideal what a budget is or how to live within a budget. Part of the problem of living in the wealthiest country in the world is everyone looks around and wants what everyone else has around them. No one seem to be willing to go without things they do not have money to afford and all we hear today this is because of some sort of "ism" as the reason people are not better than they should be or do not have what someone else has. Today, only 30% the people had any sort of saving , most people have more than 10K in credit card debt, 

My dad taught me a very simple rule of money do not spend what you do not have in your pocket, that was in the days of cash, today spend what you do not have in checking account, and only use a credit cards to facilitate a simple transaction (ie not having to pull out check book). I taught both my kids these simple skills, and my daughter adopted her own if you have $20 only spend $9 and put away the $1 of the $11 you get back in change. She did this since she was small and one day we found a stash of $1 bills she was keeping if was a significant amount she did not spend over the years of having money gifts and working.

And your solution to people having bad money management skills is....?  Go back in time and get their parents to raise them smarter?

A few apps are unlikely to move the needle on financial literacy a huge amount, but they'll might help a bit.  Credit scores can be rebuilt with effort, and having an app that tells you how to do that sounds like a good thing to me.  I already have a credit score monitoring app (not the one in the article) that gives me month reports, just for a bit of peace of mind.  I don't check it all that often, but maybe I should.

My point is and was, people are making personal choices and most choose not to understand how to manage their personal finances. Including my own kids who I made it a priority for them for two reasons. One I did not want them dependent on others, when you do not have money then you're at the mercy or generosity of others. Second and more importantly, I did not want my kids coming back to live off my finances. I got one off the payroll and doing well and the second will be off the payroll next year when they are done with school.

The issue has nothing to do with lack of information, there has been lots of information on this topic, there are so many books on this subject which have been around for a long time this is not something is new. These people are choosing not to understand and learn. I self taught myself on the this topic beyond my dad's simple advise of do not spend what you do not have in your pocket. This has nothing to do with education or how smart someone is. I talk to people all the time about their 401K and surprise how little people know about what they are invested in or how a mutual fund works. People put all this money into the market and forget about it and maybe look it once or twice of year when the market tanks and complain about how much money they loss.

Guess what, if you know how to manage money, you do not need to know how to improve your credit score since it will happen on its own. My credit score is well above 800 and has been there for at least the last 20 yrs when banks started to sharing this information on loan applications and I did nothing to manage it. I just made sure I did not take on debt and ensure when I had debt it was not to the max level allowed. Both my kids credit score are near 800 and all we did was not allow them to take on debt and use CC as cash.