I promised a few weeks ago that I would include a post on some of my favourite apps that help manage my personal finance more easily.  I know I promised to do it last week, but I thought you might be somewhat iPhone info overloaded, so I decided to give a break for a week.  I used these apps when I had the iTouch and am still using these apps on the iPhone (because they are so awesome).

I’m sure you can find the same (or similar) apps on your Android or your Blackberry too (and other smart phones/iPads etc).

Six Great and FREE Personal Finance Apps:

• Bloomberg: I love this app! I use it daily (or at least Monday to Friday).  You can input your stocks (amount acquired, price acquired) and it tells you how much you are up (wheee!!) or down (boooo!!).  You can also track stocks that you don’t currently hold but want to watch.  It helps me keep track of my stocks to make sure they’re not doing anything too crazy and helps cue me to take action and pounce when I see a stock that I’ve been eye-balling that’s on “sale”.
• Cheap Gas: This app is pretty cool too.  It tracks your location and tells you when and what the most recent prices on gas are in your vicinity.  The main drawback is that it depends on people reporting the price, so sometimes the prices can be a bit outdated (like 8 hours ago).
• Pay Back: I find this app quintessential, especially for traveling and going “dutch”.  You leap with faith when inputting the numbers, but it really does work and is 100% accurate.  How it works is you create a trip, input the people chipping in for the trip, input the expenses and who paid (and who is chipping in for the expense) and then press ‘It’s Pay Back Time!’  You will know who owes who what..just like that!  It eliminates the need to pay two or three people when you just need to pay one (makes the transactions much “cleaner”).  It’s one of my all time favourite apps.
• Balance: Great app for writing down what you spend your money on (as mentioned in my 3 part Financial Cleanse series).  It tells you how in the negative you are so you can keep track of your debits and credits to your account.  Automatic net worth calculation if you’re meticulous about inputting the data at the point of transaction.  Doesn’t include your bank information etc. so if you’re not good at updating, then this isn’t the app for you.
• PageOnce- This is a great app (sort of works like Mint.com, but the Mint app is only applicable to US accounts currently) and tracks all of my credit cards (having two credits cards, my AMEX and MBNA, it can be difficult to keep track of the balances and transactions I make), bank accounts, and investing information.  You can set a pass code for it and you can log out to delete the data from the device you are using for added security.
• iData Usage- Tracks the data that I’ve been using on both Wifi and Cellular to make sure I don’t go over my data.  PageOnce also has an app that tracks your bill from AT&T (but alas, not for Telus).

There you have it. These are my utmost favourite apps for my smartphone.

Do you have any personal finance apps that are free (or very cheap) that you are a big fan of?

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Yesss! I have finally received my iPhone 4 (just supported the Bay area, Financial Samurai!), and I was able to get it before the September 30 cut off for the free i Phone 4 case.  I wanted to hold out on my review until I had a week or two to give it a good go at it.  Because I haven’t ever had an iPhone before (I just had an iPod Touch which I felt was invaluable anyway), I am pretty happy to be hooked up 24-7 (now I can tweet more often!).

I did sign up for another three years (yes, ball and chain) with Telus.  I had about two months and a bit left on my contract.  After using my own blog post on How to Save Money on your Cell Phone Bill as a reference, and numerous calls to Telus (they were obviously getting very tired of me calling),

Here’s what my contract with Telus looks like:

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I was on my boyfriend’s computer the other day trying to look for travel deals at his place, when I got bombarded by “Your computer is not safe, do you want to renew your antivirus software??” or something like that.  Every five minutes I was asked if I wanted to renew.  Makes me very very glad I splurged  on a MacBook Pro now… I’m so computer illiterate that I couldn’t even protect my old PC from being bombarded by a virus.  I remember I was so technologically challenged that when I thought I was hit by a Trojan (not that kind of Trojan, get that mind out of the gutter!), I had to call my sister to the rescue.  It turned out that it was actually “scareware”.  Scareware tricks you into buying their antivirus software by making you think you have a virus in your computer.  Tricky, eh?  Because of this experience, I thought I would reach out to my fellow computer illiterate folks out there (do I hear crickets chirping…is it just me?) and share what I learned on how to protect your computer with firewalls and antivirus software.

Let’s first explain what antivirus software and firewalls are.

Antivirus software hunts and detects crap in your computer and kills it.  Kind of like what the white blood cells do for you (remember biology class?).  You need antivirus software to help you get rid of spyware, trojans, viruses and the sort.

Firewalls work by filtering the internet and blocking things so that the network can be protected.  Firewalls are especially important for larger companies with huge networks of computers (some people can’t access Facebook or certain websites from their work computer, and that’s why).  How Stuff Works (love that show!) explains in an easy to read format what firewalls are.

I would say that the key to using firewalls and antivirus software is to find something that is easy to use (if you’re just like me, and not computer savvy), because if you screw up, it can cause a breach in your computer’s security and it can be a pain to fix (not to mention cost you an arm and a leg).  Or worst case scenario, your computer will crash and your photos and memories will be gone…forever.

You definitely don’t want that worst case scenario happening to you.  So to protect your computer, you can buy the antivirus software or firewall protection at your local computer/ electronics shop, which can cost anywhere between $20 to $60.  To save money, you can also download basic versions of them for free too.

Here are some free basic antivirus software downloads:

• AVG - this is the most common one, I would say
• BitDefender
• Bullguard Free Antivirus

Here are some cheap (or free) firewall downloads:

• Zone Alarm- this is the one that my boyfriend has on his PC
• Comodo

Of course, if you want added protection against malware, it will cost you.  Also, you would want something that doesn’t ask you whether you would like to download the “non-free” version of the software every five minutes.  It’s a pain in the butt to have to click “remind me later” while you’re busy surfing the net.  Not having to click “remind me the next day” was one of the primary reasons that drove me to switch to a Mac (sorry PC!).  I heart my Macbook Pro.

I hope that helps save you some money (and not to mention a headache) with protecting your PC computer from the crazy crazy internet world out there.

Have you had an experience where you’ve had to deal with a virus on your computer?  Any PC die-hards or Mac die-hards out there?

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Sooo Wind Mobile has officially expanded to Vancouver, BC as promised this June.  I was really excited to hear about Wind Mobile when it first came out in December of ’09 and even did a pros and cons list on it (you know I love those pros and cons lists!).

Initially the coverage was Toronto & Ottawa, then Calgary & Edmonton, and now coverage is in Vancouver.

They have certainly been doing tons of marketing- I was watching Karate Kid the other day in the movie theatres and they had a huge ad on for Wind Mobile.  Ads have been on the free circulating daily newspapers too.  And on television.  They have really funny and creative ads, I’ll give them that.  The hot dog vendor one always cracks me up, no matter how many times I watch it.

Their push for marketing is that Wind Mobile is different from the big three aptly nicknamed ROBELLUS (*ahem* Telus, Bell, and Rogers), they listen, and that what you see is what you get.  Side note: Whoever came up with the term Robellus is a genius!!

However, I think there are still a lot of kinks to work out…and I know that they are making a concerted effort to fix them.  Despite this, I know there are a lot of happy customers out there.

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In an earlier post this week, I wrote about a step by step guide on how to negotiate with the contract yielding wireless providers.  Today I’ll reveal the actual flow of the conversation I had when I called in for my sister.

Here’s the Scoop on my Conversation with Rogers recently:

My sister was paying about $31 a month including tax (from a previously negotiated contract by yours truly two years ago) for:

• 10 voicemail
• 200 day time minutes
• Rogers to Rogers
• Unlimited evening and weekends starting from 6pm

Being the young-un that she is, many of her friends text.  As you know, texting can add up!  She wanted text messaging included in herr next plan.  She was paying an extra $3-5 more a month just for text messages sent and received (texting on the very very low end hence restricting herself from unleashing the texting beast).  She had one more week left on her contract.

So I called in to the Retentions Department for her, spoke to Tristan (names have been changed) from the Retentions Department who said that if she added $5, then she can have 250 texts, AND she would have to recommit for another 2 years.  (In my head, I was thinking WTF- what kind of deal is that? Pay more??)  I firmly but nicely said that she didn’t want to pay any more, and that I am with Telus and I get all the above for LESS per month including 100 long distance minutes per month, web browsing, and 200 incoming and outgoing texts (which is true, by the way).

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