Do you remember the days where you’d go to a financial planner’s office and sit through an hour-long presentation about your financial future?
Me neither.
I believe that financial planners do provide benefits, but it may just feel like too much for a millennial who researches everything online and does most things through their phone.
Wherever you are, times have changed. What has felt missing for me is an online financial plan that helps me understand my finances without going to an office or wondering how I can possibly afford a financial planner. Enter Savology.
1) What is Savology?
Savology is a free online financial planner that asks questions related to your personal profile (such as age and where you live, your savings, your spending and debt, your risk management, and your outlook. You may remember the article, “Three Reason You Should Have A Financial Plan” that outlines that a financial plan can give you peace of mind, provide an outlook, and stay on track financially. Savology is attempting to accomplish that task.
The beginning questionnaire flow takes about 5 minutes to complete, but let me tell you that the questionnaire is thorough. The questions range from “Which of the following assets do you have?” to “How do you feel about your health?”. I appreciate the thoroughness because it shows that they want to cover as much as possible in your personalized financial plan. I also like the user experience throughout the site. It’s very intuitive.
Once complete, it will take you to your dashboard where you can view your action items, report card, financial plan, and modules along with partner providers. We’ll spend some time discussing the elements.
Savology is not only focused on financial planning. It also wants to address such common questions as what it thinks your retirement savings by age should be.
2) Your Report Card and Financial Plan
What’s useful about Savology is that it provides you a report card on how you are doing and action items to help you attain financial fitness. For example, my report card was a solid B that you can see below.
I was doing really well until I got to the Housing and Insurance questions. What I like about Savology is that it provides simple action items to help me improve in those areas that are ranked. As a list guy, I like to see a list of improvement areas.
Savology doesn’t stop there. It provides more information about each of the different action items, including the “what” and the “why”. Savology also provides a list of partners that have been vetted and reviewed. I like that it provides context why I need it along with reputable, different partners that will meet my needs. I liked how they partnered with one of my favorite apps, the Savvy Debt Payoff Planner.
Next, we have the financial plan that gets into the details about how I am doing financially. What I like is that it gives me granular information about that “risk management” section that I undoubtedly failed.
3) Getting into the Modules
What I will reiterate is how much I appreciate that Savology gives you the actions necessary to achieve your goals. This is apparent in the modules section. The modules section is also granular and suggests specific ways to improve your finances. For example, you can analyze your credit score or prepare a guardianship nomination.
There are a ton of modules that are coming soon that will be helpful such as Life Expectancy Details or Student Loan Analysis. Personally, as a budget fanatic who’s used the same Google sheets budget template for the past ~10 years, I am most excited to see the Budget Tool module, so I clicked on “Notify Me” when the budget tool is ready for me to use.
4) What are Savology Stars?
Savology stars are where Savology gets more fun. Savology Stars are earned by completing action items, using modules, or sharing Savology with friends.
You can use these Savology stars to unlock items throughout the app. Remember when I failed in the housing section? Well, I can use 50 Savology stars to unlock the report card descriptions and what went into the grade along with how I can improve my grade, which I clearly need to do.
Should I Try Savology?
Savology is all about helping you build a simple, free financial plan online. You don’t need to pay anything for the application, and it’s fun and simple to use. It also provided me improvement information (in list format), which I had not spent enough time considering.
So, if you don’t have a financial planner and you want to know how you are doing for long term planning, Savology is a great, simple tool to help incorporate your financial planning into your everyday life.
