In today’s Internet age, keeping yourself on track financially has never been easier. There are a range of websites, smartphone apps and online financial tools to help you along the way.

Track expenses and create a budget

Find a way to track your daily expenses so you know exactly where your money is going and what is costing you more than you think. As an interesting exercise, write down what you think you spend each month and then compare that against reality after three months of tracking.

Automatic collation of spending: Nedbank’s MyFinancial Life, Pastel My Money and 22seven.com are all online money-management tools that capture information beyond your bank account, including credit cards and store cards, to create a more holistic picture of your spending and saving.

Manual capturing tool: m8 – my money, my way is a money app that allows you to capture your spending on your smartphone and then creates graphs so you can see where your money is going.

Banking app: Capitec customers can use the money-management tool embedded in the current Capitec Bank app that allows for real-time money management – which is what sets it apart from other banking/ budgeting apps. This means that clients can track all their recurring debits and daily expenses against their monthly salary deposits. Tracking on-the-go also makes savings goals more attainable.

Setting up a budget: For a basic, free budget template simply go to Microsoft Excel and select the budget template. You can customise it for your own use.

Assess your financial health and set financial goals

Momentum Financial Wellness is available to anyone and provides a questionnaire that assesses your financial wellness and makes recommendations on what you need to do to get on track. It also has great tools that include a savings calculator, a loan calculator, a tool to track your spending, and a tool that lets you file a digital version of all your important financial documents.

Sanlam Unit Trusts has a tool that helps you decide which fund is appropriate for your needs and how much you need to invest to reach your goal. The tool takes you through a four-question risk analysis to assess which type of fund would be right for you.

Old Mutual InvestRight calculator is goal specific with options for calculating various savings needs. A nice touch is that under education savings it provides a list of fees for tertiary education so you have an idea of what you’re targeting. There’s also a voice-over prompt which explains what you need to complete at each stage.

Check on your retirement funding

There are many online tools that will assist you in calculating how much you need for retirement, whether you are on track, and if not, what you need to do to get there.

Marriot Income Specialists provides Investment Planning Tools which help you calculate how much you need to be saving for retirement as well as what income you need in retirement.

10x Investments has a Retirement Guide with an interactive retirement course.

Review your life insurance needs

Liberty provides a range of tools to assess your insurance risk profile as well as what risks you face so you know what type of insurance cover to focus on based on your age and gender. You can find out how your lifestyle and travel choices affect your level of risk compared to other South Africans.

The Liberty Risk Explorer smartphone app shows you the types of risks and insurances you need at different lifestages.

The Liberty Claims Explorer provides insight into the types of claims people make based on their age and gender so you can see what clients like you have claimed for.