Clarity Money - Review 2022 - Mazzeo Jakfam1972

Given how like shooting fish in a barrel it's getting to digitally trace financial transactions down to the cup of coffee you charge to your credit card, keeping tabs on your personal finances has never been easier. The more your transactions are logged, the easier it is to have a record of them, categorize them, and analyze them. Clarity Coin is one of many personal finance apps that, like our Editors' Choice Mint, consolidates your financial accounts and transactions into one app from which you see both the fine details of your spending habits and the larger motion picture of your financial health. Although information technology has one or two features that Mint does not have, Clarity Coin is non virtually as fine-tuned as Mint. More chiefly, when I tested the app, I saw some red flags that made me feel uncomfortable using it.

How Is Clarity Coin Gratuitous?

Many free personal finance apps make money by showing you advertisements for financial products and services. Clarity Money is no different. Like many other services, including Mint and Credit Karma, Clarity Coin shows you highly targeted ads based on data it has gathered about you and your finances. Clarity Coin can encounter your credit card transactions, so it knows how much you pay in involvement and tin can therefore evidence you an ad for a credit menu with a lower interest rate. When Clarity Money asks if you're interested in creating better habits related to saving money, it shows you lot an offer to open a savings account. When yous sign up for a service as a consequence of the ad, Clarity Coin gets a referral payment.

While many personal finance apps utilize a like business model, not all do. LearnVest, for example, has a freemium model under which you get limited tools for tracking your finances for free, but you have to pay for a premium membership to get more tools and recommendations from a financial planner. LearnVest isn't cheap. It charges a $299 initiation fee, plus $19 per calendar month.

A few other personal finance apps instead charge monthly, yearly, or transactional fees for services offered by the company or their partners, such as an investment account or savings account. Qapital, StashInvest, and Acorns all come to mind.

Clarity Money's Services

Clarity Money keeps tabs on line item transactions across all your fiscal accounts, as well every bit giving you visibility into the total balances of those accounts and your overall financial status. It's bachelor on Android, iOS, and every bit a web app, although from the design of the web app, you lot can clearly tell that it was created with a mobile-kickoff arroyo. Given the popularity of mobile finance apps, information technology'due south not surprising.

A signature feature in Clarity Money calls attention to recurring charges, such as monthly subscriptions, bills, and fees, and it prompts you to review them and cancel any services you don't desire. Perhaps you've been paying an online streaming visitor or local gym a monthly fee, despite the fact that you haven't used the service in ages. Clarity Coin draws attention to this type of accuse and encourages y'all to review them and determine whether to cancel the accounts.

Clarity Money spending graph

Clarity Money also offers y'all the option to open a savings account via the app. When you open this detail account, you tin can and then utilise the app to move coin from a linked account into the savings business relationship. The terms of the account are not immediately apparent, and they don't become available to you until you kickoff to go through the steps to open the business relationship, dribbling out instead via tool tips, links to the app's Terms of Service and FAQs, and eventually a summary e-mail that you receive after you go the account. The fact that the terms are not more apparent is red flag number i for me.

I asked representatives of Clarity Coin for more details (because I did not want to complete all the steps and actually open up a new business relationship while testing the app), and they explained that the result is y'all get a no-fee, non-involvement-begetting savings business relationship with Wells Fargo. All these details should be fabricated clear and apparent much before in the process. I am shocked that they were so hard to find. I am also disappointed that the account offered is not interest bearing.

As mentioned, when y'all open up the Wells Fargo savings business relationship, you tin and then use Clarity Money to initiate deposits into information technology. Many other personal finance apps do not allow you to motility money between accounts using them for security purposes. Clarity Money does not have this restriction. In fact, Clarity Money users formerly had all kinds of abilities to movement coin amongst their accounts, although representatives told me that they are sunsetting these capabilities, in role for security reasons. I suppose it's good the company is getting rid of that functionality, but it didn't sit well with me that the app had them in the showtime place. That's reddish flag number two.

What Does Clarity Coin Do?

At the more than full general level, Clarity Money tries to do exactly what Mint.com does, which is to say it shows you lot both the fine details and g calibration of your personal finances. It connects directly to your financial accounts, pulls information from them, and consolidates all that data in one place. It also automatically categorizes your spending, with a reasonable amount of success. You tin easily run across how much money you spend on food, entertainment, travel, bills, shopping, and then along.

For example, in the app, you quickly run into your net worth or full amount of debt. It likewise shows if you spend more money than you make. Are there any categories of spending that are out of whack compared to what you would similar them to be? For the current month and to appointment, is your spending in alignment with your monthly income?

Optionally, Clarity Money can pull your credit score from Experian. To get this service, you lot must provide some boosted details about yourself, such as date of birth and social security number. Checking your credit in this way does not damage your credit score, as it's considered a soft query. Mint offers costless credit scores, as well, alongside a credit report. (Mint doesn't advertise it as such, merely it does in fact give you a detailed credit report.) WalletHub specializes in both credit scores and credit reports. The free services monitors changes to your credit history as well, sending you emails or other alerts anytime in that location's a change. Credit Karma also specializes in credit scores and reports.

Clarity Money credit score

Pattern and Details

Clarity Money is clearly designed for mobile devices. One time you gear up an business relationship and connect some of your credit cards and banks (more than on security in a moment), the app displays cards with different information almost your financial standing, history, or spending trends.

For example, one card shows a list of your accounts and each one's current residuum. Another card shows a graph with your spending so far this month confronting projected income. Yet another shows a summary of how much money you've spent "in the last few days," a rather vague report given the app'due south purpose.

When you lot click on a card, it increases in size and ordinarily gives you more item virtually the information. Ane of the cards shows a list of recurring charges alongside the corporeality. My carte included a subscription to Netflix, as well every bit two standard insurance bills. The point of this card is to highlight subscription services that you might desire to abolish or perchance unnecessary recurring fees. In my case, the information wasn't helpful. I still use Netflix avidly, and I'thousand non about to cease paying my bills. It would be worthwhile to take an choice to exclude recurring charges from appearing here if they are nonnegotiable and necessary payments.

Like Mint, Clarity Coin labels line item transactions by their category, although Clarity Coin uses many fewer categories, and you can't customize them the way you can in Mint. For instance, Clarity Coin lumps all nutrient purchases together, no matter whether they are hefty bar tabs, groceries, or $5 lattes. Mint separates alcohol, groceries, restaurants, fast nutrient, and and so forth. If Mint doesn't have a specific category that you want to rail, you can create it, which you lot can't do in Clarity Money. Mint as well lets you lot assign a budget to whatever category. I, for instance, attempt to limit my coffee shop purchases to $40 per calendar month. Mint is practiced at watching my spending in a category that's and then specific, whereas Clarity Money can't do whatsoever of that.

Clarity Money finds recurring charges

Clarity Money lacks many other features found in Mint, including the ability log cash spending and cash income. It also doesn't let you split transactions. For example, allow's say I spend $100 at a clothing store. I bought a gift for someone worth $50, and the other half I spent on personal purchases. I would desire to split the categorization so that it doesn't look like I spent $100 on myself. Mint gives you tools to separate the total of any transaction into parts and categorize them separately. Clarity Money doesn't.

Is Clarity Money Secure?

Is it prophylactic and secure to use Clarity Money? The visitor behind the app Money states that it uses multi-level security mechanisms, including firewalls and VPN to protect the data it collects. Data transmissions use Send Layer Security (TLS) 1.ii and 256-chip encryption, and storage uses AES-256 encryption. The company too reports that it uses strict information access policies and controls.

Clarity Coin does not, however, participate in whatever contained security verification, such as the Norton Secured program (which both Mint and LearnVest use) or McAfee Secure (which LearnVest also uses). These verification programs provide consumers with independent verification of bones security structures. Clarity Coin representatives did mention that the app uses third parties to verify other information, such as to check whether users are who they merits to be.

At the level of your individual device, you can utilise a passcode, Touch ID and Confront ID on supported iOS phones and tablets to unlock the app. On Android, PIN and fingerprint IDs are supported.

Something did catch my attention while I was testing the app that did not leave me feeling 100 percent confident about the service. I of my banks uses an access code rather than my personal password for third-party access. In other words, when I want to use a personal finance app to obtain read-only information from my account, the bank is enlightened that the app should accept limited access, and it provides an access code in lieu of me having to enter my password. Not all banks provide this service, although in my stance they should.

In any outcome, I was surprised when I went to authenticate this business relationship and Clarity Money never triggered a request for the access code. Instead, it asked for my countersign. In the past, the asking for an admission lawmaking has always appeared with other personal finance apps. When I asked the Clarity Money team well-nigh this specific problem, the representatives said they were unaware of information technology and would have to look into it. That'southward red flag number three for me.

In the end, deciding whether it's rubber to apply whatever personal finance app is a matter of stance. In that location's nearly always a tradeoff with free services. There are always going to be risks involved with entering personal information into an online application. In that location is almost always going to exist some granting of rights to anonymize, aggregate, and sell or share data almost you. Even so, the value you get from the app or service may be plenty to outweigh the potential risks. Deciding whether that's the example for you is a personal decision.

Doesn't Earn Our Trust

At first blush, Clarity Coin seems similar any other free personal finance app that consolidates your financial transactions and accounts into ane place where you can ameliorate analyze them both in item and on a grand scale. Simply in testing the service, I saw besides many red flags to feel truly comfortable using information technology. Information technology simply didn't earn my trust. Mint remains the Editors' Selection amidst personal finance tools for tracking and analyzing spending. Trust issues aside, superior budgeting options, nib payment features, and many more features for managing your financial health make Mint the meliorate option.