The opposite of financial planning is financial chaos. Proper management of your personal finances is an essential component of overall life planning. Sure, you can’t see the future, but you can do everything possible to put yourself in a good position to face it. That means structuring a way to make your money work towards your goals.
Once upon a time, the opportunities for financial planning were relatively limited — almost exclusive to those who were already well-off — but times have changed.
Financial apps each aim to be the most appealing to investors, though every company takes a different approach. Mint and YNAB have grown in popularity for ease of use and comprehensive features. However, a dark horse candidate has entered the race, and its name is Hardbacon. A user-friendly financial management app, it stands out for its fresh take on money management.
Since picking out the best financial app for your needs is essential to success, we’ve cultivated a breakdown of everything you need to know about Hardbacon. Let’s take a look.
Who Is Hardbacon?
A Canadian company, Hardbacon positions itself as a tool to assist clients in generating wealth and ensuring financial security. The business opened in 2017, converting into an application shortly thereafter. During the pandemic, it pivoted into a free app to aid Canadians during economic difficulties.
By offering information, insight, and all the necessary tools, Hardbacon makes financial decisions in your control. The main idea is that, if people have access to up-to-date, unbiased information, they can use that data to make wise financial maneuvers.
By connecting to your bank, credit, and investment accounts, the app puts all your information in one place. Eliminating the tedium of cross-referencing, it adds perspective to your financial situation. By letting you track where you are earning and losing, the portfolio analysis offered by Hardbacon can inform your long-term plans. The business continues to expand, projecting a web version of the app in early 2022.
How Does The Hardbacon App Work?
The whole purpose of a financial management app is to make handling your money easier and more convenient. Using a three-tiered system, the Hardbacon app enables you to tackle a different component of your finances.
Plan: Set Your Goals
The planning process is the foundation of your financial plan; and, as such, there is a bit more meat to it than what follows. First, you declare your goals – some are saving for childrens’ education, others want to get out of debt, and some look towards retirement. The app assists in choosing the account type that will lead you to success soonest (and with an appropriate amount of risk).
The application also helps you understand the technicalities and parts of agreements notorious for hitting investors with unexpected fees. It helps you avoid pitfalls while still taking steps forward. Another tenet to this part of the app is a real-time plan. Markets shift on a dime, and the app helps you measure those changes. By tying one goal to a single plan, the risk is mitigated while you still work towards goals.
Hardbacon helps users set priorities and focus their financial energy towards their most pressing goals. By calculating the projected impact of your decisions, you can get a full picture of your short- and long-term financial plans.
Budget: Take Practical Action
After you’ve completed the planning step, what you must do next becomes clear. In just about every situation, that means a budget. All your accounts connect to the same Hardbacon app, letting you synchronize all the different platforms. The app then takes a comprehensive assessment of your expenses. It highlights where you spend most, and possible ways to reduce costs.
The key to this facet of the Hardbacon app is in showcasing where you spend your money. Converting those routine expenses into long-term projections of expenses shines things in a unique light. $3 for a daily coffee sounds a lot less than $780 per year. Perhaps you spend on subscriptions which could otherwise be streamlined. In either case, this feature enables you to get a micro- and macrocosmic picture of what your money is doing.
Check out our guide to making a monthly budget.
Invest: Shore Up Your Financial Future
Finally, a financial plan without investments is incomplete. If your money isn’t working for you, it’s working for someone else. It starts with personalized return reports, giving you access to information over a term of your choosing. A stock that takes a hit one day is far different than a stock diminishing over a quarter. This helps you factor time into your calculations.
Hardbacon also assesses the quality of your portfolio in terms of set and subjective metrics. By adjusting against risk and determining your portfolio’s return, it ranks it against other investors. This comparison tool enables you to not only get a picture of the market but of where you stand in it.
Topping the feature off with innovative analytics tools, it calls attention to your portfolio’s shortcomings. By including factors such as beta data, diversification strategy, asset allocation, and more, it shows your weaknesses so you can address them. In conjunction with the alert feature, you always know when a tracked stock rises or falls below your set threshold.
Hardbacon App Benefits
This financial management application relies on up-to-date technology to assist 100,000 Canadians in curating an ideal portfolio. The number of users continues to climb, largely due to the benefits offered by the app. Among these advantages are:
- Personalized Suggestions: It’s fine to have broad-spectrum advice that tells you of overall market trends. What’s better is getting insight that applies to your specific financial landscape. Since all your finances are in one place, the app can analyze your current situation and help you identify room for improvement.
- Investment Ideas: By understanding your spending and investment patterns, the app is able to find investment strategies that are compatible with your goals. It could mean choosing a new type of account or further diversifying your assets. The draw is that the ideas are based on your finances, not general trends.
- Exclusive Offers: Any chance to save is welcome, especially when you are dealing with your overall financial ecosystem. The app uses its reach to access discounted rates on financial services and other investments. It allows you to spend less, gain more, and further the success of the app itself.
- More Goals: Depending on where you are in financial planning, you will require different goals. Paying off student loan debt is different from planning for retirement. Starting a business is different from paying for a wedding. The variety of goals lets you curate the financial structure of your accounts to your specific needs.
- Safety: Without security, a financial app is nothing but dangerous. Thankfully, Hardbacon relies on 256-bit SSL encryption. All of the data is ghosted in Amazon-secured data holding centers. Relying on a team of expert developers, the system is continually monitored to ensure security.
- Reports & Portfolio Score: Analytic tools go a long way to financial planning. By giving you both fixed and relative assessments of your portfolio, you can see where you stand now; and, based on current trends, where you will stand in the future. The reports are available in different time brackets and the score is updated in real time — a solid feature for the competitive-at-heart investor.
- Diagnostics: Just like it sounds, diagnostics test the merit of each of your portfolios. It offers a brutally honest assessment of weaknesses and strengths. Using this information, you can make changes accordingly
- Everything Under One Roof: This is a benefit and a downside. The draw is convenience. Having everything together is clearly more efficient than cross-referencing. It saves time and enables you to see the bigger-picture more clearly. However, while 256-bit encryption would take 50 supercomputers to break into, it is slower to action. The competitor software (128-bit) is less likely to be attacked. Combining platforms is useful, but if something were to go wrong, the damage would be pervasive.
- Explore: Another benefit of the Hardbacon app is its offering of data related to stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. You can sort through this market research using ticker names or thematic lists. It lets you expand your market familiarity without overspending.
- Asset Allocation: Sometimes, a change in perspective can make all the difference to success. By highlighting your investments and sorting them by categories, you can get a better picture of how diversified you truly are. Sure, investing in uranium, general mining, and cobalt might sound different. However, when seen in this view, it shows that you are focused on a certain type of commodity. Whether or not to act on the insight offered is up to the user.
Hardbacon Subscription Costs
As with most apps, there is a free and a paid version of Hardbacon. The premium features open up more possibilities in terms of features. There are noteworthy differences between the two plans. A free trial is available to those on the fence about which approach to take.
Hardbacon Free Subscription
Those who rely on the free plan still get access to financial tools. You are able to link bank and investment accounts to the central portal. The system will still offer expense and income stats, while also providing a bank transaction history. It enables you to see recurring expenses and create financial goals.
Hardbacon Premium Upgrade
At $12.99 per month (or an annual-payment discounted rate of $99.99), the app is quite affordable. You get a 30 day grace period to figure out if the system works for you. It includes everything the free plan offers, but tacks on a lot more benefits.
Benefits of Upgrading:
- Track asset allocation — see where you are investing and whether it matches your values and goals.
- Return reports — get a picture of your earnings over both the short- and long-term.
- Portfolio scores — see how you hold up against other investors’ portfolios.
- Diagnostics — let the algorithm show you shortcomings and successes you may not otherwise see.
- Banking history — use the past to inform your future financial decisions.
- Stock transaction history — factor your past investments into your current plans.
- Insights and suggestions — the system shows you new ideas about investments (leaving it up to you as to whether they become a part of your financial plans).
- Practice accounts — try your theories in a risk-free scenario before putting real money down on your investments.
Given the low monthly cost, not to mention the far superior abilities of the premium plan, if you plan to use Hardbacon, investing in premium makes sense.
Hardbacon FAQs
Which banks are supported by Hardbacon?
Does premium Hardbacon have a trial version?
Is Hardbacon safe?
Hard Facts On The Hardbacon App
Provided you are ready to take your finances into your own hands, Hardbacon is worth considering. If you plan to use the system, the benefits of the premium plan outweigh the cost drawbacks. This is an ideal system for those looking to save time, actively pursue goals, and gain a better understanding of their finances.
If you are doing large-scale investing, this app is likely not the right way to go. However, if you are earlier along your financial planning journey, this is a fantastic way to get started. It puts the power of information and insight in your palm. Whether you follow the app’s advice is entirely up to you. Hardbacon opens the door — you choose whether to walk through.
