Caregiving brings rewards beyond monetary compensation, but caregivers may need to budget carefully to ensure they can cover their bills and other living expenses on their caregiver pay. The BillGuard app allows senior caregivers to link their bank accounts to the app and view their spending patterns as well as set budgets for themselves.
When users first create an account on Bill Guard, they can link up their various bank accounts by picking their bank and logging in through the app. Once all accounts have been linked to the app, caregivers can see their recent spending history on their homepage. This includes a summary of how much money the user has spent thus far in that month. Under the analytics tab, users can see a month by month breakdown of the amount of money spent and a further breakdown of the categories in which they spent their money, such as Cash, Loans, Groceries, Eating Out, Clothing, Utilities, etc.
When a user is looking at their monthly summary, the app allows them to select "vs" the previous month so users can see if they spent more or less on each category in the prior month and recognize spending habits. Caregivers can use this particularly to compare bill costs and leisure spending from month to month to see where they can cut back on spending a little to save more money.
The app also features an area called Savings that searches the internet for coupons and savings tips customized to your spending history to enable caregivers to save the most money possible. Users can click into that area of the app whenever they'd like to, but an alert icon will also appear on their dashboard when the app finds an applicable coupon.
The BillGuard app is available for Apple and Android platforms.
Senior caregivers, let us know your feedback on this app and keep us posted if you discover additional apps that assist with caregiving duties and help relieve caregiver stress. You may also refer-a-friend to a senior caregiving job and win prizes weekly and monthly on Caregiverlist.
-Paige Krzysko