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Mechanically monitor and handle your bills whereas get extra rewards on what you’re already spending on. Simply go away it to Dobin! It has been a very long time since I received this excited over a brand new finance app, particularly one which helps me to save lots of extra with out upselling me different investments or insurance coverage merchandise!
Managing money has turn into difficult – at present, most of us have a number of financial institution accounts and bank cards, but additionally cash sitting in our e-wallets (Seize / ShopeePay / amaze / Youtrip).
I don’t learn about you, however I actually don’t fancy having to trace my money utilizing a spreadsheet. Making an attempt to optimize my very own bank cards and financial institution accounts for optimum bonus curiosity (leaping by means of all these hoops) every month is already robust sufficient!
SGFinDex has been a welcome change, however since you possibly can solely use it through a financial institution or insurer’s utility, the trade-offs embody the truth that the monetary suggestions proven to us are principally to purchase extra insurance coverage merchandise or put money into the financial institution’s robo providing. It helps me to handle my total funds however does nothing to save lots of any more cash or earn further rewards (that I didn’t know existed) on my present spending habits.
One other downside is that folks have additionally began reporting unsolicited gross sales calls, now that the banks have visibility on their belongings held with different monetary establishments:
As a client, I don’t essentially wish to be bought extra monetary merchandise after I share my knowledge. As a substitute, I need unbiased recommendation and suggestions alongside the strains of:
- Change to a different bank card – to get extra rewards in your similar spending classes!
- Procuring along with your traditional retailers? Right here’s a promo code on your subsequent buy!
On the finish of the day, after I select to share my monetary knowledge, I need to have the ability to profit from it – within the type of financial savings, rewards, or how I can higher optimize my cash.
Sadly, the present market gamers on SGFinDex will not be incentivized to assist me get monetary savings or get extra rewards as a result of it does virtually nothing for his or her backside line. Shoppers such as you and I nonetheless have to put within the effort to analysis and curate related presents for ourselves.
At the moment, most reductions are given to incentivize additional spend, as a substitute of serving to customers save extra on current spend. Your financial institution can now see you are likely to spend extra on eating out, however are they utilizing that to suggest that you just change out of your present bank card (3%) to a different card of theirs that can provide you increased rewards (8%) on the identical spend? Or, if one of the best bank card for eating is the truth is from one other financial institution, what’s in it for them to let you know that?
Earlier this yr, I wrote about my best model of an app that will:
- assist me handle my a number of financial institution accounts and bills, whereas utilizing that knowledge to
- curate related promotions and reductions for me.
A reader pointed me to Dobin, the place I received a sneak preview (media perks!) and I’ve been on the waitlist since. Now that it’s obtainable for Android customers, right here’s my evaluation!
If you wish to discover ways to handle your money and get probably the most out of your rewards, then you definately’d wish to give Dobin a attempt.
Disclaimer: This evaluation is sponsored by Dobin.
Handle your funds in a single app
Dobin fills a present hole out there, which is the necessity for an impartial, non-FI app which can assist customers get monetary savings and get higher rewards on their current spending.
It additionally connects to AMEX, CIMB and Financial institution of China, which you continue to can’t get on SGFinDex.
Since its launch, I’ve been utilizing Dobin to do the next:
- Handle my cash throughout my a number of financial institution accounts and bank cards
- View all my current bills in a single place (with out having to toggle between a number of financial institution apps!)
- Mechanically categorize my spending for me – so I can see how a lot I’m spending + spot ignored costs shortly (comparable to annual bank card charges that I forgot to name in to request a waiver for!)
- Save time trying to find reductions related to me – it has proven me promos for Shopee, Seize, FairPrice and Large to date (precisely the place I store at)
- (this characteristic hasn’t been launched however is coming quickly) Level out a greater bank card to make use of for increased rewards, based mostly on our on a regular basis spend.
Let’s discuss shortly about every of those advantages.
1. Handle your a number of financial institution accounts and bank cards
Proper now, the one method for me to handle this is able to be to individually open up my DBS / OCBC / UOB / Commonplace Chartered / CIMB app to trace how a lot I’ve, what I’ve spent within the month, what I owe on my playing cards and when I have to pay.
Let me simply say this – it’s tremendous painful and tiring.
Now that I can join all of them to a single interface – Dobin – it has been a lot simpler for me to see all of my cash in a single place. And for the absent-minded people, it could actually even flag out to you when every respective bank card invoice is due for fee.
I find it irresistible!
I’ve included a fast information under to point out how the connection works, however actually, the directions on-screen needs to be fairly straightforward to observe for most individuals.
The present record of the 8 monetary establishments you possibly can connect with Dobin are as follows: DBS, OCBC, UOB, Commonplace Chartered, HSBC, AMEX, CIMB and Financial institution of China.
Citibank is at present not obtainable however will probably be in due time. I additionally want Dobin would additionally have the ability to see how a lot I’ve in my e-wallets (since I usually overlook about them), and I’ve already raised this as a characteristic to be thought-about for future growth, so let’s see when it will get added!
That’s a game-changer, as a result of there’s no different app or dashboard proper now that lets you see all of that in a single place.
2. Mechanically monitor and categorize your bills
Now that each one my money may be consolidated on my Dobin dashboard, I can now monitor traits in my spending and revenue, see which classes take up extra of my price range, and hone into any areas of overspending.
For anybody who cares about staying inside price range, that is actually empowering.
I’m particularly impressed that I can filter my transactions by trying to find particular manufacturers (e.g. Seize, Shopee) and even view month-on-month expense traits to see which transactions drove the most important change.
What’s extra, I’m certain most of you possibly can agree that it turns into simpler to overlook sure line objects or funds, as a result of a number of playing cards we should handle at present and all of the auto-billing preparations that we had arrange previously.
With Dobin, it is best to now have the ability to spot a couple of transactions that you’d in any other case have missed, comparable to a late fee cost in your bank card, and even the under “service cost” charges which I by no means knew the financial institution had been deducting from my account all this whereas!
I known as OCBC to ask and apparently, this $10 cost is levied as a result of my GIRO fee with IRAS didn’t undergo and therefore there’s a price. I’ve been doing this for years and by no means as soon as knew?! As loyal readers would know by now, that’s as a result of I route my revenue taxes by means of CardUp as a way to earn miles, which is why the GIRO association would fail since I intentionally saved inadequate funds in my designated account for paying revenue taxes.
Due to connecting every part on Dobin, the app even helped me to determine a bank card annual price that I had ignored final month, thus prompting me to instantly give my financial institution a name to get it waived!
On my dashboard, Dobin helps me to combination whole bills vs. financial savings vs. revenue and lets me drill down into spending by class.
Simple peasy, as a result of it’s all automated and finished for you.
You’ll have the ability to use these insights in many alternative methods – from pondering of which classes you’d like to chop again on in subsequent months, and even whether or not you need to be rethinking your price range for sure stuff now that inflation-adjusted costs are right here to remain. Go experiment!
3. Get really helpful reductions
The very best half is, I may even use this knowledge to get extra rewards on my current spend with out me having to spend unnecessarily extra.
How Dobin pulls off is:
- Once I share my knowledge with Dobin, the device returns me personalised presents which are tailor-made to my spending. To this point, I’ve gotten reductions for Shopee, Lazada, FairPrice and Large proven to me, that are retailers I store closely at.
- By recommending that I exploit one other considered one of my bank cards (or get a greater bank card) based mostly on my spending habits tracked. This characteristic just isn’t launched on the time of publishing, however will probably be out quickly.
The app might choose up that I had simply returned from a Penang journey (given my card transactions overseas) and was thus exhibiting me journey reductions on my residence display. You may also search on the Reductions tab on your favorite service provider to see if any promotion is being listed!
How secure is my knowledge on Dobin?
Okay, so the app is all nice and helpful, however…how secure is it, actually?
In gentle of all of the elevated rip-off circumstances, you possibly can think about how I used to be naturally skeptical about keying in my usernames and passwords into Dobin to permit for the syncing of knowledge.
Nevertheless, the identical steps are wanted for SGFinDex anyway, so I understood why this was obligatory. That is additionally the place – upon enquiring – the Dobin crew assured me that their entry is “read-only”, which implies Dobin can solely view data and won’t be able to ship any directions to the consumer’s checking account (e.g. can’t withdraw or switch cash in your behalf).
For the tech geeks, how this works is that your consumer credentials are by no means saved on Dobin’s servers; as a substitute, they’re encrypted and saved by yourself machine password administration system comparable to Apple Keychain or Android Keystore.
What’s extra, it’s as much as you whether or not you wish to save your credentials on the machine to ease future knowledge refresh everytime you log into Dobin subsequently. In the event you favor to not, then you definately’ll merely need to re-connect every time you open up your Dobin app – which shouldn’t be an enormous problem in trade for the peace of thoughts that you just get, I suppose.
You may examine Dobin’s knowledge privateness and safety controls right here. What I took away was that my banking credentials are by no means despatched to Dobin’s servers i.e. the app doesn’t retailer any delicate or private data comparable to addresses, fee data or card particulars. As a substitute, the info goes from my financial institution to my cell phone, and stays there i.e. it’s not shared with the Dobin back-end platform, until I explicitly resolve to share with Dobin – during which case my knowledge will get anonymized earlier than sharing.
You additionally received’t have to fret about receiving unsolicited gross sales calls out of your financial institution reps to upsell you any funding merchandise anymore, since your knowledge isn’t shared with them nor their relationship managers while you use Dobin!
TLDR Conclusion
To sum it up, you might discover completely different advantages out of your monetary knowledge dashboard on Dobin vs. the worth I personally received out of it, however for me what I appreciated probably the most are the next options:
- It helps me to see all my bank card fee due dates in a single place. Now there’s no extra excuse to overlook a invoice or incur late charges once more!
- Dobin helped me to spot costs and transactions that I didn’t even know I had been paying for, such because the $10 service cost charges for my revenue tax to IRAS
- It routinely categorizes my transactions into classes for me, that are fairly correct – I’ve not spot any errors I needed to manually right to date. This enables me to grasp the place my cash goes, and do stuff like guarantee my eating bills doesn’t exceed 30% every month if I wish to keep inside price range.
- I may even search by service provider to see how a lot I’ve been paying…and even overspending e.g. I’m actually responsible of getting spent on too many Seize rides this month because of my tighter schedule.
As somebody who cares about staying inside price range and never overspending, a lot much less paying for “avoidable” charges like late costs or bank card curiosity, I actually recognize the quantity of thought that has gone into constructing Dobin and making it one that really serves the buyer’s wants.
Proper now, the app is free to make use of, so go forward and check it out!
If in case you have a number of financial institution accounts and bank cards like I do, you might wish to begin by syncing your most commonly-used playing cards and spending accounts first.
And if you happen to don’t wish to sync sure financial institution accounts (maybe as a result of your secret wealth is stashed away there), you possibly can select to not.
That method, you get to benefit from the insights and analytics that Dobin can provide, whereas benefiting from the customized reductions and promotions proven to you based mostly on what you’re already spending on.
Save extra and get higher rewards.
How does that sound?
Attempt it out for your self by downloading Dobin at present!
For iOS customers, you possibly can obtain it right here. Android customers, get Dobin right here on the Google Play Retailer.
Disclosure: This text is written in collaboration with Dobin.
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