Ever get frustrated with reaching your savings goals? So are millions of people wanting to improve their savings balances. The problem often lies in the ability to properly motivate and track your progress while also removing barriers that may impede your progress.
This is precisely what Qapital does. What is Qapital, and how does it work? Can it help you improve your savings habits and reach your financial goals? In this detailed Qapital review, we'll cover these questions and dive deep into the Qapital app to determine its real value
Overview of The Qapital App
Qapital is a saving and investing app that lets you set financial goals and track your progress toward those goals. It all starts by selecting a savings or investing goal, linking your bank account, and creating a plan to achieve your goal. In their own words:
“Qapital is now a full-service banking app that helps its members save smartly and invest confidently – all so they can spend happily.“
Qapital.com/about-us
Through the app, you can select from a variety of typical savings or investing goals, and then use simple savings tips, called savings “Rules,” such as round-ups, to achieve these goals.
Popular rules you can create within your savings goals include setting up automatic savings transfers, setting budgets, rewarding yourself for health goals, and using what they call the 52-week rule.
When setting up a Qapital savings account you can choose from three different membership packages, each that include more features and benefits. Packages range from a small monthly fee of $3 per month up to $12 per month.
What Is Qapital And How Does It Work?
Qapital is a full-service banking app that uses the banking services of its partner banks. Thus, when you open a Qapital account, you are essentially opening an account housed by one of their partner financial institutions, but with the features of the Qapital banking app, and all managed through the Qapital app.
So, is Qapital a bank? No. It's a banking app that partners with an FDIC insured bank. Qapital provides the technology, and the partnered bank provides financial accounts.
Qapital's technology allows you to take advantage of its' savings and investing “rules” to achieve your financial goals. Furthermore, when opening a Qapital account, it is FDIC insured since the account is housed with a federally insured bank partner.
Features & Benefits of Qapital
Why would you open an account with Qapital as opposed to a traditional savings account? The most significant benefits are the rules that the Qapital App offers to help reach your savings and investing goals. Among the many unique savings rules offered by Qapital include:
Dream Team
Dream Team is a new feature offered by Qapital that allows couples to manage their money together. You can decide which balances you wish to share with each other, divvy up your paychecks to cover different expenses and get instant notifications of incoming and outgoing money.
Furthermore, you can help each other out with instant transfers as needed and keep each other motivated and energized financially.
Set and Forget
Set and forget lets you save your money on autopilot by setting up recurring deposits from your bank account to Qapital. Not super unique in that this is a feature most every bank or financial institution offers, but it's undoubtedly essential and may be a deal-breaker if they didn't have this feature.
Payday
This feature is similar to the “Set and Forget” feature. You can save part of your paycheck every payday automatically. Rather than setting up a recurring transfer, you can decide how much of your paycheck you wish to have saved. This is done by setting up your direct deposit to Qapital, and each payday, they will set aside a designated percent of your paycheck automatically.
Round-Up
If you're familiar with Acorns, you probably already know what roundups are. By linking your bank account to Qapital, you can elect to have your everyday purchases rounded up to the next whole dollar and have the change saved automatically. You can even elect to have it to have it rounded up by any designated dollar amount of your choice.
Guilty Pleasure
The Guilty Pleasure rule is a savings rule within Qapital that helps you make up for spending money on things you know you shouldn't. For example, if you decide to spend extra money on clothing you don't need, this rule will save money each time you purchase something in the “wants” category.
Spend Less
Spend Less is a savings rule that helps you set a budget, spend less than your budget allows, and automatically saves the difference. In short, it helps you always to have discretionary income to save after all expenses are paid.
Freelance
Do you provide freelance work part-time or full-time? This rule allows you to set aside money every time you get paid for freelance work. You can choose to save a certain percentage or save everything over a certain dollar amount.
52 Week Rule
The 52 Week Rule helps you build a savings account over 52 weeks, or one year. The way it works is you start by saving $1 on week one, $2 on week 2, $3 on week three, and so on.
Apple Health
If you own an iPhone, you can sync your Apple Health app data to Qapital to get incentives for hitting daily health goals. Examples are setting goals for daily walk or run distances, achieving a certain number of daily steps, completing workouts, and hitting your stand hour goals.
Rules powered by IFTTT
To broaden the reach, Qapital works great with IFTTT (If This Then That) that lets you integrate apps and devices like Fitbit, Strava, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Uber, YouTube, Facebook, rules based on how the stock market performs, and Square.
Each app integrated with IFTTT has the ability to create actions that will automatically save money for you when each activity is completed. Here are some examples:
- YouTube: Save money each time you like a new video
- Facebook: Save money when you publish a new post on Facebook
- Square: Save money when you make a new sale
- Uber: Save money when you take an Uber
- Finance: Save money when the S&P 500 drops a certain percentage
Where Qapital Falls Short
For those of you looking for an option to grow your money with a customized approach, Qapital may not be the best option. Why? Because their investing options do not allow you to purchase individual stocks, but instead you invest in basic pre-made funds based on your risk tolerance. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a feature some may prefer to have.
What's more, is the investing option is only available for the Complete package ($6 per month) or the Master package ($12 per month). Which brings me to the next shortfall of Qapital, the pricing.
In all reality, $3 – $12 isn't that much money to start with, but it adds up over time. One could argue that other companies offer similar services at little to no cost at all. Or why not just use the automatic savings features provided through your bank, for FREE?
Who Is Qapital Best Suited For?
In short, anyone who wishes to find new ways to save more money would greatly benefit from using Qapital. It's by far the best option for unique approaches to saving money (outside of the regular automatic savings transfers offered by every other financial institution).
Those who like to set up incentives for themselves when completing new tasks or creating new habits could make saving money even more fun with Qapital.
You could break down the people who would benefit from Qapital in the following consumer segments:
- College students (save for education, entertainment, future purchases)
- Families (save for vacations, large purchases, etc.)
- Spenders who want to save more money but like spending all their money
- Couples who wish to work together on financial goals
If you fall into any of the above categories or descriptions, Qapital will be a great option, no doubt.
Qapital Alternatives
If you're looking for a better way to save and invest money with potentially more features and customization options, consider one of the following:
- M1 Finance: This app allows you to save money and invest it automatically with an expert-created portfolio or your own created fund (called a “Pie”).
- Acorns: The pioneers of round-ups. Acorns lets you round up your daily purchases to the next whole dollar and invest the difference in an expert-created portfolio. They also allow you to get cashback for shopping at their partnered retailer, which is then deposited to your investment account. Get $5 free when setting up an Acorns account here!
- Stash: Stash is a beginner investing platform that lets you invest on autopilot in either expert-created funds or fractional shares of individual companies. Their debit card account also enables you to get “stock back” when shopping at their partner retail stores.
- Robinhood: Robinhood is the pioneer of fractional shares investing. You can invest in the stock market in nearly any company with almost any dollar amount. Their debit card also offers an interest-bearing checking account option. Get a free share of stock when you sign up for a free Robinhood account here!
