3 Favorite Tech Tools for Retirement Savers (That Have Nothing to do With Money!)
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Welcome to the Stay Wealthy Podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Schulte, and you all know me as a finance nerd, but what you might not know is that I'm also a huge tech nerd. Just ask my wife. It's impossible for me to buy anything in the technology department without spending hours and hours reading reviews and analyzing this stuff. So to kick off this month's series on technology, I'm sharing three tech tools for retirement savers that have nothing to do with money. Why?

Why is that? Well, because if I can improve your life, save time and help you become more efficient by using technology, then you're going to have more time to spend on improving your financial plan. Be sure to stay until the end today because I'm also sharing a few bonus tech tools as well. And even if you don't consider yourself tech savvy, I promise you're going to pick up something new and easy to adopt that will make your life better or at least more fun.

For all the links and resources mentioned in this episode, including links to all the tech tools that I mentioned, head over to youstaywealthy.com forward slash 99.

Okay, the first tech tool that I want to share is the most important and it's probably the one that's most well known by our listeners today, but it's so important that I couldn't leave it out. And that is Dashlane or LastPass. Dashlane and LastPass are primarily known as password managers. In other words, they're apps that live on your computer and on your mobile phone and they help you safely and securely store your passwords.

But they do other things as well that don't get as much love, such as helping you generate unique, secure passwords that meet certain criteria. It also helps you autofill your usernames and passwords on both your mobile browser and your desktop, so it allows you just to fly through your day. You don't have to try to remember everything.

It'll also help you auto fill payment and personal information when and if you're shopping online. So it'll populate your billing address, your mailing address, your credit card information, all of that's in there makes your day really, really easy. It also has dark web monitoring, which scans the web every single day and looks for your personal data that's been leaked to the wrong people. And it alerts you when this happens and also tells you how to take action.

And then lastly, Dashlane has a built-in VPN or virtual private network, which protects your online privacy, protects against identity theft, and allows you to safely use wireless internet. If you're not already using the VPN, go and get a VPN, even if you don't use Dashlane or LastPass. I will tell you this though, a VPN can be quite expensive and it's already part of the package inside of Dashlane. So it's a nice effective way

know cost-friendly way to not only get a password manager in place but also have a vpn free to use especially when you're out in public at a coffee shop or an airport and you're using the public wi-fi

So I personally use Dashlane and I'll also mention that it serves as a safe and secure place for me to store my checking account information, my saving account information, my driver's license, my social security card, my passport, all those important documents all live securely inside of Dashlane. I can also securely store notes and receipts if you have a need for storing those types of things.

Lastly, what I love about Dashlane, and I'm sure LastPass and others have it too, there's an emergency feature that allows me to share all or some of my information with one or more emergency contacts in the chance that something were to happen to me. So my wife is my emergency contact and I'm hers. And now that I'm saying this all out loud, ideally we should add one additional person in the chance that something happened to both of us at the same time.

But the nice thing about this feature is that you can set a waiting period. So if that person, your emergency contact tries to access your account while you're still alive, you have a period of time which you can set to review that request and deny it. Now, obviously, if you're not here and you don't respond to that request, then Dashlane is going to turn over that information based on that emergency feature.

I've been using Dashlane for at least five years now and initially I chose them because it was rated as the most friendly password manager for Mac and iPhone users, which is me. It was also the top rated manager by Wall Street Journal, Wired, New York Times and a few others.

My guess is at this point, most of the top rated apps, again, I mentioned LastPass in there, they're all pretty similar at this point. So maybe test out a few to see what works best for you. And then lastly, I'll just say that recently Dashlane actually made a move where their desktop app is no longer needed and everything just lives as a browser plugin. So it's becoming much, much easier and much more integrated in my day-to-day life.

Number two is Pocket or Instapaper. So I personally use Pocket, but Instapaper is a competitor and it's widely used and gets raving reviews as well. So, you know, check them both out. But in its most basic form, Pocket allows you to quickly and easily save articles, videos, and even podcasts like this one for future consumption.

You know, how often are you browsing Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn and you see something that you want to read or watch or listen to, but you just don't have the time in that moment or you get distracted and you're pulled into another project.

Before Pocket, when I'm in that situation, I would often just email those things to myself only to see my email inbox just get more and more chaotic and unorganized. But with Pocket, the app is on my phone and it's also installed to my browser. So if I come across something that I want to save for later, I just click that little button and then I choose an appropriate tag.

And by choosing a tag, it helps me keep everything organized. For example, if I come across a book that I want to read, maybe a friend recommended a book or posted about it online, I'll just add that to Pocket and choose the book tag. And now when I'm ready for a new book, I can log into Pocket using Dashlane, of course, click on the books tag, and I can view my entire list of books that I've saved.

I also have a tag for podcasts. I have a news tag and a finance tag. Maybe you like saving recipes. You can create a recipe tag and funnel all of your recipes there. You can create as many tags as you like. I like to keep it simple just so it doesn't become chaotic and overwhelming like my email inbox was.

One of the other great features is the ability to read offline. So if you're about to jump on an airplane or you're headed somewhere with bad Wi-Fi or spotty cell service, you can add a bunch of content to Pocket and then read it without any issues while you're offline.

A few other things that Pocket does that I've taken note of, it allows you to highlight passages and store them for future reference, which if you're a Kindle reader, you might do that already, but you can do the same thing for articles that you're reading. Highlight things, stick them in a folder, and revisit them in the future. It also allows you to listen to an article rather than read it using the built-in narrator function.

And then lastly, it gives you these estimates for how long something will take to read or listen to. So if you save an article for the future and then you go to see what articles are in your pocket, it'll tell you, hey, this article is 34 minutes. Well, if you don't have 34 minutes at that time to read it, maybe you'll skip that one and save it for later and read something a little bit shorter. So a nice little function to tell you an estimate of how long something will take for you to consume.

Pocket does have a free version that has limited functionality, but the premium version is only 45 bucks a year. And I found it just be a huge time saver and really has just boosted my productivity. And it also just really helps keep things organized and I'm able to get to the things that I save that I actually want to read.

So I'll link to all of this in the show notes, which again can be found by going to youstaywealthy.com forward slash 99. The third tech tool I wanted to share today is called Grammarly. Grammarly is a real-time spelling and grammar checker, and it is by far the easiest app to use in this department. And even if you aren't overly concerned about spelling every single word correctly, and even if you're not writing professionally for work,

It's just a really nice tool to quickly fix your emails or your social media posts that might cause confusion. And unlike spell checkers in other programs like Microsoft Word, Grammarly is just like this one click of a button fix to correct a spelling or grammar mistake. All it does is just underlines the basic spelling or grammar mistake in red and

And for other advanced errors, it has different color underlines as well. All you have to do is just hover over the option to fix it and click your desired correction and it's done. It's seriously the easiest spellcheck tool I've ever used. It's also free if you don't need all the premium tools and you just want the basics. But even the paid version is only $30 a year.

Another use case for Grammarly is improving your writing skills. You can set your writing goals, how formal you want to be, who your audience is, your tone and the intent of your writing, and it'll actually grade you as you write and provide suggestions for improvement.

You've probably heard that good writers try to write at an eighth grade level for maximum impact and Grammarly helps you accomplish that through this scale that they have that's on a zero to 100 scale. And the scale essentially tells you how much energy your reader is going to have to expend in order to absorb what you're saying. And it'll provide tips for making improvements to your writing and making it easier for people to read.

even if you aren't in the working world, you might just be interested in sharpening your writing skills in retirement as a way to learn something new and keep your mind working. And heck, maybe you have a second career in retirement as an author. You might not know that Mark Twain didn't write his first book until he was 41 years old. And remember that was in 1869 when life expectancy was around 39 years old. So, uh,

It's not too late to start that second career in retirement as an author and Grammarly would be a great way to help you do that.

Lastly, if you have kids or grandkids that need some writing help, Grammarly is a great low-cost solution to consider for them. It's also a great way to help them test for plagiarism before submitting those important papers. You can literally just copy and paste the entire document, even if you're writing it somewhere else, copy and paste it into Grammarly, and it'll tell you how original the paper is or the document is and what sections you may need to better put into your own words.

Grammarly now integrates with Chrome and Safari browsers, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Outlook, and others. And I know it's also available in the Android and Apple mobile app stores. So it's pretty much everywhere these days. And at the very least, I highly recommend just checking out the free version, throw it on your phone, throw it on your desktop browser. I've used it for years. I used the free version for years before upgrading and it's absolutely fantastic.

Okay, so with those three tech tools out of the way, I saved some bonus ones for the end to serve as more of a rapid fire and some more fun, friendly tech tools. So the first is an app called One Second Every Day, and it's seriously one of the coolest video apps I've ever come across.

In short, every day it prompts you to record a one second video. It could be of your kid or your grandkid or a shot of the beach or that amazing meal that you had that night or of a friend or significant other, whatever. It's only one second, so you don't have to overthink it.

And once you have a handful of these one second videos recorded inside the app, the app will automatically stitch them together and create this one long video with all of your one second videos in chronological order. So the more one second videos you record,

the longer your featured video becomes. It's just a really fun way to document your life and I've had a lot of fun reflecting back on all these one second highlights and watching my kids grow and get older and it just couldn't be easier to use. So it's called One Second Every Day, a really fun, easy to use video app to create these videos.

Next is a Chrome plugin, Chrome browser plugin called Video Speed Controller. And I don't know about you, but I listen to podcasts at one and a half times speed these days and I'm just used to it. And I find myself frustrated with videos that don't allow me to increase the speed.

So this free plugin, Video Speed Controller, allows you to quickly change that with any video on the internet. It doesn't have to be YouTube or Vimeo or anything like that, just any video on the internet, this plugin allows you to increase the speed. Also, a quick side note, I mentioned YouTube. A lot of people don't know that YouTube now actually has this functionality built in. So you don't really need the plugin if you consume all of your content on YouTube.

All you have to do is just click the little settings gear icon at the bottom of your video on YouTube, and you'll see an option that comes up that's called playback speed. So just turn that sucker up, and you'll be all set.

Second to last here in the bonus rapid fire is this awesome voice note-taking app called Otter, like the animal Otter. Like me, you've probably tried voice dictation software that just doesn't seem to do the job. I never really adopted it, but I promise Otter completely changes that. Just install the app on your mobile phone.

And it's AI powered assistant just captures everything with the best accuracy that I've ever seen. And it's just really, really easy. Just you just hit record, talk into your phone, and you'll watch it transcribe in real time. You can even make quick edits to the transcription. Just it's just really, really easy. And then also you can send that transcription from the app directly to a friend or a co worker or to yourself, whatever is needed.

Otter was voted the app of the day in 2019 by Apple and Fast Company, and they've rolled out tons of additional features since then, most of which you and I probably don't need. But they've rolled out tons of additional features, and it's just become a really, really neat tech tool, both for personal lives and professional. Best of all, you can record sound.

600 minutes of transcriptions per month for free. So if you're just a casual user like me, it's not even gonna cost you anything. So again, that app is Otter. I'll link to it in the show notes.

Lastly, if you're tired of online search behavior, your online search behavior being tracked by search engines like Google, and you don't want these search engines storing your personal information, check out this alternative desktop and mobile browser called DuckDuckGo, which is actually now an option in your iPhone settings and doesn't even require any tricky integration. So it's that important that, uh,

the iOS platform has actually adopted DuckDuckGo as an option in addition to the Chrome browser or Google and Safari.

What most people don't realize is that even if you don't use any Google products directly, Google is still trying to track as much as they can about you. In fact, Google trackers have been found on 75% of the top million websites, which means they're also trying to track just about everywhere you go on the internet, trying to learn everything they can about your browsing history. And get this, that information is kept by Google forever.

So using a private browser like DuckDuckGo can be a bit of an inconvenience compared to browsers like Chrome and Safari, where you have everything organized and bookmarked. But if your data and privacy, especially online and through search is really, really important to you, then giving up the convenience just might be worth

it. So I've had a lot of fun just learning about DuckDuckGo, some of the different settings. I'll be honest, I don't use it on a day-to-day basis, but I've heard enough of it by now that I had to download it and check it out. And I wanted to mention it in case it's just something that's really, really important to you.

Okay. As mentioned, I'll be linking to all of these tech tools in the show notes, which can be found by going to you stay wealthy.com forward slash 99. I hope you enjoyed the change of pace today. And I look forward to continuing the technology theme for the rest of the month, but don't worry. We'll get, be getting backed into the world of finance next week. So thank you as always for listening and I will see you back here next week.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. This podcast is not engaged in rendering legal, financial, or other professional services.