The best apps for 'adulting': Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there listeners. It's Brett Melina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. There is probably some point in our lives where we had to figure out the basics when it comes to living life as an adult. How do I open a checking account? How do I set up paying my bill? How do I get my electricity turned on? How do I do all these zillion other things? All these kind of big steps that you take when you're venturing out on your own and you go out there in the world as an adult. And of course, there are a lot of kids out there now that are going through this as well. Fortunately for them, they have a trove of websites and apps and other information that can help guide them and make the task of "adulting" a lot easier. My colleague, Jennifer Jolly writes about this in a column that you can read on tech.USAtoday.com.

It's called Adulting 101 and it focuses on apps that can teach life skills to young adults so that their transition into the real world is a lot smoother. We'll talk about a couple of these apps and websites here, and then you can read the rest in her column. Let's start with realworld.co. It is an app that essentially breaks down different topics into what they call playbooks. And they're broken down into things like finance, health, work, and life. And when you go into these topics, you dive in deeper and you can focus on other things. It focuses on topics like creating retirement savings, how to file your taxes, what to do when it comes with signing up for health insurance or life insurance, maintaining your credit scores. Whatever basic needs that you want to learn about, this is where you can go.

And really, it's interesting because I looked a little bit at the website and yes, it's ideal for young adults. I think a lot of older adults can learn a couple things too. Just some basics on other stuff maybe they didn't know about. So, I mean, it's definitely worth checking out. Another area that a lot of folks can can think about too is the finance space and really budgeting. There are so many apps out there that allow you to manage your budget. Mint, Credit Karma, YNAB, which is short for You Need A Budget. And they all kind of do the same thing. And it's essentially managing your budget, managing your bills, tracking them knowing what you paid when, and just keeping an account of every little bit you spend. Now, some of these services have plans where you can subscribe and some of them might require you to connect your bank accounts. So you can do that. If for are some reason you want something that doesn't either, whether you want to not connect your bank account, or you don't want to pay like whatever it is for the plans.

I use an app called Fudge It. It is free. You don't have to connect any kind of banking account to it. It is a very simple budgeting app. You plug in your different expenses, you plug in how much money you bring in and it'll set aside your budget and you can just work off that. If you need to add in extra little expenses, you can pop those in. And it's very straightforward. So it gives you a really quick, basic, like here's how much you have, here's how much you've spent and you can really break it down. So if you're looking for something that's a budget app, you want something a little simpler, that's another way to go as well.

One other app that Jennifer mentions that's really good is called Peero. It's spelled P-E-E-R-R-O. And what it does is it helps students in high school and college connect with peers to learn about the skills they need to get into certain jobs. So if you have your mindset on a particular career, you can connect with people in those jobs and get a better sense of what is it that you do? What is it that you need to learn in order to get that job? And you can also discover other stuff like training programs, and you can connect with possible employers too. So a lot of great stuff you can get from that app. It's free and it's available on iOS and Android.

To learn more of some of the other apps and services that Jennifer recommends to help you with adulting, be sure to check out our column on tech.USAtoday.com. Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, show ideas, any tech problems you want to us to try to address? You can find me on Twitter @BrettMolina23. Also, any younger users out there, have there been any apps that have helped you in your young adult life? Let me know. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.