If your New Year’s resolution is to save money, a Montreal-made app can help you put away some extra cash without changing your daily habits.
Mylo rounds up your everyday purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the extra money in a diversified portfolio.
When you sign up for the app, it links directly to your credit and debit cards.
“We track all those roundups that happen throughout the week and then once every Monday, we do a pre-authorized debit from your primary funding source,” Mylo founder Philip Barrar explained. “You can link multiple credit and debit cards directly to the application, take that change and then put it… into your investment account with Mylo.
“Typically, the user would see about $10 to $15 a week.”
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Over the course of a year, that money adds up.
“We did a survey before we actually launched the application, and we found that 53 per cent of Canadian millennials have less than $1,000 saved up, regardless of income,” Barrar said.
“For us, our target was how do we get to that $1,000 easily? We did so through three transactions a day, which rounds up to about $500 a year. On top of that, you have about a $10 weekly recurring deposit that’s very accessible for most users, so you could easily save over $1,000 a year within the Mylo application.
“If you want to save more, you can also do a one-time recurring deposit to help you accelerate that saving.”
Barrar said Mylo uses the same level of security as banks.
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After launching in July 2017, Mylo has seen “tremendous double-digit monthly growth” and Desjardins recently signed on as an investor. Apple even featured Mylo in its “Apps We Love” section.
“The reception has been fantastic,” Barrar said.
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He credits a lot of its success to how easy it is to use and how users don’t have to change any of their habits.
“Most people, when they make New Year’s resolutions like going to the gym every single day, they go really strong for the first 30 days, and then February, it dips off a little bit,” Barrar said. “With Mylo, we integrate with existing behaviours. You don’t have to do anything different than you normally do.
“It’s a New Year’s resolution that’s very tough to give up on.”
There is no minimum entry amount but Mylo takes a flat $1-a-month fee. When you sign up, it asks for basic information like name and address, but also asks for your opinions on investments and financial goals.
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“Mylo walks you through the whole way. Your money is professionally managed by a portfolio manager, so no investment knowledge is necessary and it’s all done from a mobile device,” Barrar said.
“We have a lot of people who reach out and say this is the first time they’ve started saving and this was the solution they’ve been looking for. People seem to really love the product and we’re happy that we can help Canadians achieve those financial goals.”