Saving money is harder than spending it; Astra is fixing it

Astra is an automation platform for money movement. Astra’s personal finance app helps you move your money. Once monthly, weekly, or as frequently as you’d like, Astra moves your cash from your checking account to savings so you can save up and plan ahead smarter.

A simple, dare I say, basic idea. But, hidden behind Astra’s simplicity, Astra’s offer to keep you financially accountable may be critical to your long-term financial wellbeing, especially in a world of instant gratification & shiny objects demanding that you buy them now.

Astra makes it easy to set money aside, save, earn interest, and build better money habits — risk-free and on autopilot.

If you need more proof about that, just throw your mind a bit backward to the last shiny object you bought — the latest model iPhone, AirPods, that pizza you looked at on Instagram for just 34 seconds before you ordered in a second, and on, and on, the consensus is quite simple: we’re overspending — and our banks and credit cards are making it too simple.

Based on that background, it’s easy to now see that Astra’s ‘basic’ idea goes further than help you put money away. Rather, Astra offers everyday users an avenue to grow financially, make smarter choices, and build a nest egg with minimal effort. Simply create a rule, connect your accounts, and Astra offers that it will take responsibility for moving your cash from the expense to the asset column.

Unlike other fintech apps that require users to sign up and jump through lengthy verification and compliance hoops, Astra acts as a simple widget attached to your checking account so you can move cash to your savings easily and keep tabs on how well you’re doing financially.

Some of Astra’s main solutions designed around individuals looking to get their money go further include:

• a percentage-based savings plan that sends a fixed portion of your cash from checking to savings,
• compounding savings that grow how much you save over time,
• account sweep savings that move any cash over a certain threshold from checking > savings, and,
• round-up plans that bundle all you change into round figures and move them to savings.

With an intelligent money management solution designed to work on autopilot, Astra makes it possible for busy students, professionals, and just anyone from any background to grow financially without overthinking it. In essence, Astra puts automation to work helping you spend less so you can save more and do more when you really need to.

Astra was founded four years ago by Gil Akos and Sam Morgan, a product & innovation executive with experience across Alcoa, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley. Gil serves as Astra’s CEO while Morgan heads up product vision and innovation over at the startup.

I reached out to CEO, Gil Akos to get a better insight into:

• what exactly Astra is building,
• what makes Astra different from the gazillion other fintech apps out there,
• and why they’re building Astra.

According to Akos, building Astra all began as an effort to make your finances smarter. He and his co-founder both directly experienced the friction of managing your money across multiple bank accounts as young professionals in New York City. After building a few prototypes, they quickly realized that there was no solution to simple cross-account transfers, and nothing to execute those transfers automatically.

Many other fintech apps come with a debit card or try to help you accumulate savings balance offered by the service itself. Astra is unique in that it links to those other accounts, focusing on the smart routing between them. The range of functionality with their Routines allows you to create powerful systems to manage your money, everything from faster savings to advanced cash management for your small business.

“Like the rest of your digital life, financial software should do work for you when it comes to savings. Astra is designed so that anyone with a bank account should be able to move their money to the right place at the right time — that would result in more efficient savings for the millions out there just like you or me.

Take Astra for a spin right away!