In today’s digital age, there’s no reason for retirees or pre-retirees to sit back and watch the world go by, reminiscing on their youthful adventures and dynamic professional lives.
Seniors can now use mobile apps for intellectual development and personal growth by tracking their finances, keeping their health in check and stimulating their cognitive skills. Here’s a selection of top apps for seniors (most of them for the iPad, some of them for Android tablets), all designed to keep their life increasingly engaging and intellectually satisfying.
Mint
Mint is one of the top personal finance apps that helps seniors to keep track of their finances and modify their spending to save more. The app will automatically present all your financial information in one place – account balances and transactions can be easily controlled from a smartphone or tablet. Mint will track and categorize all your spending, making it easy to analyze it and create budgets. (Compatibility: iOS 7.0 or later. For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.)
Check
Check is an award-winning personal finance app that can be of great help in any kind of financial planning, including the retirement budget. The app integrates information from various sources, such as your savings, credit card and bill information. When bills are due or the balance is low, the app will let you know. (Compatibility: iOS 6.0 or later. For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.)
- Download iPad/iOS [Free]
WebMD
This is a classic for keeping up with your health – the app features a wide range of information on medical conditions and advice for healthy living. It can be of great help during medical emergencies, but not only – you can use its Symptom Checker to perform a preliminary diagnosis of your issues and, if necessary, seek professional help. There are support group discussions with experts and other seniors, with whom you can exchange information on the health topics that interest you. (Compatibility: iOS 6.1 or Android 2.3. For iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android devices.)
- Download iPad/iOS [Free]
- Download Android [Free]
Blood Pressure Monitor
This app is practical and easy to use – it helps to keep track of your blood pressure and provides a weight health monitor. Blood Pressure Monitor gives statistical information that can span over a lifetime, has built-in reminders, visualizes data in an understandable way and includes an e-mail import/export service that helps to communicate with healthcare providers. (Compatibility: iOS 5.0 or later. For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.)
- Download iPad/iOS [Free]
Find My iPhone
This handy app can be useful for everyone, not just seniors. We all tend to lose our phones and this app can help us to find our lost iOS devices (like iPads or iPhones) and, if they are really beyond our reach, it allows to remotely lock them. (Compatibility: iOS 7.0 or later. For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.)
- Download iPad/iOS [Free]
Voice Reading
Excellent for those who get easily tired reading long e-mails or web content, the app will read aloud any text shared from other apps, URLs or even text files. (Compatibility: Android 2.2 and later. For all Android devices. )
- Download Android [Free]
EyeReader
Another very practical tool for those who find reading their paperwork exhausting. Eyereader simply acts as a magnifying glass – by holding your iPhone in front of a book or newspaper you’ll get a clear picture of the text with a light to help brighten it and ensure a pleasant read. With this app, you can spend a couple of hours catching up on and managing your paperwork without tiring out your eyes. (Compatibility: iOS 6.0 or later. For iPhone (4, 4S, 5, 5c, 5s) and iPod Touch, 5th generation.)
- Download iPad/iOS [Free]
Crosswords Classic
Apps for seniors are not only about finance or health – they’re also about nourishing their cognitive skills and training their memory. And what could be better than a classic crossword puzzle? Crosswords is a great $9.99 app for all those who love to bend their minds in solving crossword puzzles. Top recommendation: the crossword guru, The New York Times, has given it great reviews. (Compatibility: iOS 5.0 or later. For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.)
- Download iPad/iOS [$9.99]
Lumosity
Another great opportunity for cognitive development is offered by Lumosity, an app that features games designed by neuroscientists to enhance memory and cognitive speed – in sum, your brain agility. If trained, our brain can perform at the top of its form, and Lumosity provides personalized brain training programs that can focus on improving your attention, memory, speed or problem-solving capacities. (Compatibility: iOS 6.0 or Android 4.0 and up. For iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android devices.)
- Download iPad/iOS [Free]
- Download Android [Free]
iBooks
Books enrich our lives and offer fresh perspectives that can impact our personalities. This is an e-book app developed by Apple, where books can be downloaded from iTunes store – some of them for free. The app helps to make the reading experience more pleasant by including controls to change the type size and brightness. Keeping up with the latest bestsellers and captivating non-fiction has never been easier. (Compatibility: iOS 7.0 or later. For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.)
- Download iPad/iOS [Free]
