I sit here waiting for clothes to finish washing and drying so that I can get a couple loads started before dozing off.
I'm a responsible adult like that. I was checking up on my accounts and all that and realized I don't really tell people what I do to keep an eye on my accounts. I mean, why would I? Nobody really cares and it's certainly not a subject that draws a lot of interest, it's not exciting; managing your finances and the tools one uses to achieve that.
Well, for me, I've been using a couple of online tools in a comparative method. First off, I've been using Mint.com for a few years now. It's a great and secure way to keep track of your spending. Not only that but it keeps track of your investment accounts to… It's a lot like Quicken, in fact, but it's a lot better. Oh and it's FREE. Yep, free. However, the thing that worries me is that Mint was bought out by Intuit, the fine makers of Quicken mid 2009. One never knows how these acquisitions will pan out. Intuit says they'll keep Mint free and separate from Quicken… That all remains to be seen. In the meantime, though, I continue to use it to track my expenses and investment accounts.
Another service I use is one that I signed up for recently. It's called Mvelopes. Much like Mint, it's also an online service. It does everything that Mint does, but it's not free. Why use it then? Well, Mvelopes uses an antiquated method of managing and allocating your money that really forces you to see HOW you spend your money and take control of what you're spending. It still takes discipline, but I really like what Mvelopes does. They take an old school approach to managing your finances. When I was younger, I knew people that would withdraw all of their cash and divvy it up for different expected expenses. For instance, they would set aside 200 dollars for groceries, 500 for rent/mortgage. Anyway, Mvelopes does the same thing. You take your cash and you allocate it to different categories or "envelopes." When your transactions update you need to assign them to the appropriate envelope, which then decrments the funds in that envelope equal to what was spent.
Effectively, it's making you create a budget and how you use the program centers around the money-in-an-envelope concept.
Mint is straight forward. It offers support for checking, savings, credit cards and investment accounts. Aside from the free price tag, I appreciate how well Mint does at organizing your finances. It has powerful tagging features that allow you to get in deep and really separate your bills and transactions. It also offers notifications so that you know when you have bills due, large transactions and more. They support themselves through ads, of course. But you really don't see them, unless you go to the "ways to save' tab. Even then, you'll find some really great deals and rates on different banking products. I'd recommend looking at the offers, actually.
Sure, why would anyone bother with either software solution? I bother because it's a really strong visual and real life understanding of how I'm spending my money. It's already impacted how I spend my money.
Financial institute support for each product is pretty broad. Mvelopes supports many more banks, though so keep that in mind. Sometimes there's advantages to paying for software, kids.
In all, I think both programs kick a lot of ass. Mvelopes shines where it comes down to training, support and how it changes how one looks at their money. Mint's service is just awesome right out of the box. For a free product it's pretty amazing. It's reporting, tagging and trending features are all very robust and give you insight into how your money is being spent. It has community based support, meaning you need to check into the forums and post to them if you're having an issue. The community is pretty active thoug, so getting support isn't an issue.
In all, if you're still using your checkbook register, doing it in your head or using Quicken, I'd highly recommend that you give either of these program's a try. I'm using both. Mint is free and Mvelopes has a 14 day free trial, you do have to provide your credit card, though. Honestly, it's well worth it.
Update: I was contacted by @neobudget about their site and service. I checked out the site on their free trial offer, for seven days. It's an envelope budget service, in the same vein as Mvelopes. The site and set up is simple and straight forward but lacking in the raw feature set area. You can't feed tie in your accounts to Neo Budget, thus you're forced to manually enter transactions or upload your transactions from your bank… Not really what I'm looking for, as I prefer more automation with my services. Still, for the priced $2.50 per month with the existing feature set it's perfectly reasonable and makes for a great value for a good budgeting service, if not great. Try Neo Budget.
Financial Software
I'm a responsible adult like that. I was checking up on my accounts and all that and realized I don't really tell people what I do to keep an eye on my accounts. I mean, why would I? Nobody really cares and it's certainly not a subject that draws a lot of interest, it's not exciting; managing your finances and the tools one uses to achieve that.
Well, for me, I've been using a couple of online tools in a comparative method. First off, I've been using Mint.com for a few years now. It's a great and secure way to keep track of your spending. Not only that but it keeps track of your investment accounts to… It's a lot like Quicken, in fact, but it's a lot better. Oh and it's FREE. Yep, free. However, the thing that worries me is that Mint was bought out by Intuit, the fine makers of Quicken mid 2009. One never knows how these acquisitions will pan out. Intuit says they'll keep Mint free and separate from Quicken… That all remains to be seen. In the meantime, though, I continue to use it to track my expenses and investment accounts.
Another service I use is one that I signed up for recently. It's called Mvelopes. Much like Mint, it's also an online service. It does everything that Mint does, but it's not free. Why use it then? Well, Mvelopes uses an antiquated method of managing and allocating your money that really forces you to see HOW you spend your money and take control of what you're spending. It still takes discipline, but I really like what Mvelopes does. They take an old school approach to managing your finances. When I was younger, I knew people that would withdraw all of their cash and divvy it up for different expected expenses. For instance, they would set aside 200 dollars for groceries, 500 for rent/mortgage. Anyway, Mvelopes does the same thing. You take your cash and you allocate it to different categories or "envelopes." When your transactions update you need to assign them to the appropriate envelope, which then decrments the funds in that envelope equal to what was spent.
Effectively, it's making you create a budget and how you use the program centers around the money-in-an-envelope concept.
Mint is straight forward. It offers support for checking, savings, credit cards and investment accounts. Aside from the free price tag, I appreciate how well Mint does at organizing your finances. It has powerful tagging features that allow you to get in deep and really separate your bills and transactions. It also offers notifications so that you know when you have bills due, large transactions and more. They support themselves through ads, of course. But you really don't see them, unless you go to the "ways to save' tab. Even then, you'll find some really great deals and rates on different banking products. I'd recommend looking at the offers, actually.
Sure, why would anyone bother with either software solution? I bother because it's a really strong visual and real life understanding of how I'm spending my money. It's already impacted how I spend my money.
Financial institute support for each product is pretty broad. Mvelopes supports many more banks, though so keep that in mind. Sometimes there's advantages to paying for software, kids.
In all, I think both programs kick a lot of ass. Mvelopes shines where it comes down to training, support and how it changes how one looks at their money. Mint's service is just awesome right out of the box. For a free product it's pretty amazing. It's reporting, tagging and trending features are all very robust and give you insight into how your money is being spent. It has community based support, meaning you need to check into the forums and post to them if you're having an issue. The community is pretty active thoug, so getting support isn't an issue.
In all, if you're still using your checkbook register, doing it in your head or using Quicken, I'd highly recommend that you give either of these program's a try. I'm using both. Mint is free and Mvelopes has a 14 day free trial, you do have to provide your credit card, though. Honestly, it's well worth it.
Update: I was contacted by @neobudget about their site and service. I checked out the site on their free trial offer, for seven days. It's an envelope budget service, in the same vein as Mvelopes. The site and set up is simple and straight forward but lacking in the raw feature set area. You can't feed tie in your accounts to Neo Budget, thus you're forced to manually enter transactions or upload your transactions from your bank… Not really what I'm looking for, as I prefer more automation with my services. Still, for the priced $2.50 per month with the existing feature set it's perfectly reasonable and makes for a great value for a good budgeting service, if not great. Try Neo Budget.