Over 10 Free Money Management Services to help you manage your finance better
Image by ZeroOne via FlickrEarn – Spend – Invest – Save, right. That’s what you do with the money you earn.
But most of times you lose track of your income, expenditure, investment and savings. You don’t know how much you are spending every month on Shopping, Restaurants, Gas & Groceries etc etc…. Last month you even forgot to pay your credit card bill and had to bear finance charges and penalty.
And in this UGLY ECONOMY when you never know…., every penny is worth saving. Isn’t it? No matter how – by cutting down expenses, cutting down on shopping, vacation and unnecessary visit to a local bar and restaurant or by working part-time/overtime.
But how do you keep track of how much you are actually earning and how much of it you are spending. Don’t worry, there are over dozen services to help you manage your money. They will let you see what, where and how much you are earning, spending, investing and saving. They will help you see in what categories you are spending much, so that you can cut down if you want. And if you were planning for a Romantic Cruise Vacation, then how much you need to save monthly to get this well deserved vacation by helping you set Monthly and Annual goals.
All the services I checked provides almost the same set of features but with varying ease of use, limitation, display, information and the way they aggregate your financial data. Following are some features which you will find in almost all the services mentioned below:
- Collating your various accounts information in a single interface to provide you overall visibility.
- Single sign-on so you don’t have to remember multiple account informations of your banks.
- Automatic categorization of your expenses by automatically recognition.
- Financial Alerts about bills due dates, high spending activity, over budget expenditure etc etc..
- Help you make financial goals and set budget for various spending habits based on history.
- Community Suggestions and deals for saving opportunities on various credit cards, bank accounts etc.
- Security over your data – they (say), they can’t access your personal information and provide you 128-bit SSL protection.
- Don’t let you transfer money in/out of the accounts from any of these services. So they have read only anonymous access to your financial data. (You might wanna check out their data protection policies and methods)
- Support for international currencies, generally.
- Support for almost all banks, if not, you can ask it to be added.
- And much more, I leave it to you to explore…
Finally, below is the list of various services (No particular order):
- Mint
- Money Strands
- Wesabe
- Geezeo
- Expensr
- Rudder
- Buxfer
- Quicken
- Yodlee
- Thrive
- Green Sherpa
- Xpenser: A service for the people who wants to manage their cash expenditure. Just enter online, call (using Dial2Do or Jott), twitter, IM or email you expense details as and when you do any cash transactions. The service will do the rest to manage it for you. Quite handy…
Word of advice:
Everyone has his own opinion about managing important financial data and giving it to a third party. Though the services use various kinds of security measures to protect the data from hackers, but it is entirely upto you to believe these services and provide your information. I am no judge to validate how secure they are.
They definitely help you manage your financial data better. If you have ever used Microsoft Money or Quicken desktop software, then these service are no different. Only other benefit you have is your data is available ANYWHERE, ANYTIME.
CBS News mentions:You have to give your bank accounts’ user IDs and passwords to these sites so they can gather data for you. That is a risk. Each site says they are secure and hacker-proof and even if someone reads your data they can only see your transactions, these sites don’t let you actually move money.
If, however, one of these services was hacked and the bad guys got your stored bank passwords out of it, well, that would be financially catastrophic. The site spokespeople will tell you that’s not possible. They’re probably close enough to right that it doesn’t matter. But there is no such thing as zero risk when it comes to computer security.
Please read privacy policies and safety information before using any service. To know more about these services in detail, read reviews by CBS and CNet mentioned below in related articles.
Questions to you:
Would you feel comfortable giving your bank account details to a third party. What do you think about someone stealing your money or getting to know you personally, how much you earn, what you spend and all. And then keep bugging you for various offers if any of these companies sold your information.
These are some of the questions, I think comes to everyone’s mind when dealing with such a crucial information. It all depends on how much faith you have on any particular service.
You may think if Google comes up with such a service, then you probably would. But remember Google already has so much information about you through Email, Docs and all.
What do you say??
Would you feel comfortable giving your bank account details to a third party. What do you think about someone stealing your money or getting to know you personally, how much you earn, what you spend and all. And then keep bugging you for various offers if any of these companies sold your information.
These are some of the questions, I think comes to everyone’s mind when dealing with such a crucial information. It all depends on how much faith you have on any particular service.
You may think if Google comes up with such a service, then you probably would. But remember Google already has so much information about you through Email, Docs and all.
What do you say??
Update (06/12/09): Now when Microsoft has decided to shut down Microsoft Money project after 30th June, 2009, it even makes more sense to use these services.
With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009.
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