[...] the competition “How is this different than Mint or Wesabe?” I asked. “Why would anyone pay for this when there are free [...]

[...] how to organize your money in 2008 with Wesabe, a web-based personal finance tool (my November 2006 review). You can get a feel for how Wesabe works by watching this introductory [...]

[...] you folks? Have you used Mint? Do you like it? How would you improve it? Last year about this time, I reviewed Wesabe, another online personal finance tool. Have any of you tried both? How do they compare? For myself, [...]

[...] Wesabe is a web-based personal finance tool where you can manage your finances. They’ve also added acommunity component where you can [...]

[...] a detailed review with screen shots at get rich slowly via Money SmartLife Wesabe’s tagging system is a key to its power. Every transaction, every tip, [...]

I’ve been looking for a tool for some time and while Quicken & MS Money have all these seemingly fantastic tools, to be honest, I can’t be arsed doing a 3 month intensive course so I can figure out how to use them. There’s such a thing as feature bloat and those two have it spades.

I’ve tried Excel but it’s just too endlessly malleable for an inveterate tinkerer like me, I seem to spend more time trying to colour my cells the right shade of baby pink than actually, I don’t know, looking at the numbers.

Wesabe seems to work for me for now. I worked it out in an hour. Perhaps later, when I’ve mastered monitoring my finances, I may want to move on to something more powerful but then again, maybe not and maybe Wesabe will have evolved by then.

Wesabe…

What are the best sites for learning about Wesabe? We’ve started with these. What else should be here?
1. Wesabe – Web-based community provides users with personal financial tracking tools and encourages the sharing of tips and experiences. (www.we…

[...] GetRichSlowly gave an excellent review on Wesable, a new personal finance tool.  Check it out! [...]

[...] Find Out For Yourself In order to build their base Wesabe is offering free membership at its Pro level for all of 2007 if you sign up and create an account in 2006. I signed up for one today and am eager to check out what Wesabe has to offer. For more information on things such as setting up an account, offering tips, tagging transactions, and privacy read a review over at Get Rich Slowly. [...]

[...] I could go on and on about the features of Wesabe, but I’d just be repeating the content of this excellent introductory post on Get Rich Slowly. If you’re more of a visual type, just visit Wesabe or watch this wonderful orientation video. [...]

You’re wrong about US — we currently support a number of banks outside the US, and while we need to clean up our currency support, we’re doing that on requests from users.

Super Saver, you could be right! I would be very happy if people found good uses for the site beyond what we originally thought of. I’m hearing tons of great feedback from people using the site today, so I think what we have won’t need to go away, but as people want more, we’ll find the right ways to help.

Hope this helps,
Marc

Any ‘spare’ time I have outside work and family commitments goes towards doing a P/T master’s degree and managing my investments – things that will have a bigger long term impact on my networth than wondering if I was charged too much for my last car service.

Regards
http://enoughwealth.blogspot.com

The original concept is interesting, but I think it is missing a key point. Tracking where the money is going is only a (small) part of the solution. Know what to do with the information and how to do it is the big opportunity. I would be pleasantly surprise if the community can do the second part.

(a) have all your money in the US, and
(b) only use credit/debit cards and checks.

There’s no way to track your cash transactions. There’s no way to track ANYTHING, in fact, unless your financial institutions offer Quicken/MS Money export functions.

That’s a pretty glaring hole in the system. There should be a manual entry option. As it is, I’m probably going to stick with Excel for my money tracking.

[...] I created a Websabe account this afternoon, and I really like it. Flickr is to photos as Websabe is to personal finances. J.D. at Get Rich Slowly provides an overview. [...]

@James, we offer free memberships to manage up to three bank or credit card accounts, and a ‘pro’ version for up to 12 accounts. The pro version will be $4.99/month, but if you upload any data in 2006, you get a pro account for 2007 for free. We do not intend to sell ad space and certainly are not planning to sell people’s data to marketers.

Also, it’s great that you reconcile your accounts — the reason we don’t have that now is because so few people I could find do it at all — even some Quicken users! It’s a lot to ask of people to track, and while I agree it is wise to do, we didn’t consider it a launch feature for that reason. We’d like Wesabe to be as automated as possible, and to add manual features later. We do, though, plan to add cash tracking and upcoming transactions in the near future, and investment management later.

Hope this helps.

Reasonable concerns and reactions. I’ve long been an advocate for online privacy (you can look at my posts on http://radar.oreilly.com/marc/ to see some of what I’ve said about it), and I wouldn’t want you or anyone uploading private data unless you had great reason to do so.

Wesabe is intended to be a great reason. For the concerns about “what happens if they go out of business,” please check out our “data bill of rights” at https://www.wesabe.com/page/security which says:

* You can export and/or delete your data from Wesabe whenever you want.

* Your data is your data, not ours. Our job is to help you understand and act on your data.

* We’ll keep all of your data online and accessible for as long as you have an account. No “archive access” charges.

* Any data you want us to keep private, we will.

* If a question comes up not covered by these rights, we will answer it remembering that your data belongs to you.

If you want to read more about this, take a look at blog.wesabe.com, where I write about this topic often.

I think Wesabe offers more than Quicken or Money ever could, because it builds a community of consumers helping each other find better values. If you’re looking for a way to get better data and better advice about a purchase or a merchant, we can do that, and we do it by matching advice to your personal finances.

Think of it this way: when you walk into a car dealership, they can find out your credit rating, income, roommates, magazine subscriptions, political donations, and a ton more. What can you know about them and whether they’ll provide good value for you? Through Wesabe, you can see how much an auto shop charges on average, and how people feel about their purchases afterwards. That’s incredibly valuable if you’re looking for a good place to spend your money on something you need.

If you’re not comfortable uploading, you can still join at get and share tips and goals, and look at our reports on merchants and tags. I think that many people will find good reason to go from browsing to more, but that’s a great way to see what could work for you if you like the early experience.

Thanks to J.D. for the great write up, and to all of you for your comments. Feel free to write me at marc@wesabe.com if you have questions you want answered.

Sounds like a Web version of Quicken/Microsoft Money with fewer features (no investments or assets, right? so no overall net worth picture etc) but with the currently-correct buzzwords (“social”, “tagging”).

Apart from the security/privacy issues, consider also this: what happens if you’ve adopted Wesabe for your financial records and, 12 months down the line, they go out of business? Or start charging a monthly fee?

I find Wesabe intriguing; but I’m pretty happy with my 7-year-old version of Microsoft Money and don’t see anything compelling enough to get me to switch or to run in parallel.

(Oh, and I have a big aversion to relying *only* on downloaded statements for account reconcilation: believing only what your bank says is a good recipe for allowing fraudulent transactions or unjustified interest or fees to slip through unnoticed. I’ve had both happen in the past; my practice of entering spending as it happens and then reconciling against the monthly statement caught it.)

This is a great article about the tool that convinced me never to go near it.

I get the feeling the jury will come back with a verdict of Nice, But Unnecessary.

The problem with systems like wesabe is that users will work hard to improve their performance on paper, regardless of whether or not this means there is any real improvement in financial performance.