Tomorrow I’ll be participating in a brainstorming session about online personal finance tools. The people behind this workshop want to know what the average person is looking for when she chooses a tool to manage her money. I promised to poll GRS readers for suggestions.
How I manage my money
For years, I’ve used Quicken to manage my money, both on Mac and PC. I’m using the Mac version now, and it’s way behind its PC cousin. The program has all the features I need to track my bank accounts, my investment accounts, and my business ventures, but these features are difficult to find and use, mired by a lousy interface.
Though I like the idea of an online personal finance tool, in practice I find they have too many barriers for me:
- They take too long to set up.
- They have limited functionality.
- They have annoying interface quirks.
For me to move to an online tool, it would have to offer fuss-free setup, not have a subscription-based income model (I’d rather pay a one-time fee), allow me to customize my transactions, and be able to track investments. I don’t really care about social networking stuff. I’m not that eager to compare my expenses with everybody else.
Meanwhile, I’m gradually moving to a paperless personal finance system. I’ve automated as many transactions as possible. I scan every important document that comes my way. I make regular backups of my data. I’d certainly give serious consideration to a tool that helped with this.
How you manage your money
How do you manage your money? What strategies do you use? What tools have you tried? What are you currently using? Do you manage your money on your computer with Excel, Quicken, or Microsoft Money? Do you manage it online with Wesabe, Mint, or Expensr?
What are the top three things you want out of a personal finance tool or service? Do you want to be able to budget? Connect to your investment account? Discuss money management with other users?
Finally, what are your biggest personal finance challenges? Becoming debt-free? Learning how to invest? Finding money to save? Resisting the temptation to spend?
This article is about Ask the Readers, Tools
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I’m surprised that I’m in such a minority — I use “The Budget Kit” by Judy Lawrence. It’s a book with spaces for everything — daily expenses in every category, investments, and anything else you’d need. It’s simple, it’s intuitive, you don’t need to change it over when you change computers, there’s no security risk, and I buy my annual copy (they’re the same for every year) on Half.com for around $6.00.
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Yodlee Money Center is the best system I have used. Love the expenses pie charts!
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@Mark:
I don’t think you are reading the security concerns posts very well. At least not mine. You’ll see that I state that I DO use my credit union’s bill pay service as well as automated bill pay.
That is not the issue. The issue is that technically speaking, there is a huge security risk in posting all of your account information for multiple accounts inside one, third-party system where the data resides on a server that they host, because:
–You have only their word that they are exercising proper security practices on their servers.
–You have no way to know whether they really are a bona fide company or if they are a couple of servers jacked together in some entrepreneurial programmer’s basement somewhere.
–You have no way to know if they will sell your information to another third party. Or if they do, you don’t have a way to guarantee that you will be notified they have done so. Or if THEY get hacked, that they’ll tell you your data was compromised.
–You are placing a rather comprehensive picture of your financial accounts — including the accounts where you hold your money — in one place that you don’t have control over.
These financial tracking services are not banks. I don’t hesitate to use my credit union’s services because I can push a payment from my bank to my creditor. My bank retains my account number at my creditor, but my creditor does not retain any knowledge of my bank account numbers in their database (my bank issues an electronic check, it’s not a direct EFT). It would be pretty difficult for my creditor to access my account without me knowing it, or for a third party to steal that information from the creditor’s system.
I trust my bank with my creditors’ account data more than I trust a third-party internet service with my banking account data.
I also get privacy statements repeatedly from my bank, I know they have staff to deal with transaction disputes, and I can actually walk into a physical office here in my home town and discuss any problems I might be having with somebody. Not to mention that they have several layers of authentication to get into my account, and another layer to get into my bill pay — so much authentication it’s slightly annoying. So I know they take data privacy seriously even if they can’t 100% guarantee it is safe with them.
P.S. — I highly doubt that Mint.com or any of those other services is going to take responsibility for your losses if your data gets hacked on their server.
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I’d also like to note for everyone that is concerned with the online services’ security model…with the way that most of the online services are designed (such as Wesabe, etc.) your account credentials aren’t actually stored by them on their servers, only the transaction data. You usually have a client running on your local machine that stores the information and will download your financial data and then subsequently upload it to your Wesabe account so it remains separated and secure.
It’s no less secure than running Quicken or any other software on your local machine where you input your account information since none of that ever permanently leaves your computer either. If you dig in to how they are designed, the online systems are pretty well thought out.
And if you’re really security conscious, then open source software and a lot of reading code is the only way to really be SURE your information isn’t being used by someone inappropriately…that includes Microsoft or Intuit or any of the other big players.
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I must be the only one here who doesn’t have a formal budget or use any of the money managing programs mentioned here…I do the majority of my banking online. I work in sales, so my weekly income varies. My paycheck is direct deposited into my interest earning checking account every Friday. Sundays, I sit down and pay whatever bills I have for the week through electronic bill pay and transfer what’s left into my savings account~whether it’s $50 or $500~leaving enough in the checking account to cover weekly expenses. I don’t carry a lot of cash, using my debt card for most purchases. I have one credit card that I use for gas and payoff monthly. It’s not very high-tech, but it works for me!
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I use a sweet little Excel app called Budget Planner from simpleplanning.com. I think it cost me $10, but you can get a package of all their planners for about $30 or $40, including investment planners, retirement planners, 401k calculators, etc.
Because Mr. C. and I married late in life and have our own day-to-day financial quirks, we keep separate personal finances with split bills, but plan and allocate our investments together. He enjoys the Quicken tracking of the heavy duty stuff, so I like the quick and easy budget app from simpleplanning.com.
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The rave reviews have convinced me that I need to try Yodlee Moneycenter. And soon!
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I am a Yodlee.com fan. It’s Quicken on the Web. With Quicken, you have to be at your own computer. With Yodlee, you can be anywhere, on any computer, and check your financial situation.
I never use my debit card for purchases. I use my Chase Freedom credit card as often as I can. You would be stupid not to. It’s FREE MONEY! Chase wants to give you 3% back! Wow! (I always pay the statement balance in full every month.)
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I actually use QuickBooks Pro
I have the software to run my six businesses from home, and so I started another company called “Personal.” It’s really the best system I could ask for and I love it. I have records of all my money for all my businesses and for myself, carefully documented by GL code and so forth. I wouldn’t recommend that someone go out and BUY QB for their personal finances alone, but since I know the system inside and out, it is natural for me to use it. I like that QB has a load of powerful tools that I never use for my personal finances, but the option is always there 
Speaking of QB Pro, it’s only available for Windows. I run Windows on my Mac using Parallels III, which works marvelously. I run a dual system that way – on my Mac laptop with a virtual machine inside of it for the PC.
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@ db
Please read post #154 posted by Aaron Shaefer. It will address most of what you said in response to me. Further, I was indeed referring to the folks that had posted concerns about using online money management tools in general, and as a matter of fact I do not even recollect reading your original post to begin with. I appreciate your response, but as I posted information strictly as an aid to many folks’ concerns over internet security, I do not think your attempt to incite an argument or to denounce what I had posted is with cause. In the future please keep responses limited to useful information rather than argumentative rhetoric.
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On a Mac you might want to check out Cha-Ching I’ve been using it for a few months and it got enough features for my uses and has a very Mac UI.
http://midnightapps.com/
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I use OpenOffice.org Calc – like Excel, but free and non-proprietary. I break it up into one worksheet for each month, with extra sheets for salary, savings, etc. This has worked quite well and accurately for several years, but now I’m trying to get into using GnuCash (like Quicken, but free).
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MONEY MANAGEMENT – I keep track of spending as I go by collecting receipts and recording check and credit card transactions in a modified check register that I created using a free spreadsheet program. I also sewed a checkbook/register holder that also holds my credit cards and pen so I only have to pull one thing out at the cash register.
I keep track of my budget, net worth, etc. using a spreadsheet on my computer. I check my work by checking my accounts online. It’s somewhat time consuming, but I enjoy it and it helps keep my on my toes, reminding me my priorities.
I store my paper receipts in envelopes (one for each month)–this has come in surprisingly handy–and my online receipts in an online folder.
TOP THREE THINGS I’d want out of a personal finance tool are: 1) it’s free, 2) it’s completely flexible (i.e., does exactly what I want), 3) it’s worthy of my complete trust. Automatic downloading of figures from my account is enticing, but you can see it’s not in the top three. I like not relying on some service that could raise rates or “improve” in some way I hate or go out of business or lose my data, etc. And if my computer breaks, I can do it all with pencil and paper. (Why, yes, I am middle aged.)
BIGGEST CHALLENGE – I don’t much like my job these days, but I can’t live on my investments yet. And I seem to be already doing all the things I’m willing to do to keep expenses down. For example, I’m willing to live in a small house near an iffy part of town, but I’m not willing to house sit or live out of my car or even a van, etc. So I keep coming to my job, where at least I am respected and beyond competent and really shouldn’t complain, and which has an amazing pension plan for which I will qualify in 6 years, 9.5 months, and I’m job hunting.
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I recently started using Mvelopes – an online service. I like being able to connect to all my accounts in one place, and when my check is deposited I can disburse it into the necessary envelopes. I’ve been using it for a month – so far I really like it.
I’ve tried Quicken and MS Money in the past but they were much too labor-intensive to keep up with. Before that I used a simple pad of yellow-lined paper that I gridded and listed each expense by month.
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Another endorsement here for Mvelopes.com which I’ve been using for almost two years no. I really like it because it automatically shows me all of the purchases so I don’t have to harass my significant other about purchases he made so I can manually enter them in. It also allows me to see the bigger picture so I’ve been able to cut back in places where I didn’t even realize I was overspending as much as I was. It’s a really great budgeting tool that has helped me immensely.
Right now, my biggest personal finance challenges is finding money to save. It’s there – but not in a large amount. I can look at my budget and see I’m not overspending in any areas. Living at a very low spending level and I feel as if it will be years before I get a proper 6 month expense emergency fund going. Then, I have no idea how and where to invest (I’m scared!) once I do have money to do that with.
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I’ve been a longtime Excel budgeter. At the prompting of so many posters here, I tried Yodlee last night and it looks like a great solution to save time. Over the past several years I’ve toggled from using cash for most transactions to using a rewards credit card and electronic bill pay. The software appears to make it much easier to code transactions to a category and track the results against a budget.
I understand the security concerns, which is why I only uploaded my credit cards and checking account information (no savings/investments).
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Yodlee Money Center is great! I tried all the other online personal finance apps, and all of them fell short.
Yodlee is the only one that meets all my needs. It can keep track of 401k, mortgages (even current home value), budget, custom categorization, and it automatically pulls info from all your accounts.
I have been using it for about 3 months now, and I am extremely happy.
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I actually have a really nice budget sheet made in Excel, with figures that automatically roll out when I update the root figure, and a pie chart that automatically updates as well. Even still…I find it cumbersome and, frankly, ugly. I mean, you can only give a bunch of cells on a spread sheet so much pizazz. It’s like my daddy used to say, “son, you can polish a turd all you like, but at the end of the day it’s still just a turd.” I know aesthetics should mean diddly squat when you’re talking about your budget. I know many of you could care less what it looks like as long as it has the functionality you want. I’m a designer, so I do care. Put spreadsheets, long text lists, tabular data, or anything like that in front of me and you can count the seconds on one hand before I loose interest. I need it to be simple and shiny or I won’t use it.
I’ve been using Mint for a few months. It gives you your balances for all checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, and even Paypal. It also provides a budgeting tool that generates a simple bar graph to show you where you stand, expense-wise, for each category in your monthly budget. Mint is pretty handy, but I wouldn’t call it a power user’s tool. It’s more for the average Joe that wants something easy to set up, doesn’t involve much maintenance, and provides an aesthetically pleasing summary of your banking finances.
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Currently I’m using an Excel spreadsheet for a ledger on all of my finances- bank accounts, credit cards, loans, investments, 401K, and tracking of major or recurring spending such as payments and premiums.
I am using mint.com to compare different categories of spending and am currently using a notebook as a spending journal to write down not only what I spent money on but WHY I spent money. This is a 2 month project to discover any psychological habits that lead to spending that can be curbed.
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Great questions, JD. I’ll answer a few here:
1) How do you manage your money?
a) Mvelopes is our primary tool – we use to track spending, stay on budget, pay down debt and save for future
(Mvelopes dashboard/ homepage includes visual “envelopes” for at-a-glance info on money left to spend for specific category of expense.)
b) Bank of America – for bill payment weekly (PUSH only)
c) TD Ameritrade & The Standard websites – for investment performance tracking (monitored quarterly)
d) Excel spreadsheet – for annual Net Worth tracking
2) What tools have you tried?
For tracking spending, my wife and I have tried: a customized Excel spreadsheet (~6 months); Quicken (~2 yrs); MS Money (~5 yrs); Mvelopes (~2.5 yrs)
3) What are you currently using?
Mvelopes.
It saved our marriage, as Mvelopes (an online program) autoloads records of transactions from our bank and credit card accounts (no manual entry!) and we can each assign transactions to appropriate spending categories (aka “envelopes” which are customizable) when it is convenient (usually once a week) -AND- my wife can see at-a-glance (on any particular day of the month) how much money might be (still) available to spend (so we can avoid the “why did you overspend on clothing/ food/ furniture/ etc. this month?!” arguments)
4) What are the top three things you want out of a personal finance tool or service?
a) track spending to stay on budget, pay off debt and save for family financial goals
b) ease & speed of use for a busy Mom (my wife) and
c) detailed enough reporting for the analytical spouse (me)
In sum, Mvelopes is the best tool we’ve found to accomplish these three primary goals. (And for us it is well worth $10 per month to help us save money, time and frustration.)
Best wishes!
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I’m still low tech as it seems to work for now. I use a steno notebook and a pen to plan monthly and weekly expenses pretty much to the dollar. I then write down whatever other unplanned expenses come up or if I underbudgeted or overspent on a line item. If I’m not writing this down as I go along then I sit down once a week to catch up and rebalance my spending. Most months I do a snapshot of spending categories-especially dicretionary spending. Last year was the first year I did this consistently and adjusted this year’s spending accordingly. I use online bill pay and automate savings as much as possible.
I’d love to use an online progam but I have a history of abandoning them after a few months. I tend to put off entering information.
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I currently have an online-only savings account, a checking account and a credit card account. All monthly payments are push paid through the credit card account. I have bookmarks in my internet browser for each place I have to make monthly payments. All deposits and savings transfers are done through my checking account. I buy things using my credit card or debit card.
Essentially, I just check my checking account statements to track my expenses. I keep records by downloading my statements from each account every month.
Regarding budgeting, I use a notepad file to allocate percentages of my monthly income to different things such as groceries, eating out, rent, utilities, student loan payments, savings, etc.
On the topic of finance applications, my firm uses Quickbooks 2008 to take of their accounting. It’s very comprehensive but probably has too many features for personal finance purposes.
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My husband and I have a very simple method. I created a set of business-sized cards that I store in a small card-carrier type of thing. Each month, I add money to each card (groceries, books, fun, etc), and then throughout the month, as we spend money, we record it on its card. I’ve actually recently separated the cards into 2 groups: cards that get used regularly are carried with me every day, and cards that are for longer-term savings stay at home. We’re still getting the hang of following the budget, but I learned this idea from my mom. She said that if you keep a budget, then if you want something, but there’s not enough money, you can get upset at the budget, instead of getting upset at your spouse. that seems like a good thing to me
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I use Quicken for checkbook & savings account registers, tax reports, and for tracking my monthly credit card expenditures, and Excel for net worth, weekly budgeting, long-term planning, and month-to-month tracking of investment savings.
Agreed that Quicken for Mac is a little backward. It still has some features I loved that dropped out of Quicken for PC, but the trade-off is some real 24-carat pains in the tuchus.
Trouble w/ Quicken is they force you to keep buying new versions (even though you have no use for the bells and whistles they dream up) by changing the code so that after a couple years your records can’t be read by a current version. I really, really hate that, and in fact resent it so much I tried to put all my records in Excel (it’s not hard to build a checkbook register in Excel, for example). Unfortunately, the whole arithmetic concept is a bit too much of a challenge for me to pull that off, so I’m back to Quicken.
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I used to use Microsoft Money to track my spending until it started crashing my computer.
I have OpenOffice Calc but don’t know enough about how to use it to not be frustrated at setting it up.
Currently I’m using GnuCash to track stuff, and other than the fact I keep having to start accounts because it’s a double-entry system, I like it a lot.
I recently won a copy of Quicken Starter Edition 2008 and would like to play around with that and see what I think of it. I might use it for my personal finances and save GnuCash for running a home business.
Just about every money issue you could think of, I have to deal with in some way, except I don’t have a mortgage. Although I may inherit a house in several more years, and it needs upkeep and up*dating* between now and then. But I have debt, I have student loans (also debt, of course), I have nothing saved for retirement, and so on…
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Excel all the way. It’s such a powerful tool that you can adjust to anything you want it to do – rather than having to cope with someone else’s account/tracking/budgeting arrangements. My current spreadsheet is so powerful that it doesn’t just warn me if a regular payment is missing but immediately calculates my left-over budget whenever I enter a transaction. Plus, it automatically updates some graphs I use to visualise how my budgeting and saving is going. I haven’t found anything else so far that is even remotely capable of doing all this while at the same time being easy to set up and use!
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I just use a good old fashion notebook. Every month I sit down and write down all my expenses. I adjust it depending on special occasions that might happen during the month. After that, I add a $100 for miscellaneous expenses. I’ve been using this system for the last three years and it has been working like a charm. Although I would like to get a little fancy and use my computer to keep track of my budget, It really isn’t necessary.
I also use automatic bill payment with Wamu and I’m good to go
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I recently started using ClearCheckbook (clearcheckbook.com) — it’s still in it’s infancy but it allows me to manually enter the information (I don’t like auto downloads) and, most importantly, I can add transactions via GTalk, AIM, SMS, etc — as soon as I think about what I spent on lunch, I can add it before I forget! And, it’s free, although I’ve donated.
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I used to use Microsoft Money. Then I bought a MacBook.
Now I use GnuCash. The double-entry system takes some getting used to, but once you do, you will wonder how you ever did without it. If you don’t track every penny, you’ll know quickly. The best feature is the price – free.
GnuCash was designed primarily for Linux, but will work on a Mac as an X11 app. (Install via Fink. The MacPorts version is broken, at least on Leopard) There is a Windows version available too.
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I use Microsoft Excel. I only need a simple tool customizable to my own needs. I only track my budget, expenses, income and investments.
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I check my online banking (for my credit union checking and savings accounts and 2 credit cards) every few days to make sure everything is in order, and every few months I download all our statements so we have a backup copy on our external hard drive.
I use Open Office Calc (an open source alternative for Excel) for our business accounting – sales figures, expenses, taxes, etc.
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I use quicken for windows. I run parallels for that specific purpose. I found th mac version to be frustrating, and the windows side to be quite useful. Thus, I run parallels for two apps – quicken and onenote.
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I just wanted to put in another vote for Gnucash. My girlfriend and I both find it very useful, it is easy to maintain, and I now don’t know what I did without it. Being able to quickly make variations of different spending/income graphs is a great way to figure out what it going on.
For planning or playing with ideas we use a spreadsheet (OpenOffice Calc).
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Quicken 2007 (PC)
I’ve used Quicken for years. I haven’t written a check by hand in a very long time. I try to tweak everything I can out of the software and I have every financial aspect of my life on it.
This may be a little OT. I couldn’t get through all the comments so I apologize if I am repeating some one else’s advise……..
BACKUP YOUR DATA. I can’t stress this enough. I had a computer crash and backing up to other hard drives saved me a ton of trouble. A computer crash is never an “if” it is a “when”.
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Grab a book.
Get rid of previous page marker (see below).
Grab a 5-10-20$ bill.
Use bill as page marker.
Finish book.
Deposit bill.
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I’ve been using Microsoft Money since the mid 1990′s, and am completely dependent on it. I’d gladly not pay to upgrade again (I’m using 2008 Deluxe) if I could find another resource that will do everything I need it to do.
I just signed up for Yodlee today and will test it out.
I use BoA’s website to do all my BillPay stuff. MSMoney tracks my cash, investments, savings, checking, credit cards, student loan, and other non bank related loan accounts. If Yodlee can do all of that, and help with categorization and budgeting, I’m all for it. MSMoney has gotten too bloated these past few years and I’m tired of it.
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Quicken for Windows.
Watch for rebates on upgrades. I just got 2008 Deluxe on amazon.com for $8 after a manufacturer’s rebate.
I wish the budgeting feature worked better.
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I have tried many different methods of money management. From just limiting spending and periodically checking my balance – to management software. I have used GnuCash, Quicken, etc. but I have finally settled on MoneyWell from NoThirst.com.
I use a envelope based budget (MoneyWell), and schedule as many transactions as possible through my credit unions Bill Pay feature. Finally I am applying Dave Ramsey’s principles to manage my student debt.
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A friend told me about this little free online personal budgeting utility, and I have been using it for 2 month now, it is nothing short of amazing, a dream for those who like to be in control of their cash. Totally anonymous, safe, simple and easy to use and very functional.
It’s called “Out Of The Dark” and it is available at:
http://www.myexp.org/OOTD_gate.php
Enjoy.
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I agree with Jaime’s comment(#140) – it would be great to see examples (file downloads or screenshots) of some of the excel templates that people use to manage their personal finances. I’m sure we have some pretty sassy ones out there!
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This post got me started using Yodlee. I like it so far; I’ll have to see if it stays long term.
Before that I used Microsoft Money 2004 and then Mint. Mint just isn’t powerful enough.
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I’m a bit late joining this conversation. I teach money management to employees at my company, and have test driven at least a dozen different tools, both on-line and not. I’ve used Quicken for at least 15 years, and no matter what products I use, I always prefer Quicken. For one thing, I am of course used to it–a major bonus. But more practically, it’s inexpensive and it’s constantly upgraded. Some of the cool products I tried in the past do not exist anymore.
Curiously, we do not use the automatic download of transactions from our credit card and bank accounts. And there is one word why: Walmart. Quicken forces automatic matching, which might be fine for Exxon, but at Walmart, I never, absolutely never, 100% of the time in history, make the same categories twice. This week it’s groceries and shoes, next week it’s change the oil. This happens at all grocery stores and general merchandizers, because we track clothes separate from cleaning supplies separate from food–just because it came from Albertson’s doesn’t mean it’s “food”.
My only other monstrous beef with Quicken is it’s Microsoft-like oppression: When you load your latest version, like it or not Quicken will post several frustrating and useless icons on your desktop. If I wanted a Quicken MasterCard, I would have got one 10 years ago.
Those two small issues aside, I love the power and flexibility of Quicken. I’m surprised when I’m teaching my co-workers that they complain that Quicken can’t do X or Y; then I show them how it can.
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I enjoyed the varied comments. I would love to see some of the Excel spreadsheets people have made (w/o the data, of course). Could really save others from having to re-invent the wheel.
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