Comments on: Your Take: Do You Use Online Personal Finance Tools?

By: Hareiana

Hareiana — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:04:19 +0000

Not sure how many like to budget online anonymously without giving out access to bank accounts and how many heard about this website but I used Out Of The Dark (OOTD) Budgeting for over a year now and it really changed my life financially. It has budgeting and expense tracking on one page side by side which I love, it has cash put-aside and personal stock management built in, and it has something called Credit Card Debt Terminator which I have not seen anywhere else which is great if one wants to get out of any credit card debt situation, it is completely anonymous to use, does not require me to give out access to any of my bank accounts and it’s unconditionally free. Find it at: myootd.org

By: Backpack

Backpack — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:15:09 +0000

Well, we all give our bank passwords to our banks too right? It’s the same security/encryption levels. It’s not so much the “leak” from the site (although possible), it’s an attack from outside that’s the worry. Perhaps you double your chances if your encrypted info is stored two different places. But I agree with Hannah- it’s the world we live in. The custodians who have the money have ways to reconcile compromises.

By: jsbrendog

jsbrendog — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:25:03 +0000

i really like creditkarma, but you have top realize it isn’t an exact score and might not actuallybe that close i believe. but it is a good guage and a good tool to use inconjunction with other credit score tools

By: jsbrendog

jsbrendog — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:24:02 +0000

yeah i ue a spreadsheet as well, although not as much since mint. I at least keep and up to date list of bills on it, how much they cost, then have a section with saving, spending cash, and break glass in case of emergency. i tweak it every once in awhile when i have a purchase coming up or if i feel like i havent been saving enough

By: jsbrendog

jsbrendog — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:22:30 +0000

i really like how easy it makes tracking all of my retirement funds in one simple interface. and it shows in red or green when it outperforms the market and when it doesn’t. interesting stuff

By: jsbrendog

jsbrendog — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:21:49 +0000

yeah it def is weird. i’m not sure how i feel about this new goals interface. it hogs up a good amount of the front page…opinion tbd

By: TJ

TJ — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:21:16 +0000

Let me say Yodlee SUCKS. I have sent a good amount of my time to try and get that stupid website to work. Have the time it tells me that my routing numbers are incorrect which I know they are not, my husband and I are trying to share accounts, that is crap, and it keeps logging me out for no reason in the middle of doing something. Plus when I try to do something most of the time is doesn’t work. I added my chase account and it took my bank info but not my cc info from there… I don’t get it.

I have nothing but problems with it and i am trying to use their bill pay and I am afraid that my bills aren’t going to get paid. My husband was the one that wanted to use this and I am ready to kill him over it. I have been trying to find something else that has bill pay with it but I can’t find anything yet that doesn’t cost a lot of money. I use to use My Check Free which was great but then a lot of banks pulled from them.

By: pays to live green

pays to live green — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:15:32 +0000

I was actually thinking about this very topic, should I begin using some online finance tools to get a better grip on my finances. I really should try some of them out and see if they could help fine tune my finances. I currently do a pretty good job with spending conservatively and savings as much as possible, but I’m sure there are things that I could change to better reach my goals.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:31:28 +0000

I use Mint and the categories are pretty cool, but you have to tweak it a bit or else it starts looking whacky.

By: Art

Art — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:36:05 +0000

If you are downloading transactions in Quicken’s desktop edition, you may as well be using an online service. Both Mint.com and Quicken 2010 use Yodlee as a service provider. Your usernames and passwords are encrypted and stored by Yodlee. Yodlee, in turn, passes your financial info back to the application.

By: echidnina

echidnina — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:16:40 +0000

Excel does the job, but other services can offer additional bells, whistles, or analysis. It depends on what you’re looking for. For instance I can definitely see the appeal of something like Mint when you use several different companies for your banking – logging into one site after another is time-consuming.

By: echidnina

echidnina — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:04:53 +0000

I track things in an Excel spreadsheet – an only slightly higher-tech version of a budget notebook. I’ve been tempted to try something like Mint at some point, but I am wary of giving my sensitive data out. Even the most well-meaning companies can have leaks.

By: RobMan

RobMan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:16:53 +0000

I use Mint.com as it is a great place to aggregate all of my accounts and get a better picture of the whole. One advantage of Mint is they are able to pull in accounts (company sponsored 401K) that Quicken 2010 or other personal finance software can’t. Additionally you can setup reminders warnings etc.. I don’t use it heavily, as Quicken 2010 is my daily finance and back accout interface, but Mint is really convenient and its’ free.. my 2 cents (for free)..

By: ian

ian — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:54:31 +0000

I use Mint and love it. That said, I also protect myself my only giving Mint access to my Credit Card accounts (which I assume are protected if the info gets out) and a transitional checking account (where we get our direct deposit but that never holds more than is needed for a month of bills). They do not get access to our savings accounts, brokerages or retirement accounts.

This allows us to see where every dollar goes and assign it to the budgeting categories we have set up. This gives us accountability to who is spending what and where our household money is going.

Mint is not perfect, but it allows me to go more in depth with my finances than Excel does. (plus i can see my available budget on my smart phone) I also use Excel, but it is only updated monthly to make sure bills are paid, track loan amortization and see our net worth.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:30:31 +0000

use to use mint, but it didn’t do everything I wanted it to do. Plus, I’m not a fan of having so much personal info linked to one thing on line.

tried Quicken next, and it again didn’t do what I wanted and it just seemed so cumbersome to work with, I gave up on it. I found that the automatic importing simply did not reconcile things properly, so I had to manually account for many things anyways.

I’m back to my tried and true simple but very effective excel spreadsheet with various pages.