Alright, so maybe cholera is not the right word here, but the situation right now is really bad, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. Thankfully, there’s a bunch of financially-oriented people out there, writing great blogs on how to deal with this mess. My current favorites are
The Consumerist is a blog listing all sorts of great things, such as scam alerts, money-saving deals, customer complaints, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
This one I just discovered, but I really, really liked their 18 Things a New Homeowner Should Do Immediately to Save Money article. I’m going to make this a regular read.
www.yodlee.com and quicken online
The two links above are for two different website, both providing the same service: manage all your bank/credit card accounts at the same time.
You know that excel spreadsheet you’ve setup, with all your bank transactions, that you religiously kept updating until you forgot/deleted it/realized there was an error on it and just went crazy? These websites are the solution you’ve been asking for. The process goes something like this (using quicken online as an example):
1) Create a user account with quicken online (it’s totally free!)
2) Add your bank/credit card accounts to your quicken online account
3) Watch as quicken online downloads your transaction history, categorizes each transaction, then creates a expenses chart that tells you exactly where you’ve been spending your money
4) Come back the following day and watch quicken online update with your transactions from the previous day
5) Realize you’ve been spending too much money at gamestop, and that you need to start spending that money somewhere else (hmmmm….)
And that’s it! It’s much better than microsoft money, and there’s no files to worry about, since all the information is kept on the website. I’ve tried them both, and the process is the same (and both are free, no costs or strings attached). The main difference for me is that yodlee has a lot more features, but it is a bit rougher around the edges. Quicken is more streamlined, but much easier to use. For me, the extra features totally compensate for the occasional issue, so I’ve become a die-hard yodlee fan.
What about you, o ye reader? What do you use for your finances?
2 comments:
I'm still big on Microsoft Money. Must be mostly habit, I've used it since my first piano student (first job, I guess) when I found a cd-rom laying around the house. Quicken probably does the same things, but I do love all the reports and things I do on money. Not sure how people get anywhere without some kind of money management!
- Fex
I did not try quicken yet, but I love quickbooks (from the same company). I will give a try though. I am kind of tired of my customized spreadsheet. However, withever role model we choose, I think that the secret is "keep doing". It is so easy to start all nice and organized, but like a new notebook, it wont last longer... By the way I loved the comparison with the best seller, "love in times of cholera." The book is great, unfortunately we can say the same about the movie.
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