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10 Free Online Budgeting Applications

October 21, 2009 by Lazy Man 11 Comments

One of the great things about the Internet is that free stuff is everywhere. Sometimes you can even find good free stuff. It may surprise you that there are a lot of companies offering to help you budget your money for free.

Before I go too much further with the mention of “free”, I should mention my definition of free here. While you won’t pay to use any of this software, you will be trusting your financial data with the company. That could come with some potential hacking and identity theft issues. Also, there may be something in the fine print where these companies may be able to sell your financial information. Usually this is aggregated (as in females under 30 spend X amount at the hair salon each month) so as to protect your identity. Because of these risks, I don’t see myself personally signing up for 10 budgeting applications to write in depth reviews about them. (Also, didn’t you catch the name of the site? Lazy Man and Money.) Instead, I’ll just give you a brief run-down of what I could research and let you go to the sites themselves to learn more about which budgeting service might be right for you.

Here are some free budgeting applications and a very brief run-down of their features:

  • Mint – Mint is what I use. It’s not just becuase I had the fortune to use their software in private pre-beta. It’s not because I did some work for them in the past. It’s not because their CMO gave me a great tip about the local burger/BBQ place in Mountain View called Clarke’s. It’s because their software just works and works really well. They seemed to have got the jump on almost all the other software, had the funding, and built out the top product. Then they got bought by Intuit, so now they even have the big brand behind them.
  • Wesabe – Wesabe was an early bird in the online personal finance applications. It seems to be more budget-minded than most. The big thing for me is how it helps you shop more efficiently. The community is also a large part of Wesabe. I gave a very, very brief review of Wesabe in the past
  • moneyStrands is a newer online personal finance application. I’ve met with the top people in the organization in person a few times now. I was even invited to be part of a brainstorming session on personal finance software. I have been too busy to use it for a few months. It was not as full-featured as others out there, but the “widgety” interface really clicked with me better than others. I can see them being a strong challenger to Mint with the right funding to fill out everything.
  • Geezeo – Geezeo is like Wesabe in that it emphasizes the community in addition to it’s free budgeting tools. You get the standard budgeting accounts available (checking, savings, credit cards, etc.). They are local to my Boston-based home, so while I’m pulling for them, I haven’t heard much new from them in a long time.
  • Quicken Online – One of the most trusted names in personal finance, they have their own product that has fewer features than Mint’s – which may explain why they bought Mint. There’s the usual budgeting and categorizing of expenses, but not really that much else.
  • Yodlee – Yodlee seems to have been around forever. I remember I signed up for it around 1998 or 1999 because it tracked the T.G.I Friday’s reward points as well as airline frequent flyer miles. When I moved to a different job that didn’t fly me as much or have weekly lunches at Friday’s, I kind of forgot about the account. (I wonder if it’s still gathering dust on their systems.) In any event, Yodlee has come a long way. They have contracts to securely aggregate almost all financial out there (not sure if they are working with P2P yet like Lending Club or Prosper). They leverage that expertise to power other services like Mint.
  • Buxfer – Like many of the tools above, this bills itself as a complete money management tool. It was more of a budgeting tool when it started, but now it can track your checking, savings, and credit card accounts. Two notable aspects are the bill reminder feature and the trade IOUs from friends. I don’t see any information on investing accounts like a brokerage, so this might be more geared to young adults just out of school who might not significant investments.
  • Thrive is another online tool similar to many of the above. One thing I like is how they allow people to categorize themselves on the front page. You can click on any of: “I want a place of my own.”, “I have way too much debt.”, “I like to shop…a lot!”, and “I want the best accounts.” and learn more about how to solve each problem. I like that they have a good blog and focus on eduation.
  • SmartyPig – Despite difficulties in setting up an account for them, I have successfully used SmartyPig to save money for a small goal, to buy a netbook. SmartyPig works by setting up automatic withdrawals each month until you reach that goal. When I had the money, I dipped into another account because I didn’t want to deal with SmartyPig’s login to retrieve the money I had been depositing. So it did it’s job in my eyes – stopped me from getting the money, but failed in other aspects… my money is still at SmartyPig and I keep on forgetting to get it out. It’s just too “small potatoes” at this point to make my “to-do” list.
  • Budgetpulse – From what I could tell, this service simply doesn’t have the feature set of other services listed here. They do have international compatibility which may be of some interest if you are outside of the United States.

There are certainly some very compelling reasons to go with free online budgeting applications. However, in the upcoming days, I’ll look at some of the paid budgeting applications and ask what you are get for you money.

Filed Under: Budgeting Tagged With: budgetpulse, buxfer, Geezeo, mint, moneystrands, quicken online, SmartyPig, thrive, wesabe, yodlee

SmartyPig: Gift Card Redeemed

June 14, 2008 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

smartypig-logo.jpgLast week, I finally got around to starting up my SmartyPig account again. You may recall that I had trouble when I tried in the past. However, the questions their verification partner asked me about my financial accounts did not match what I knew to be true of my financial accounts. SmartyPig promptly mailed the documents necessary for me to be manually verified and once I got around to filling it out, set me up right away. I’d have to give them an A+ for customer service, but then I might not be the typical customer as they asked me to try out their service.

So with my gift card in hand and an activated SmartyPig account, it was time to see if I can deposit this gift card. The first thing I did when I logged in was go to the tab that said, Redeem a Gift Card (makes sense, right?). When I got there, the page said that I had to add a bank account first. My heart sank, thinking that this was going to take 3-4 days while SmartyPig deposits a few cents in my account and I verify that later (something that I’ve done with a couple of financial institutions in just the last week). I was pleasantly surprised that this was not necessary – I was able to set up my bank account right away.

Setting up the bank account was fairly easy, but it took me two tries. One of the pieces of bank information that SmartyPig asks is the bank’s phone number. I had expected to only need my checkbook for bank routing numbers and account numbers. For the phone number, I had to retrieve my wallet. Though I’m Lazy, I’m not that Lazy, so this didn’t upset me much. I pulled out my bank card to look on the back and entered in the number in the format of 1800xxxxxxx as I didn’t see SmartyPig request a specific format. I then put the card and wallet away and focused on the routing numbers. When I had finished entering those, I submitted the form. Turns out that I didn’t enter the phone number in the xxx-xxx-xxxx format. So I had to get out my card again and re-enter the number. But I also had to re-enter my bank account’s information again since the form didn’t say that. A suggestion to SmartyPig: either be very clear about the format of the phone number you want or accept pretty much any form that a person could put in.

So now that I had my bank account set-up it was finally time to enter in my gift card. I go to the Redeem a Gift Card tab and enter in my gift card serial number and pin. I get ready to click submit, but I realize there’s no submit button, just one that says Decline This Card. That scares me quite a bit, I fear if I click that it will void the card and all my work will be for nothing. I do notice some text after the pin that says I haven’t set up a savings goal yet, so I couldn’t redeem the gift card yet. I don’t know why it asked me for the serial number rather than just tell me to set up a savings goal. Once I set up a savings goal, I could easily redeem the card.

I set up my goal to be $250, which I estimate is how it’s going to cost me for an upgraded Asus Eee after I sell my old Asus Eee. With the gift card I’m 20% of the way there. I’m happy that my account will be earning a decent interest rate of 3.90%.

Overall, I think SmartyPig has a great idea, but a few minor things need to be ironed out. Once they clear up the minor usability issues, my only question is about the idea of the gift card. If you know someone has a SmartyPig account the gift card is a fantastic gift idea. If the person does not have a SmartyPig account set up, I think there are too many hoops to jump through (the issues I had in signing up, setting up and linking a new bank account, giving up your social security number to another place, having to create a specific savings goal). I would only get someone a SmartyPig gift card after I exhausted the options of cash, checks, savings bonds, Amazon gift card, or an Ebay gift card.

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: account numbers, bank information, bank routing numbers, checkbook, customer service, financial accounts, financial institutions, gift card, savings, SmartyPig, typical customer, wallet

Apologies to SmartyPig

October 21, 2009 by Lazy Man 9 Comments

On Friday I went a little off the handle reviewing SmartyPig’s registration process. I got frustrated by the many security steps that I had to take before finally getting locked out because my information didn’t match the information in Equifax/SmartyPig’s database.

What I should have said is that many online banking security systems are not user friendly nowadays – and it’s not their fault. The fear of identity theft has driven everyone including regulators to more and more stringent standards. What confuses me is that not every bank has the expansive security process. I have accounts with Bank of America and TD Ameritrade. These account have thousands of dollars in them. These companies are worth billions of dollars – how can they not be required to implement these security systems? It makes no sense that a smaller start-up like SmartyPig, with a business plan that would lead to smaller accounts, should have to be more secure (and I don’t buy that they want to have this process in place).

Back in 2004, I worked for a company that created cell phone applications that utilized the GPS in some phones. It was a tremendously difficult business as only a small subset of phones were GPS enabled, and cell phone carriers didn’t want allow customers to install these applications on their phones (because they’d be the one that would get complaints if it didn’t work out). It was a frustrating time for the whole industry. I feel for SmartyPig – it seems like a similar situation to me. The comments from others showed that these extensive registration/login processes are frustrating customers. It’s not to the same degree, but when you are required to frustrate people, you are facing an uphill battle.

I don’t know if it came across on Friday, but I was particularly critical of SmartyPig. I had hoped to give them a review that would help them advance their product. It appears they will be taking my suggestion to reword the requirement of a driver’s license to include a state issued ID. I would like to see them be able to take a passport ID or a military ID in absence of those as well. Overall it’s a minor issue as most adults will have required ID. You’ll notice I stressed “adults” there. It would seem to me that the SmartyPig service would be popular amongst teens saving up for their first car or a video game system. Yet this target audience likely doesn’t have the state IDs necessary to sign up. I’m sure the SmartyPig team knows this and are looking at ways to address the youth market.

In the coming days and weeks, perhaps I’ll be able to set up an account manually and give a full review of the service.

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: bank of america, banking security, equifax, identity theft, online banking, regulators, security, security systems, SmartyPig, td ameritrade

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