Lazy Man and Money

10 Free Online Budgeting Applications

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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.

Wesabe Review: Can Wesabe Save You Money?

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Wesabe tracks your spending… let’s you know where your money went.

wesabe.jpgIf you are regular reader of personal finance sites, you’ve probably heard of Wesabe. It’s one of many personal finance start-ups that track your spending in order to help you maximize your dollar. I first heard of Wesabe over a year ago. I signed up to give it a shot. I had planned to write about Wesabe then, but I came away underwhelmed. The way Wesabe works is that it analyzes your spending and gives you suggestions from other members on things you could do better. When I put in my bank account, it had only two tips and neither were that revolutionary. I believe one was to buy a case of water from Costco and keep it in my car. It didn’t occur to me until later that I should have given it my credit card information, I typically only use my bank account for Costco because it doesn’t accept my credit cards.

So you can imagine why I wasn’t very enthusiastic about seeing their demo at Finovate Startup a few months ago. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised by demo they had… very pleasantly surprised. You can watch the demo here. You may want to right-click it and watch it full screen. Before you stop the video early, the good part really starts at the 3:30 mark. The video shows an example of finding a bike shop with a fantastic deal that may have been otherwise missed.

The demo impressed me so much that I shook off my monumental shyness and went to talk to the people at Wesabe at their booth. I even went as far asking Gabe at Wesabe to see it again, which he happily did.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the Wesabe conversations I’ve highlighted over the last month. It was the first time that I actually went out of my way and pitched an company to advertise their product. Before now, each advertiser has come to me. I urge you to take a minute and look at the Wesabe discussions. There’s a wealth of knowledge there… much of it coming from people like me or you… people just looking to learn a few things about money. (Note: This write-up is not part of the advertisement, I simply want to share with you something that got me excited.)

Finovate Demos – Part 3

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Here’s another round of my notes from yesterday’s Finovate demos. Since each company only got 5 minutes to show their stuff, my notes are short as well. I got to meet many of the companies afterward to get more detail.

Expensr – I thought this might steal Best of Show. It’s a personal finance management tool like Mint, but with a strong focus on widgets. The idea is that you can customize everything to your liking, which is one of the things that came up a month ago at a blogger meet-up they sponsored. They also have been acquired and will change their name to MoneyStrands. Shawn and Reman also put on a witty presentation ending with a humorous revelation that Mint must be scared of them because they bought an ad on Google for expensr.

SmartyPig – I’ve mentioned them in the past and hope to have a more complete review of their product in a week. They focus on three things as far as I can tell: making savings goals public so others can contribute, savings from their partnered retails, an interest bearing account earning a good rate.

Invesra – Retirement planning for financial institutions such as banks and credit unions. Not affiliated with a fund family which makes them unbiased. I believe they sell their product directly to the banks, so if your bank doesn’t buy it, you can’t use it.

Typhone – Mobile contactless payments with a great emphasis on security using industry jargon that I didn’t really understand. I don’t think I care about mobile payments much.

Wesabe – Wesabe had one of the most interesting demos in my opinion. So good that I went back after to see it again (and offer advice for how they can improve the product). They rolled out a new way to compare merchants and find better buying options. It’s much better than what they launched with originally. I could actually see myself using this, which may be the biggest praise I can give.

Wonga – This was one of the oddest entries of the show. It’s a UK-based company, with the URL of Samedaycash.co.uk. You can borrow money for the short term and pay them back at about a percent a day. Want to borrow money for 30 days, you’ll have to pay back 30% (though the interest rate wasn’t mentioned). Ramit and I turned to each other and said, “payday loan.” He made a good point that a credit card is a better deal if you have to pay it off within 30 days (as is the case here). You could pay no interest with the credit card.

Loanio – The much anticipated P2P lending company did show and demo the product. It looks like an unpolished Prosper.com. I have been waiting to hear what make them different than Prosper. It seems there are two things. You can have a co-borrower/co-signer on your loan and you can pay an additional fee to have a platinum listing (I’m not 100% sure what that got you).

Confident Technologies – Tries to the Internet of passwords. They partner with financial institutions to create a new way for customers to log into their accounts. Customers choose two categories like bikini babes and money. When you login, you type your username and up pops 16 pictures of various things like fish, hats, dogs, etc. Two of those 16 pictures will be a bikini babe and a picture of money. You select that pair and it knows it’s you. Bikini babe and money photo is different every time. Lots of scientific psychology studies back this up as a good thing for users. Not sure if bikini babes is one of the available categories – I would imagine it’s not.

IP Commerce – From my notes, “No idea what they do… energetic presenter.” I talked with a few people afterward and only one person had an idea of what they did, because it’s highly relevant to their day job.

SimpleTuition – Approximately from my home town in Massachusetts, they help students find loans and easily apply for them. It’s that “Simple” and useful.