Narrow Bridge Finance » Personal Finance Arsenal

Award Wallet is Mint for Non-Financial Tracking

Eric — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:23:54 +0000

I always wished that Mint.com would add something to track my frequent flyer mile accounts, hotel point accounts, and so on. Fortunately, someone came up with a way to do it.

Award Wallet lets you input your airline, hotel, and many other online accounts for automatic updating. You also get a weekly e-mail with updates to your accounts if you choose. I really like the warning that tells you if your points will be expiring in the near future.

The site is not perfect. There are some missing accounts and I have a few that will not update correctly, such as Southwest Airlines. However, it is a great step forward and it looks like they are adding new accounts regularly.

I have been using the site for about a month, and I suggest it to anyone who likes financial aggreation sites.

Award Wallet is Mint for Non-Financial Tracking is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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The Business Arsenal: inDinero

Eric — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:06:05 +0000

I recently found a new web tool that gives the personal finance arsenal tools a small business twist. I often write about sites like Mint and Thrive, but those are both focused on individuals. For business owners, you might be interested in start-up inDinero.

Before I go on, I have to note that inDinero is not completely free. There is a free plan for entrepreneurs with less than 50 transactions per month, but larger businesses have to pay $30 per month or $100 per month for the higher tier plans. (At least it is a deductible business expense)

The site has many of the features of Mint and Thrive, but focused on accounting rather than a personal budget. The site can connect to many financial institutions, such as banks and credit card companies. It aggregates your data into a basic cash statement that helps you monitor cash flow and liquidity, which is very important for small businesses. It also gives you spending, income, cash, and net income trending over time.

If you are a small time freelancer or blogger, like me, this could be a great way to break out your expenses from your personal expenses for free. If you have a larger business, it may be worth the cost (and accountant savings) to give something like this a shot.

If you are interested, visit inDinero’s homepage. Do you run a small business and have other online tools, maybe even free ones, that you use for this purpose? If so, please share in the comments.

The Business Arsenal: inDinero is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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RIP Wesabe [Personal Finance Arsenal]

Eric — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:08:53 +0000

Wesabe, a previously mentioned Mint.com alternative and member of the personal finance arsenal, has announced it will be closing its doors on July 31st. At that point, the community feature will remain but all finance tools and records will be purged.

I am deeply unhappy to have to announce that Wesabe will be discontinuing our Accounts tab, and all of the related personal finance tools we offer, as of July 31st, 2010. The Groups tab, which hosts discussions on personal finance topics, will remain online indefinitely. A FAQ about this shutdown is available.

You will be able to download all of your data from now until July 31st by visiting our export page. After that date, we will delete all data and all credentials we hold for security and privacy reasons. If you prefer, you may delete your membership immediately or at any time before July 31st.

I liked that Wesabe was the main player in the personal finance aggregator world that did not require you enter your bank’s user-name and password. However, you were required to manually download your bank data and upload it to Wesabe. I had an account for a short while, but closed it in favor of Mint due to the time consuming, multi-step process.

It was a great site for many people, and will be missed. If you have never tried a personal finance aggregator, my favorites are Mint and Thrive.

RIP Wesabe [Personal Finance Arsenal] is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Mint.com Adds New Goals Feature

Eric — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:39:51 +0000

Mint.com, my favorite tool in the personal finance arsenal, has eliminated the “financial fitness” tool and has replaced it with a new “goals” feature. It helps Mint in the ongoing battle of the personal finance websites. I have done an in depth examination of Mint.com vs. Thrive.

The new goal feature allows you to set a specific goal and helps you track your progress to reach that goal. There are about a dozen pre-defined goals, or you can make your own. To reach the list, click on the “goals” tab at the top. Click any image from this post to enlarge.

I decided I need to build a bigger emergency fund, as I am looking forward to a possible layoff. I clicked on the “save for an emergency” image to bring up the goal detail screen.

Mint already knows my average monthly spending, and it suggested that I save for three months of expenses. I can easily decrease my spending in the event I am without income, but I decided to round up from three months just to be safe.

I moved on to step 2 where I decided how long I wanted to contribute or how much I wanted to contribute. I clarified by goal of $4,000 and said I wanted to reach it by the end of the year. Mint gave me a suggested contribution based on those factors.

On the last step, I was able to tell Mint that I am already saving for emergencies in my ING Savings account. Mint took that into account and suggested I contribute $314 per month to reach my goal in December. You can always change the amount later, so I picked the higher amount and saved my goal.

Now, every time I look at the goal’s tab, I can see my progress. If you are behind, your bar will show up in red. If you are on track, it will show up in green. I went into the “View Details” tab to adjust my contribution to $400 per month ($200 per paycheck) and $4,000 total.

This is a very useful and user friendly feature. It is the first major interface change since Mint was acquired by Intuit. I hope they keep improving the product over time. My biggest annoyance today is the sporadic connection to my 401k and the non-working connection to my student loan servicer.

Overall, I still love Mint. You should seriously consider Mint or Thrive, or a similar service, to keep track of your finances.

Mint.com Adds New Goals Feature is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Quicken Online Goes Offline, Users Move to Mint.com

Eric — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:15:16 +0000

It was recently announced that Intuit, owner of Quicken, purchased Mint.com for an undisclosed amount. The speculation was that Intuit would close down Mint and force users onto Quicken Online. However, the opposite has proven to be the case.

Intuit announced that current Quicken Online users will be migrated to Mint. In six to nine months, the Quicken service will be discontinued. Mint CEO Aaron Patser said that with the Quicken Online customers, two highly sought after features might migrate to Mint as well, item reconciliation and uncleared check entry.

This is good news for Mint.comlovers, like me, is that the site will definitely be sticking around and improving as time goes on. If you are not familiar with aggregators, you should probably read about the next generation of online banking. [Lifehacker]

Quicken Online Goes Offline, Users Move to Mint.com is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Mint.com to Be Purchased by Quicken Owner Intuit

Eric — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:38:35 +0000

In what looks like great news for Mint.com investors but bad news for users, Mint is going to be purchased by Intuit, maker of Quicken finance products, later this week.

Intuit offers a very close competitor to Mint, Quicken Online. That may mean the end for Mint.com in the next few months when Quicken attempts integrate Mint users into their existing service. If not, Mint may stay around but be changed quite a bit. Either way, I am not all that thrilled to hear that my favorite staple of the Personal Finance Arsenal is changing hands.

This might be a good time to give Thrive another look. Or, you can just start using Quicken Online itself, which stopped charging a fee a while back.

Mint.com to Be Purchased by Quicken Owner Intuit is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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A Review of Thrive vs. Mint.com

Eric — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:56:43 +0000

I have given Thrive a test run and decided to put a review of my thoughts of the Mint vs. Thrive battle here. Mint and Thrive both give similar aggregation services to users, though each one has a slightly different emphasis and a different front end.

What They Have in Common

Both sites have the same behind the scenes program, Yodlee, bringing in the data from the bank websites. As such, you are going to get the same information from either site. Both sites bring in transaction data and perform some sort of analysis and budgeting function. Both sites offer a fairly sleek and intuitive layout and design. For the most part, the sites do the same thing. For the details and differences, keep reading.

Mint.com

Any longtime reader of this site is very familiar with Mint. Mint is one of the pioneers of online financial aggregation and I have been a proponent of the site for the two years I have been using it.

Mint’s flagship feature is automatic budgeting. Mint builds a budget for you based on your average spending and allows you to tweak it at will to fit your lifestyle. While it is always a good idea to clamp down on budgets, that is up to you to decide.

Mint has been going through many changes including adding new investment and loan features. The company has gone through growing pains, however. Many users complain about the slow customer service response times and how long it takes for fixes to be made to broken accounts.

Overall, I am very happy with my experiences at Mint. I enjoy the ease of use, for the most part, of keeping tabs on my account balances, transactions, and budget.

Thrive

Thrive gives you the same sort of budgeting data as Mint, though it goes beyond tracking and gives you advice. I have only used it a short time, but Thrive seems to pass the test. It works as advertised and gives you a different perspective on your financial information.

The things that Thrive gives me that Mint does not: Estimated credit score (which is fairly close to my score reported by Credit Karma), how long I can make it if I lose my job (61 days apparently), and how expensive of a house I could buy today. It also analyzed my saving and spending habits to give me an estimated retirement budget and tips on how I can save money.

Thrive does seem to have a few drawbacks compared to Mint. Some accounts that work for me on Mint do not work on Thrive. I suspect that has to do with the age of the two sites. Thrive is much newer and has had less time to add more sites like Lending Club that Mint has supported. On the other hand, Thrive has a toll free number for support if something goes wrong. That is almost unheard of for most web based companies.

I have also found that Thrive does not have as good of a transaction history view and has trouble differentiating between transfers and income. This makes some of the information less accurate.

The Verdict

Mint and Thrive are trying to one up each other to gain your loyalty. Thrive’s budget system is an obvious re-designed look at Mint’s budget tool and Mint’s new financial fitness (still in beta as of this writing) is a rip off of Thrive’s financial health score.

If you want to be your own financial adviser with an easy way to track things, you would probably be happier with Mint. As the tried and true aggregator, I have no plans to simply abandon my historical data compiled in Mint. I have, for the most part, always been happy with Mint.com and would suggest it without hesitation to anyone looking for a way to make money management easier. If you do decide to sign up, please use this referral link. (I don’t get any money from it, but if three of you sign up I am put on the permanent beta testing list.)

If you feel like a rookie in the personal finance world and want help figuring things out, Thrive is probably a better choice. The site’s features that help you create a personalized saving and investment plan make financial planning so easy anyone can do it.

If you have any questions or think I missed anything, please let me know.

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A Review of Thrive vs. Mint.com is a post from: Narrow Bridge

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Money Management in the United Kingdom

Eric — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:36:28 +0000

I often troll the Mint.com forum and try to help people out where I can, but one constant complaint has been that Mint does not work outside of the United States. Last I heard, some Canadian banks were being added, but that is as far as it has gone. A Mint alternative has emerged in the United Kingdom. The site is called Kublax.

I cannot say much to how well it works, as I do not have any UK bank accounts, but it looks like a good money management tool. The site claims to help make money management easy and can help you stay on top of your financial situation.

If it works as well as Mint, which it appears to do, this is a great addition to the European version of the Personal Finance Arsenal. It joins the ranks with sites like Mint, Thrive, Wesabe, and Quicken Online. The Kublax team looks promising. If you are in the UK and looking for an aggregation tool, give it a go. Please let us know about your experiences in the comments.

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How Minty Are You?

Eric — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:02:58 +0000

Mint.com, my favorite personal finance tool, just added a new feature in private beta that gives you a monthly “financial fitness score.” After playing around with it for a few weeks, I thought I would give you a rundown on the fun new feature.

I will start by saying that is does not add any tracking abilities to your financial accounts. If you ignore the tool all together, Mint will work just as it did before. This tool is an add on that can give you an idea of what you are doing right and what you can do better.

When you load up Mint with the new tool, you will see a “Financial Fitness” box on the homepage. Mint will automatically mark off tasks as complete for you, so when you login many will already show as complete. When you click on “show all tasks,” you will be brought to a list of completed, pending, and incomplete tasks.

The tasks are broken down into a several categories: Know Your Money, Spend Less Than You Earn, Use Debt Wisely, Invest Your Savings, and Prepare for the Unexpected. Each category contains one to five tasks that you need to copmlete weekly, monthly, or yearly. Each task has a point value that contributes to a total score of 7,550 points.

I suggest this tool as a fun way to play the financial game. It provides little real value beyond that. For those of you who have trouble keeping on top of things without other incentive, it can be a fun motivator to try to get 100% every month. For those of you already doing the right thing, this tool will just help you confirm you are on the right path.

If you notice anything that I missed, please leave a note in the comments. Right now about 25% of Mint users have access to the beta. They are adding new users every week, so keep checking in if you do not have it yet.

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E-Book Update

Eric — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:22:00 +0000

I have started writing my personal finance e-Book. I am very excited about how it is coming along. While it is still in the works, I will tell you all what it is about. Are you ready. Drum roll please…

The book is about the Personal Finance Arsenal that I regularly refer to on this blog. It is a much more in depth look at tools to help you manage your financial world. The book is designed to make your life easier and save you a little money while you are at it.

I will be giving away a few free “advance copies” to readers for feedback. I will let you all know when I get to that point. Until then, are there any tools that you think I have missed? Take a look at the personal finance arsenal posts and let me know in the comments. I will give you credit in the book if I include something at your suggestion. (There are many tools included in the book that have not yet been written about on the blog, so you will have to trust me on that part.)

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