Financial Tracking - Software beats Paper II
In my first post Financial Tracking - Software beats Paper I mentioned:
Aside from Quicken and M$ Money, there were online options available such as mint.com, wesabe.com and yodlee.com, but I’m still a little hesitant to use such services. I guess there’s still a little old fashioned in me, but who knows…maybe one day.
Well it looks like “one day” came sooner then I thought. Instead of impulsively going to the store and spending money for Quicken, I’ve decided to give the free online alternatives a try. It may not offer an all-in-one solution for scanning and encrypting my financial documents, but that can easily be done on my own using other excellent (free) software. I’ve decided to go with the flavor of the month…Mint! The setup for Mint was easy and took less than 15 mintues to get fully up and running. The only issue I had was adding my American Express credit card to Mint, but that was quickly resolved. Here are a couple of things I thought about my experience with Mint:
The Good:
- Free to use!
- Suggests money saving ideas and offers without ads harassing you.
- Updates all your accounts automatically, showing clearly and concisely your total assets vs. total debt.
- Able to setup instant alerts, and weekly or monthly financial summaries that can be sent to your phone via Text or E-mail.
- Clean and easy to use interface.
- Available wherever you have access to the internet.
- Logs you out of your account if inactive for 10 minutes
The Bad:
- Can be annoying to setup transaction categories if you are a detailed/OCD budgeter and organizer.
- No setup for bill pay
In my experience so far, Mint.com’s online financial software has been incredibly useful. My only gripe would be the lack of paying bills online through the site, but thats petty compared to what they offer. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already in the works. Eventually, I will give Wesabe and Yodlee a chance so stay tuned for those reviews. Mint.com gets Cashola’s Stamp of Approval!
