Cashola

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!

P2P Lending - Viable Alternative Income?

Peer-to-Peer Lending seems to be a controversial subject in the personal finance world.  Sites such as Prosper and Zopa offer Peer-2-Peer Lending, allowing individuals to engage in financial transactions such as lending or borrowing without the intermediation of a traditional financial institution.  Prospective lenders bid on borrowers ebay style - The borrowers post the maximum interest rate they are willing to make on their loan, and the lenders go to a bid war trying to offer a better interest rate.  Borrower’s credit history and debt ratio are appraised by the site and are given a credit score on their profile ranging from AA all the way to D, so lenders can have a general idea about the person they are bidding on.  Some Lenders are claiming returns of up to 10-19%.  Sounds great so sign me up! Wait just a second.  I needed to research a little more and with all the good that I found, I found an equal amount of bad.  There were a fair share of horror stories of borrowers defaulting on their loans and failure of the company to collect.  Ugh.  There were also lenders who mentioned that their returns were no better than your average CD after fees and tax.  Why all the risk, when you can go with a secure CD? I personally haven’t dabbled with P2P lending, but despite all the negatives, it still has me interested.  I don’t think that this can be used as a viable means for alternative income or investing just yet, but it can be something FUN to experiment with your play money.  Depending on my expenses this month, I may throw the minimum $50 to test it out so I’ll keep you posted.

Financial Tracking - Software beats Paper

Tracking your finances accurately is a necessity. The thought of organizing and tracking your finances brings on thoughts of sifting through piles and piles of paper work just to find any relevant data. The keyword here is data. You still need to process, organize, and structure all this data, by busting your brain and pulling your hair out, to make it useful to you. I know there are some people that are old school and don’t like change, but we are living in the age of technology and computers…let’s put it to good use! The ability to see ALL aspects of your finances put together in a processed and organized manner is a godsend, giving you the ability to make smarter financial decisions. Today I decided to take my financial planning to another level…digitizing it. I did some research and decided I would choose Quicken over Microsoft Money. I’m a sucker for cnet reviews, plus I’m not much of a Microsoft fan boy. With Quicken you can connect to your financial institutions (banks, mutual fund companies, credit card companies, etc) and it will update your info seamlessly. You also have the option to scan your paper work and encrypt that information locally on the hardrive. Let me tell you now, Paperless is the future! 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. Regardless of what you choose to track your finances, the goal here is to do it (easily) and stick with it!