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“Spending Time”: Online Money Management, Currently

What’s new in the online financial world?

Still not sure if you want to use an online money management tool? Maybe a friend has mentioned Mint.com, but you want to know more before you get into it. Here are a few links to help you know “what’s up” in the OMMT world and help you decide which tool to use.
 

Overall Review of the Major Sites

This article by Daniel Begun for ComputerWorld thoroughly explains Mint, Geezeo, Wesabe, Quicken Online and Thrive and touches on Green Sherpa and Rudder.

These sites are no substitute for professional advice if your financial situation warrants it, nor are they even a replacement for more robust financial management applications such as Microsoft Money or Quicken. But they do offer a no-cost way to consolidate your financial information — including credit card accounts, investments and loans — into one easy-to-manage place.

If you just want the rundown comparison, check out the final page, with Begun’s conclusion and a chart comparing these sites (partially shown below).

 

Wesabe

Wesabe has a new look. Check out their blog post here for the details.

It has been a chance for us to clean up some of our mistakes, make the site easier to use all around, and introduce a new standard of design for our site. Where with the first design I was extremely controlling about every little piece, this time I told Magera, “Make something you would like” — and it turns out we all like what she likes.

Wesabe also released a new iPhone app which MG Siegler for WSJ/TechCrunch characterizes this way:

So how do the apps stack up? Well, there are two key differences: Mint’s looks nicer, but Wesabe’s is more dynamic.

Read the rest of the article here.

 

Mint

Mint’s new Financial Fitness was introduced yesterday “in beta to a group of current Mint.com users.” From their press release:

Financial Fitness defines five personal finance principles and specifies the steps everyone should take on a weekly, monthly and annual basis to put them into action. Integrated directly into users’ automated Mint.com service, which tracks their spending and investments every day, Financial Fitness recognizes and alerts users when they are on- or off-track in achieving financial health.

See this TechCrunch article for a description and go to this article from AppScout to get an invite to Financial Fitness (if there are any left).

This appears to be a very smart business move on Mint’s part, but–more importantly–this feature may help millions of people learn how to budget better. While no automated financial planner can tell you everything you should do to plan your finances, so many of the things we need to do with our budgets (pay taxes and bills on time, know our credit scores, plan for the end of the month, etc.) are things that everyone needs to do. Kudos to Mint for building what looks to be an easy and even–dare i say it–fun way to teach people how to use their money wisely. I can’t wait until I get to test it myself.

 

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