Would you track finances online?

I use Quicken. It's not automatic, but I am not sending someone all my acct. info either. I share your wariness.

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

The third party aggregater in this case is Yodlee, you can visit their web site yourself to read more. A leading investor in Yodlee is Bank of America, wouldn't be surprising if they just buy it outright at some point.

In fact Yodlee itself offers a competing service to Mint. You can also check out Wesabe, which according to the web site does not require you to upload your login info, you can manually upload the data yourself. I don't use any of these, and can't tell you what the costs or other comparative data are. Quicken on-line apparently is another similar service.

If using a service like this makes the difference between tracking your finances and not tracking them, I'd say the benefit outweighs the cost. After all, if you have all your account information stored on a notebook computer and already have "paperless" financial accounts on-line, I'd guess the aggregater's security is probably better than yours (in other words, the aggregater isn't the weakest link).

-Mark Bole

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

Well I did it for years using Quicken.... but it was a hassle as I would have to save all receipts from daily expenses and enter them at night to get the necessary "snap shot" of what's going on.

I basically track EVERYTHING.... even small purchases such as coffee and such.

I do use my Visa card for 99 percent of payment.... even small things like coffee.... but still need some way to get that snap shot.

I do realize there are competing services that do same thing such as Mint..... but am just unsure of giving Mint my acct info

But as you say.... they are basically an aggregator

what to do... what to do

I'm attracted to the automation that Mint has. Sounds like it could eliminate the nightly entry of receipts into Quicken

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

If you've been doing this for a while now, can't you just put in a single monthly number for coffee, it's likely the same every month (you can average the varying number of workdays per month over the course of a year). For budgeting purposes this should work fine. OTOH, if you are using a charge card for every small purchase, then you have the details already.

Slight correction -- Mint *uses* an aggregator, namely Yodlee.

Try it. It's free, the security risk to use it for one or two months is minimal because you can always cancel and then change all your passwords.

One downside, if you have a database already and want continuity for historical reporting or forecasting, switching around in this way will require you to import and export data in some fashion.

-Mark Bole

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

I also used to use Quicken to track. I charge a lot of stuff so I enter my items when the credit card bill comes, or when the bank statement comes. I definitely did not do it every night using receipts. But even two or three times a month was a real hassle.

How would they know what your charges are? $100 to Amazon, was it for some books, electronics, or music? You write a check to Jane Doe, was it for gardening, housekeeping, babysitting, or what? I don't see how any service can automate this without you still having to do a fair amount of massaging.

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

Thing is ... if you don't do it daily.... then you don't get that instantaneous "snap shot" of exactly where you stand money wise.

It would be like driving a car where the speedometer shows you your speed 1 month after you actually drove it!

Good question! I don't know. I do know from reading the web page that the system has some "learning" capability in it. But Like you say.... how does it know WHAT you bought from Amazon?! A person could buy clothes, electronics, most anything of varying categories!

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

My Visa CC allows me to import all my credit transaction details from their on-line site along with their best guess on budget categories-Groceries, dining, gas, etc- depending on where or what the vendor was. They get it right about 90% of the time. Saves a ton of typing. It can be imported in Quicken, Money, or spreadsheet format.

My bank does this also with my checks, but not nearly as good.

Chip

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.

Coincidentally, I stumbled on another option for this sort of thing, named "Buxfer" (as in, "bucks transfer"). It appears to be free, and claims its security is better than Mint because your account login information is stored locally using "Google Gears" instead of being stored remotely. In addition to budget and spending tracking, it also has a separate feature to allow small groups sharing expenses to track individual payments amongst themselves (e.g. roommates sharing utility bills).

I haven't used this one either, and have nothing to gain from anyone else using it, other than learning from any experiences they care to share here (hopefully someone will). The web link is the obvious one based on the name.

-Mark Bole

-------------------------------------- Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the Newsgroup.