Best Online Budgeting Software
September 23, 2010, By Jonathan Wylie 3 comments
Managing household finances is no easy task. Thankfully, help is at hand...and online! These online tools are some of the best ways for you to see where your money is being spent, and how much you have left at the end of each month.
Mint.com
This is one of the most popular and feature packed examples of online budgeting software. In fact it was so popular that Intuit, the makers of Turbo Tax and Quicken, decided to buy it and add it to its own product lineup. Mint.com is a free tool that allows you to see all your accounts in one place to help analyze your spending habits, and budget for the future. It offers help with reducing debt, meeting savings goals, and tracking investments like mutual funds or a 401k.
Using Mint.com will require you to supply your online banking usernames and passwords, because this is how it interacts and helps organize your finances. However, it uses bank level security to protect your information, and it is a "read-only" system, which means no money moves around or is withdrawn from Mint.com.
E-mail or text alerts inform you of large purchases, bounced checks or late fees, while the iPhone and Android apps help you keep track of your money wherever you are. You can even add Mint.com to your Yahoo! page and have personalized graphs and updates on your homepage.
JustThrive.com
Like Mint.com, JustThrive.com is another free online money management tool. As well as combining your online banking accounts, it lets you set monthly spending and saving goals. It displays your progress in easy to read charts, and it tracks where you saved or overspent each month.
Set yourself a goal for saving towards a major purchase like a house or a car, and Thrive will work out how much you need to save each month to meet your goal. There's even a credit score estimator that will give you an update on what your credit score will likely be based on your current financial situation. E-mail alerts also help keep you up to date with your latest balance.
ClearCheckbook.com
If, like my wife, you are not comfortable giving out your bank login details, then ClearCheckbook.com may well be the online budgeting software for you. You have to manually enter your transactions, or upload a file of transactions, but your diligence will be rewarded with a myriad of options to help you keep your family in the black. Set up reports by how much you're spending in a given category (e.g. gas, coffee, cell phone bill), and get month-by-month comparisons for the last 12 months.
You can set up budgets to try and stay within a set spending limit for an account or category, and you can set yourself reminders for upcoming expenses. All your main information is displayed on a user customized dashboard, while mobile apps for iPhones, Androids and Palm Pre phones help you keep up to date wherever you are.
Other extras let you add a Clear Checkbook gadget to your iGoogle homepage, or download the Mac OS X Dashboard widget. All of these features are free, but even more are an offer if you sign up for the premium plan.
Organizing your family's finances has never been easier. These sites let you focus on your financial future, let you set achievable goals, and provide you with all the help you need to maintain a healthy standard of living for those that you care about most.
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