These days, it’s all online – even personal finance programs, which once were the exclusive province of Quicken and Microsoft Money have now been supplanted by online person finance program. But which one is the right choice for your personal needs? To answer that question, we looked at five of the most popular online personal finance programs and dissect what each one does and why it may or may not be the perfect fit for your needs:
Mint.Com
By far the best known of the online personal finance programs, Mint suffers from just one thing: it tries to be all things to all people. Now if you aren’t really sure what you need to do (maybe some budgeting, maybe balancing your checkbook, maybe planning your retirement), Mint can be a great choice for the simple reason that it provides you with everything you could possibly want in the way of an online personal finance program. On the other hand, if you have more specific goals in mind, then other tools may be a better choice.
GoalMine
This is a relatively new product on the online marketplace and it’s one of those niche tools which is really perfect for those who have very specific needs. In essence, GoalMine is all about saving money and nothing else. It doesn’t allow you to balance your checkbook or plan a budget. However, if you are trying to save money for something (buying a home, going on vacation, paying off debts, etc.) GoalMine can be an absolute godsend.
In essence, GoalMine allows you to set up various savings goals and then helps you pick one of their products to reach that goal. They offer just three products, a savings account, a money market fund and a mutual fund. However, for those who don’t have a lot of money and who want a simple way to save up money, these are pretty much all you need. You tell GoalMine about your goal and how long you want to take to reach it and they recommend a product and tell you how much you need to invest each month to make it to your goal.
You can switch the numbers around to see approximately how long it will take for each goal (for example, if you want to save $100,000, they estimate it will take 39 years if you invest just $25 per month) as well meaning that you can be more realistic about your savings. You can also post your goals on Facebook to encourage friends and families to help out with reaching the goal.
Buxfer
For those who want similar features to those found on Mint while keeping a very simple interface, Buxfer may be the perfect online personal finance program for your needs. It is designed to be a super simple system which lets you manage your money and budgets. It doesn’t have lots of bells and whistles, but that’s actually by design – they wanted to avoid the clutter that other sites have. They also include tools which allow you to share expenses with someone else, making it a perfect choice for roommates.
Your Bank or Credit Union
While there are dozens of other online personal finance management programs, the fact is that every one of them suffers from one very big problem – they don’t offer you the chance to integrate directly with your bank account. At most, you can simply link it to your bank account and get some access. That’s why many banks have begun offering their own online personal finance management programs. These programs are often third party applications which the banks sign up for, though they are occasionally homegrown. In all cases though, they may well be all you need, thus avoiding the need to share more information with more online services.
George Gallagher works in finance and education sectors. When not writing for the Internet he helps students find private loan consolidation options.
Hi, I’m Cathy! I’m a former career-driven professional turned stay-at-home mom. Living on one salary has its challenges, but it is possible to live the good life while spending less. Cool to be Frugal is all about how we’re thriving, not just surviving, on a single income.
