Managing your finances is one of the most important things you can do to get ahead and stay ahead of the financial curve. Thankfully there are some excellent, and free, online tools to help you to quickly and easily manage your finances.
Qualifications for this list. The following online money management tools are listed because they meet several criteria, namely, they are free, online, and they are secure. In most cases the companies use the same standards as required for online banking, and in some cases offer a higher level of security.
Online security. Many people are concerned about online security, and rightly so. Identity theft is a growing problem and will continue to be a problem. But you can prevent identity theft by vigilance and smart computing.
Top FREE Online Money Management Tools
Mint.com. Mint has taken the financial community by storm in the last year by bringing in over 1 million new users. That is an astounding growth rate, and for good reason. Mint offers a great money management tool, and it is completely free. Mint’s business model is to bring in users with a quality product, analyze their spending, saving, and other financial habits, and offer suggestions for improvements, including showing users how much money they could save or earn by using credit card with a lower interest rate, earning higher interest from a bank account, buying a less expensive cable service, and other ideas. Mint.com is able to offer a free product because they make money by referring products and services to customers, but they always show you how much money you can save or earn and why it would be a good idea to do so. You can’t turn the ads off, but you can always ignore them, which is a small price to pay for a quality financial management product. Mint is designed primarily to track cash flow and budgeting, and recently added the ability to track investments. Mint also offers an iPhone app. Visit Mint.com for more information.
If you are looking for a more powerful platform including tracking your investments, net worth, and other assets, then check out these Quicken discount codes for great savings on Quicken’s desktop version.
Yodlee. Yodlee is one of the oldest and most comprehensive online money management programs. Yodlee differs from most of the other tools listed here because it is not a cash flow or budgeting tool – it is a one stop shop to track your financial health and offers “a consolidated view of all assets… from accounts such as brokerage, insurance, 401(k), mortgage, etc.” Being able to track your entire net worth online is a great feature, but Yodlee offers much more than just tracking net worth. Users can create a budget and track spending, monitor online accounts, create expense analysis charts, track real estate value, or share access to your account (great to share info with your spouse, accountant, or financial planner).
Customers can transfer funds, pay any biller or individual, pay bills via credit and debit card, receive eBills from over 2,900 institutions, create transaction alerts, set up mobile access and more. To top it off, Yodlee is one of the most secure online money management tools out there.
moneyStrands. moneyStrands is a web-based money management tool. It automatically gathers data for financial accounts, including savings, checking, and credit cards, providing users with an up-to-date view of their finances. moneyStrands also provides personalized money saving advice and recommendations, and lets people anonymously compare themselves with people with similar backgrounds and financial goals. moneyStrands is fully customizable, offers an iPhone application and mobile version for Smartphones, and supports pdf exports of financial reports. It is also available in both English and Spanish.
BudgetPulse. BudgetPulse.com features a fresh and easy to use interface and is best used for building a budget and monitoring your current financial status. BudgetPulse.com also offers another layer of protection between their application and the user’s account information: “For security reasons, we do not and have no intention to link direct to users’ banking account data.” BudgetPulse also supports tracking your finances in multiple foreign currencies, making this an ideal option for someone living in another country.
Buxfer. Buxfer is one of the better options for those who are concerned about online privacy and storing their financial information on a third party server. Buxfer allows users to store their login information on their desktop and will only use it to make a connection to the user’s financial information for downloading recent data; the account info is not stored. You can track your expenses in Buxfer through manual inputs, or by importing your payment statement from your bank, Quicken, or Microsoft Money.
Buxfer also offers a social aspect and allows users to communicate via messages and forums. Buxfer offers a free basic account, but there are two other options available, Plus and Pro. Plus costs $1.79/month and Pro is $2.79/month. Buxfer Plus offers unlimited personal budgets, account links, bill reminders as well and cashflow projections. Pro offers the same features as the Plus version without any advertising.
Geezeo. Geezeo features one of the most active social user groups and offers more opportunity to interact with other members that most other online money management tools. Users can set goals, budgets, join groups, share information, have discussions, or read their blog for more money magement tips. Geezeo can import information from most financial institutions, but some users have reported problems importing data from ING Direct, which would prevent Geezeo from being an option for me.
Wesabe (Update – Wesabe is closing the money management section of their site as of July 31, 2010; the community pages and forums will remain open). Wesabe combines social networking with money management and tracking capabilities. Users create a user name and can join groups, set financial goals, and share tips and information with each other. Wesabe also offers the ability to create tags for your expenditures and automatically label your purchases from a store. Other features include a substantial user forums, ability to create reports & graphs, and more.
Which of these online money management tools is best?
It depends on your wants and needs. Here is a quick overview of each tool’s features:
- Yodlee – Monitor net worth, financial accounts, set alerts, make online payments, and more.
- Mint, BudgetPulse.com – Manage cash flow and create a budget.
- Buxfer, Expensr, BudgetPulse.com – Stronger security (they don’t store your account information).
- Geezeo, Wesabe, Buxfer, and Expensr – Social networks, learning from others, comparing yourself to others in similar situations (age, education level, etc.).
My thoughts. These online money management programs are great tools and offer customers differing abilities to track their finances. Some offer a comprehensive overview, while others are strictly online budgeting and cash flow monitoring tools. The social aspect is important to a lot of people who desire another outlet or even support group. These tools all offer the user q great product at an excellent price.
My biggest complaint is the lack of being able to track all financial accounts through one interface – savings, checking, credit cards, budget, investments, other assets, net worth, etc. Basically what I would like is the functionality of Quicken’s desktop version in an online format.
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Full Disclosure: Thank you Ryan for including BudgetPulse in your list of free online money management tools. All the tools you have mentioned are excellent resources, and people should take advantage of the tools to help with their finances.
We at BudgetPulse are releasing our brand new completely revamped software within the next week or two and the site will be visually enhanced, allow for easier navigation, and improved content and functionality. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Craig Kessler
Marketing Director at BudgetPulse
craig@budgetpulse.com
Craig, thanks for bringing that to my attention. I will be sure to update the article when the changes occur.
Missed one, Craig! I suspect an anti-orange prejudice at work… =]
I’d be interested in hearing a little more about your last point. Most of the online management sites allow you to see all your accounts in one place. Not all of them have full budgeting features (we’re releasing our solution for that next month) or net worth, but they seem to be getting fairly close; can you say more about what would make your “dream solution”?
@Matt Feel free to email me and we can speak more. I always check out your site and like everything you guys do.
Thanks for including Expensr. Just a quick note that Expensr is owned and operated by Strands and Strands has a new personal finance management offering called moneyStrands.
Best,
Atakan Cetinsoy
V.P. – Personal Finance Products
http://www.moneystrands.com
Hey, Nice post! There’s another free tool out there for finance stuff. It’s called Billeo . The tool manages your passwords and enables hassle free bill pay. Also tracks your expenses to help you make a better budget every month.
Teenager from Hong Kong
I’m looking for a simple software that will record my daily spendings. As we’re not involved with large investments or banking issues or credit card debts, that adults constantly stumble into most of the above aren’t really helpful. I’m just looking for something that will allow me to manually enter my spendings, maybe calculate it per month, and help me with a small budget a.k.a. our allowance, to save up for the next CD that I want to buy.
There’s also the problem of different currencies in Hong Kong. All the above websites are mainly servicing Americans, while our “pocket money” or “red packets” could be in RMB, Canadian or HKD.
We want something that can conclude our piggy bank savings and lunch spendings…
Does it exist?
Jessica, try BudgetPulse.com which is a free online money management tool that offers global support and the ability to track and manage money in multiple currencies.
Thanks for the swift reply, Ryan.
??
Hey Ryan!
I just want to let you know I appreciate you making this article! It’s great to see a simple comparison of [free] online money management tools. I recently heard about Mint.com, but because it doesn’t work with my financial institution I haven’t been able to use it; thus, your article quickly became very helpful. Keep up the awesome fun and work! Bless you!
Much love,
Jon
QuickenOnline will cease to exist at the end of August-2010. One important feature that I need is the ability to create re-occurring expenses (utility bills, phone bills, etc.). QuickenOnline had this but Mint.com does NOT.
Can you please tell me which of the other tools have this feature?
Matt, I know this is something that can be done in the desktop version of Quicken, but I’m not sure which free online tools offer this capability. You could send Mint’s customer support an e-mail and ask them if this feature will be added soon, or if it is available in a different form.
Quicken Online has been folded into Mint. I’m currently looking to replace Mint because I don’t like it.
I’ve used Mint since January of this year, and the biggest core defect I find in the program is the sporadic account update problems. Currently, many of the bank accounts cannot be updated. Mint has no direct communication with users other than the help site, and you never get an update on any corrective action directly from Mint or posted prominently on the web page.
A second, irritating problem with Mint is the inability of the user to correct erroneous information downloaded during the updates. As an example, my brokerage does a sweep from a MM account for the cash to make an investment purchase, and shows the sweep as a negative cash amount in the purchase transaction. Mint picks up this negative cash in the transactions, and understates the investment account by the cash amount. End result is that the overview tab shows the correct investment total and the investments tab shows an erroneous total. A simple fix would be to enable the user to delete the negative cash transaction in the investments tab, but Mint never gives any feedback on their attempts, if any, to correct the problem. The “exclude from Mint” function does not work to correct the investment tab total.
Of the million or so Mint users, from reading the help blog, and from my own experience, many are frustrated by the update problems and by the lack of communication from Mint concerning any fixes they are working on and the estimated completion dates. It’s a good program, but definitely has some serious core problem that need to be resolved to make it a useful tool.
John, I’ve experienced the update problems as well, but I haven’t had the same experience with my brokerage and the sweep account. It’s probably just isolated to one, or a small handful, or brokerages. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating though! Overall, I think Mint has come a long way, but I agree, it isn’t yet a perfect solution. But I’m not sure a perfect solution exists at this point. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
I agree with the comments on your article regarding Mint. I used QuickenOnline for 1.5 years and it worked great. I have yet to find an equivalent site – I have tried Mint and Yodlee. And while both are ok, neither has all the features of QuickenOnline. I have emailed their customer service, to no avail. I did not even get an answer. If anyone finds a site that has recurring bills, please let me know. Will the desktop version of Quicken automatically update your account transactions?
Thanks Ryan for your article reviewing the sites…. There are a couple I will go check out hoping that they compare to QuickenOnline.
I am also looking for a replacement for Quicken Online. Mint.com just doesn’t cut it. It’s very frustrating to me to have been forced into Mint when it’s not “just as good”. I want a combination of cash flow management AND big-picture analysis. I really love the idea of PNC Virtual Wallet’s tools, but am not ready to move my accounts…
I am going to check out a couple you mentioned and hopefully find something to replace Mint.com.
Hey there!
A question to the experts
I’m trying to understand more about personal finances, my accounting basics went wrong T_T. Do you have any recommendation to someone who wants to learn about money while tracking it? let’s say a “beginers” level type. I’m looking strictly for free software since i’m not comfortable with my basics yet.
what alternatives are good both in the cloud based and desktop based categories?
Thanks!
I like onebudget.com for they support online as well as manual accounts. and good feature like cash flow, net worth, bill alerts along with usual budgeting etc.
Thanks, giving this one a try for my kids who are beginners in the world of finance management. They don’t have much to manage at this point… checking, savings simple bills and payroll deposits – no investments, retirement accts, or debt as of yet. I want for them to have a simple tool that will help them be good money managers as grown up adults, the bonus is it’s free.
I like ManageYourExpenses(.)com. It is very simple to use and it is FREE!. It has good features like budgeting, bill reminders and also feature for sharing expenses between roommates/friends.