Holy budgets Batman! Finovate 2009 is showcasing no less than ten (count them 10!) budget solutions for personal finances. I explored some of these on my blog this past week as I wrote all about budgeting for a week, but there’s a lot out there and I couldn't do them justice there.
For the sake of the reader, I’m going to make some categories here to differentiate what might be right for your style as a prospective user or curious reader. Some of these will overlap due to the nature of the features. All are free to use unless otherwise noted. The denotation ($) means fee-based and (*$) means free during Beta trials, or some features are subscriber-based.
I included a “social media” category here—because two of these are very similar to common social applications. Wesabe is a lot like Facebook in that people can recommend or comment and share information. Geezeo has a lot of Twitter-like features and their “confession booth” even integrates with Twitter (not to mention, it's outrageously addictive).
Rudder is in a bit of a class of its own. It appears to include bill-pay features (note to self to play with this one a bit more).
For the sake of the reader, I’m going to make some categories here to differentiate what might be right for your style as a prospective user or curious reader. Some of these will overlap due to the nature of the features. All are free to use unless otherwise noted. The denotation ($) means fee-based and (*$) means free during Beta trials, or some features are subscriber-based.
I included a “social media” category here—because two of these are very similar to common social applications. Wesabe is a lot like Facebook in that people can recommend or comment and share information. Geezeo has a lot of Twitter-like features and their “confession booth” even integrates with Twitter (not to mention, it's outrageously addictive).
Rudder is in a bit of a class of its own. It appears to include bill-pay features (note to self to play with this one a bit more).
There are essentially two "classes" of personal finance application in my view. Those that require data-entry of transactions, and those that don't. Otherwise, the items below appear in no particular order and none of these are paid placements.
Data-Entry
Social Media Features
Posts
4 comments:
Rudder and Mint were just nominated for a 2009 Webby.
The Data-Entry solutions seem to be nice for someone who has tons and tons of time to tweak and work with everything. However, why even bother when you can still tweak information that Aggregators have?
Am I missing something? It seems to me Aggregator solutions can get into the Data-Entry area easier than vice versa in terms of development.
Thanks Greg! Most aggregators require you to provide your userID and password to your online banking. That freaks a lot of people out. Thankfully, most online banking sites keep your actual USER info separate from your ACCOUNT info, so the aggregator works as a gateway rather than a receptacle for your information, still many people are uncomfortable with that level of information-sharing with a third-party.
As for me, my laziness far outweighs my security concerns, and I'm confident with most of the aggregators' security credentials to be willing to go that route, but I understand if others aren't.
Hope that helps,
Jessica
There is some concern even if all these aggregators are legit and keep your info safe. As people become more and more willing to share banking info online phishing opportunities increase.
Post a Comment