financial planning

[topaz]

 Mint.com rocks.  With its help I have devised a budget that exceeds our monthly income by only 20%!

This is actually such an improvement over the previous situation that it is excellent news.

Comments

[nooks.livejournal.com]

Yes, mint is quite awesome. I was a little hesitant to use it for a while but now I'm just sorry I don't have more history.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I'm still hesitant, but it has the clear advantage over the MacOS alternatives I tried (MyMoney, Moneydance) that the online banking tools ACTUALLY WORK. So I'm going to run with it at least for a while, as long as it takes for us to kick each other's asses into shape.

[khedron.livejournal.com]

I'm not meaning to cause trouble, but does it bother you at all that Quicken bought them?

I'm using Quicken 2006. No bank integration as far as I can tell. (Grr.) But it works well enough as a program otherwise that I haven't bothered to change.

It *does* take me a long time to enter in credit card statements & things though. It's be so nice to press a button....

[penk.livejournal.com]

Intuit bought them because Quicken's online system was vastly inferior to Mint. I wholly support jettisoning an inferior product an replacing it with one thatworks better.

[penk.livejournal.com]

Hooray! Making budgeting headway and actually being able to SEE where things are going is awesome, no?

I use DCU's online banking constantly, though their interface looks like it came from 1997. Coupled with the quicken iPhone app (which just shows me balances and basic budgeting), i'm pretty happy.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah? I should look at it again. I checked it out early in its life and it wasn't anything to write home about, but it has an iPhone/Touch app, which is obviously a big perk for me.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's a thousand times better than the desktop alternatives, but online bank integration was completely seamless for me. I have some quibbles with the budgeting interface, but overall, the learning curve starting from "blindly logging in" to "having categorized transactions and a rough outline of a budget" was very, very smooth.

I haven't even looked at the iPhone app yet. Onward!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I don't really care -- should I? I've heard very very poor things about Quicken's Mac interface and so didn't even try it.

Online bank integration is kind of a dealbreaker for me. The more things that I have to do by hand, the more likely I am to throw the whole project out the window and budget by hope, which is how I got myself into my current situation.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't laugh - except you wrote your post to be funny so I guess we have permission to.

How did you pick mint.com as your service? Did you investigate their privacy and security policies? I am impressed by how readable and user-friendly they are, even in little things such as when the policy was last updated; anyone know if that's correlated with reliable and adhered to?

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Yes, you have permission to laugh :-)

A friend asked for recommendations for personal finance software, and Mint turned out to be one of the popular ones. The desktop-based applications I tried just plain didn't work.

I didn't read the privacy or security policies. I just assume that they promise nothing and disclaim all responsibility. I'm not happy with using an online service for this stuff at all, but right now it's better than the alternative. Once we get our finances better organized I will look into options that make me squirm less.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

You should read the policies - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I've been reading a lot of frugal blogs recently. Let me know if you're interested in recommendations for some or some of their collective wisdom.

[penk.livejournal.com]

Intuit's mac product line is a nightmare. years without updates... BLEAH. I have a WindowsXP vm under Fusion just so I can run Quicken Home and Business for Windows, because there is no mac equivelent.

They keep saying "Any day now" - biut the writing is on the wall. Personal finance software is going online.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

The worst part is that in 1997... DCU didn't even HAVE a website. That kluge came along a couple of years later (at which point it already looked so out of date that I remember joking that all it needed was blinking HTML), and IIRC it's had exactly one redesign since.

[redfishie.livejournal.com]

I don't know you (at least I don't think I do) - wandered here via a mutual friend, but if your looking for debt management/counseling, I highly recommend Take Charge America (Takechargeamerica.com) - as they're a non for profit and they may be able to help you figure some stuff out. They also help with budget type stuff.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Thanks! We have mostly (I think) cured ourselves of a dependence on credit, and were even credit-card-free for about 18 months there. Our current problem is not exactly debt management so much as cash flow management -- we do have some savings and other assets to draw on, but need to stop drawing on them and start putting back into them.

I do know folks who have benefited a lot from debt management programs, so we may yet follow through with that. Thanks for the suggestion!

[redfishie.livejournal.com]

No problem - it's important to go with one that's a non profit with a good better business bureau rating, hence the recommendation.

And actually I realized post suggestion that we were both at the snooty foods party. :)