Errol Pierre-Louis |
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Online Services for Weathering a Recession by Errol Pierre-Louis The economic climate looks rough. These online tools will help you weather the storm by letting you easily watch your personal finances. With our economy dangling on the precipice, money is a top concern for most of us. But with the right tools, you can better manage your money and reduce your chances of going over the edge. Billeo helps you streamline and track all your online transactions. Its eWallet feature can store information like passwords and credit card numbers and also auto-fill forms. But what really makes this service a valuable financial tool is its billing assistant, which saves copies of all your online receipts, including paid bills. You can use the site's dashboard to track all your bills, set up payment reminders, and get one-click access to the sites you use to pay bills. And not only does Billeo help you stay on top of due dates, it also keeps detailed records of past online payments so that you can view reports and see spending trends, letting you more easily discover where you can cut back, if necessary, to save money. For a free, comprehensive money-management tool, Mint.com is your best option. It's easy to set up and does detailed tracking of your finances with hardly any effort on your part. And since we last looked at the service, it's been updated to give you the option of tracking investments and loans as well as credit and bank accounts. You can set up a budget and view your total net worth (assets minus debts) to help make sure you stay in the black. The site lets you view your transaction history broken down by category, and it can produce pie charts of your spending habits. This thorough financial tracking makes it much easier to understand your spending habits and see where you can cut back. You can also set up alerts for financial events like when your credit limit has been reached or when your checking account is running low. The site will even save you money in more tangible ways by searching for good deals. For instance, clicking on the Ways To Save tab in my account produced several offers to switch to checking accounts that would save me more than $200. Those less interested in an intricate breakdown of their finances may take to Rudder, which offers a simpler, more casual approach—a "set it and forget it" solution. You add your credit card and bank accounts, then fill in info on your income and expenses, and you're more or less done. You don't even have to log in to the site to get your financial information: Rudder can deliver it via e-mail. In addition to reporting how much you have in your accounts, the service looks at your income and expenses, then tells you how much you can spend and still pay your bills. It can also alert you to the dates of upcoming bills, and it has a Spending Meter feature that lets you know if you're using your money wisely or living beyond your means. Rudder doesn't offer the comprehensiveness you get from Mint, but it's a fine option for those who want a straightforward, stripped-down yet effective financial monitoring solution. With these three services, you can stay on top of your bills, keep your spending in check, and find ways to save. And who knows, once you're armed with online tools that empower you to make smarter financial decisions, you may come out on the other side of this financial crunch better off than you were before. Read the full reviews by clicking on the links in this article or in the summaries below. To catch up on the full range of personal finance products we've reviewed, visit our Personal Finance Product Guide. Billeo Mint.com Rudder |