5 Tools for Managing Your Finances Online

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest article from David

Thinking about debt, savings and investments often fill people with a sense of dread. Luckily there are several online services that simplify personal and business finances. From creating a snapshot of where finances stand, to creating and tracking savings goals, to making investments, the following are five great finance services to suit anyone’s needs and simplify your life.

Mint.com – With the endorsements from publications such as Kiplinger’s Magazine, PC Magazine and Money Magazine, Mint is an excellent free resource to begin tracking finances for both individuals and businesses. Simply enter your bank account, credit card and investment information, and Mint will track your balances to provide an easy-to-look-at profile of how your finances stand. Mint also has tools to create budgets to address common financial issues such as paying off student loans, credit card debt or saving for retirement or a new car. Mint also makes it easy to shop around for financial products such as credit cards, bank account or insurance with maximum benefits through their ‘Find Savings’ page.

InDinero – InDinero manages the finances of your business. Enter the information for all your accounts, and inDinero will create a profile of your finances that can be viewed at a glance. Offering up-to-date information about the cash flow of your business, inDinero.com uses your business’s projected spending habits to send alerts when your business may face cash flow gaps, and recommends short-bridge loans. InDinero can save your company hours of data entry, your account information is automatically updated from your accounts and can be easily exported to Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks. They have three plans, the New Entrepenuer plan is free with 50 monthly transactions, the ‘Small Business’ plan is $29.95 per month with 500 monthly transactions and the ‘Enterprise’ plan offers unlimited access at $99.95 per month.

Buxfer – Recommended by Lifehacker, TechCrunch, and NetBanker, Buxfer targets personal financing, offers a great deal of flexibility and is free. Buxfer will sync your online account information and provide a snapshot of your finances, and also has tools to create financial goals. They’ll also send email reminders to pay bills, which is a really handy feature. Users can upload the application to mobile devices, sync to Facebook or iGoogle, and share budgets with friends, family and roommates. For those concerned about loading passwords to online management sites, Buxfer offers three options: logging into bank and credit card accounts each time they use Buxfer, having account information saved on the user’s computer, or allowing Buxfer.com to save account passwords on the Buxfer server.

Rudder – Featured on SmartMoney, WSJ.com and The Consumerist, Rudder is an excellent, free tool for the goal oriented spender. In addition to providing an overview of the users current finances from your online accounts, Rudder offers overviews of user spending, and allows users to set goals and track their progress. A great feature of Rudder is their ‘Deals Marketplace.’ Users to plug in financial information, and Rudder will calculate how much interest they will make in major banks. In addition to building an overview of your financial information, Rudder will also provide daily email updates about your recent financial activity which is really useful. Perhaps one of the best features is the ability to easily identify patterns in your spending, such as the stores you spend the most money in or the fluctuation on your heating bill.

Covestor – If you are ready to take your personal finances to the next step and start investing, consider Covestor. Eschewing the cost of a personal finance manager, Covestor created the idea of ‘Social Investing.’ Covestor features investing profiles from a large variety of investors. With a minimum subscription fee, users can choose an investment model and the money from the subscription fee will ‘mirror’ the investments from the profile in real time. In deciding which model to mirror, users can check an investor’s track record of investments, investment models’ return percentages and volatility. It’s a great way to invest, especially if you’re new to trading and investments.

Author bio: David runs a website where Australians can easily compare credit cards, such as a range of business credit cards with rewards for Aussie companies.

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