Where is All My Money Going?

January 26, 2008 2:30 PM

What is the best online web 2.0 personal expense tracking sites?

I recently started using Mint, and I'm very happy with the way it can keep track of all my money from different account in one centralized location.

I'm hoping there is something similar that I could use to keep track of how I spend my money, where I could enter in my credit and debit card info and it would auto-import all the money I'm using with my plastic. Obviously, this would require entering in cash and check expenses by hand, but I mostly use cards for day to day purchases.

If there doesn't exist any sites that will automate part of this, I'm looking for the best websites where I can enter in daily expenses by category and get monthly reports of what percent of my money goes to different categories (rent and utilities, transportation, food, entertainment, etc.) and check trends over time.

posted by davidstandaford to work & money (19 comments total)

Wesabe
posted by special-k at 2:34 PM on January 26, 2008

special-k: are you a user, or have you just heard good things about the site?
posted by davidstandaford at 2:36 PM on January 26, 2008

Yodlee. Yodlee is king above all. For reals.

http://moneycenter.yodlee.com

Don't be afraid to give it your info, they actually are the backbone for just about every online transaction in the US.

You don't "add" your transactions, it imports them. You make a budget, you make budget items, you can split, receive email notifications of your progress, etc. It is win.
posted by TomMelee at 2:39 PM on January 26, 2008

I asked a similar question, but ended up going with Quicken Online. It's pretty good, and avoids the cross-platform madness I might have had.
posted by Pants! at 3:05 PM on January 26, 2008

I use Mint and I love it. It imports your transactions from your bank accounts, credit cards, etc., and let's you label and categorize everything. As time goes on it breaks everything down so you can see where you are spending most of your money, complete with pie charts and all. :)

It even gives you hints on where you can cut back, or different credit cards or services taht you may be interested in to save money based on your history.
posted by treesarefree at 3:08 PM on January 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

davidstandaford: Yup, I've been using it for over a year now. It gives me nice clean expense reports, allows me to set targets for categories, and clearly tells me when I go over or under. I can see how I've done over the last several months, weeks or days by dragging a slider. And the best part is that I no longer have to categorize expenses. My spending patterns don't change that often so I may have to tag one or two new expenses each time but all I have to do at the end of the month is sync data to wesabe and quicky see where my money went.
posted by special-k at 3:14 PM on January 26, 2008

I just signed up for Mint and first impressions are that it is much more friendly than Wesabe (at least as far as synching data).
posted by special-k at 3:22 PM on January 26, 2008

davidstandaford: You can use Mint to track more than just bank account info... credit cards, debit cards, you name it. Just log in, go over to the Accounts tab and add a new account. Select the type of account, fill out the login details and you're done.
posted by hummercash at 3:30 PM on January 26, 2008

I don't understand why you can't use the tagging and categorization in Mint to track your spending.
posted by rhizome at 3:48 PM on January 26, 2008

I'm a big fan of Expensr. I'm not sure about importation of data as I do everything by hand, but I know it has some importation functionality. However, it does have this in spades:

I'm looking for the best websites where I can enter in daily expenses by category and get monthly reports of what percent of my money goes to different categories (rent and utilities, transportation, food, entertainment, etc.) and check trends over time.

Does all of this, makes awesome graphs and trends and all the categories can be customized. You can even set budgets for each of these categories and have that updated automatically as well.
posted by Nelsormensch at 4:01 PM on January 26, 2008

I didn't realize that Mint might already be able to do what I want, and if that doesn't work, I'll check out some of the other suggestions. Thanks all.
posted by davidstandaford at 4:22 PM on January 26, 2008

Do Mint, Wesabe etc. work with Canadian accounts?
posted by sevenyearlurk at 4:36 PM on January 26, 2008

Mint definitely, and wesabe I believe, use yodlee to pull information and generate reports. Why not go straight to the source? Sorry, I'm such the fanboy. It does all the things that nelsormensch does, and has recently added free online bill paying too. I'm a big fan because you can integrate all accounts. Example--my friend w/ significantly more resources than myself, can see on one page:
all 6 credit cards and their balances/limits
mortgage
401k
Roth
all utilities
and student loans.

Krazy!
posted by TomMelee at 5:04 PM on January 26, 2008

Do any of these services make it easy to track cash expenses? They're all great at importing transactions from banks, but what about cash transactions?
posted by jdroth at 5:18 PM on January 26, 2008

Mint doesn't allow for investment accounts yet.
posted by Pants! at 7:25 PM on January 26, 2008

I like Buxfer's interface and features. Nice and simple.
posted by simplesharps at 4:55 AM on January 27, 2008

I've been using ExpenseView for a few months now and really like it. You have to enter everything manually, but I kind of like the habit of going through everything I've spent money on at the end of the day.
posted by bdk3clash at 1:27 PM on January 27, 2008

I may be missing something - do any of these products work in the UK? Apologies if this is a hijack
posted by eb98jdb at 8:25 AM on January 28, 2008

Follow-up question: I'm looking for a good tool to manage cash expenses. My bank is outside the US, so these sites that synch with US banks don't do much for me. I pay my bills with online banking and almost all other expenses via cash. I only use a credit card when I need to pay for something online, or when I'm traveling.

I need a tool that's smart enough to manage finances for a two income household, where our incomes are kept separate, but we split certain kinds of bills.

Is there anything like this out there? I don't particularly want to sign up for and configure accounts at 5 or 10 different sites in order to find the one that does what I need.

Alternately, is there a good online resource that's more focused on this sort of question than AskMe - maybe a forum or an aggregator with reviews of different budget / expense platforms?
posted by syzygy at 2:57 AM on February 28, 2008