Update: Quicken has discontinued Quicken Online, moving those resources over to the equally fantastic Mint.com. Everything I said below applies to Mint as well.
In my marriage, I am primarily responsible for managing the money. Billing paying, budgeting, savings, and debt repayment are all under my supervision. While my wife is an active participant in our money management, she follows my lead.
While I am capable of handling this load, I am always looking for tools to assist me in this management. This has been especially true in the past year. During that time, my old job was downsized, leading to a move to a new city, new jobs for my wife and I. These changes lead to the creation of a large debt that required serious management, as it spread amongst several credit cards and a few bank loans.
I recently discovered Quicken Online, a free service from Intuit Inc., famous for their various tax and money management software. Offered, I am sure, with the intent to give people a taste with the hope of paid upgrades, Quicken Online is extremely competent for my needs.
Setting up the service is relatively simple, involving inputting the login information for your various accounts. The program then goes and pulls in the last few months data, and auto-sorts it for you. The program even suggests budget goals and potential future expenses coming up.
From this initial setup, you are given the ability to tweak and adjust things as needed. I can easily go through every purchases my wife and I have made and properly label them into easy to use groups. This allows me to take a look at the auto-created pie chart, and easily see where our money is spent. Some obvious things jump out, giving easy feedback. For example, twenty percent of our month expenses go to rent alone. It is easily our largest expense and leads us to consider looking for cheaper lodging when this lease is up.
The service also allows us to set monthly goals, such as $400 for groceries and $50 for entertainment. The program will then track how much you have spent and what is left for the rest of the month. I find myself far more conscious of what money is getting spent where this way.
In conclusion, I find Quicken Online to be an excellent service. Especially considering it is free to use, with no advertising outside Quicken’s branding everywhere (which is perfectly acceptable by my standards). I highly recommend it for anyone who struggles with understand and controlling their monetary expenses.
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