With the volatility of the stock market, I have been interested in other investment opportunities. They can be hard to find.

So far, I am very pleased with the peer to peer lending model offered at Lending Club. I can honestly say that its simple to set up and use, and is providing me an average return of 14% so far. I’m so impressed in fact, that I would like to invest in this option rather than my 401k. At least for a bit.

Diversification always sounds like a good idea, but it isn’t lately in both real estate and no matter what stock or fund I seem to choose. But peer to peer lending feels good because I’m helping out someone with consolidating their debt, and I’m earning a little interest for doing it. A win-win.

Visit their site and find out more for yourself if you haven’t already. Plus, they give great incentives for you to try them out, with $25 in your pocket, and $25 for you if you refer your friends.

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Review of The Best Online Goal Tracking Tools for Personal Use

There are many online tools available for keeping track of and measuring progress on your goals. Many corporations have started to incorporate goal systems (Success Factors is one example) and S.M.A.R.T. goals. Not all goal systems utilize this method, however, it is widely accepted as an excellent way to achieve results with your goals. The following is a look at how to measure your personal goals and a review of some of the best online tools for measuring your goals.

So, what are S.M.A.R.T. Goals?

S – Specific (the more specific the better)
M – Measurable (The criteria that you will use as measurement that you have completed a goal, such as getting your degree, etc)
A – Achievable (Do you currently have the skills and resources needed to reach this goal?)
R – Relevant (How does this goal tie to your passion or purpose?)
T - Time-dimension (When will you aim to start and finish the goal, will there be milestones to reach along the way?)

Many of these goals start with the questions (that you then fill in the blank for):

• Why do you want to achieve this goal?
• Next ask yourself, what specific benefits will come with achieving it?
• When will you achieve it by? (time factor)
• How you plan to achieve the goal?

There is a growing philosophy that if you share your resolutions or goals with others, your friends, family, or a social community can help encourage you to stay on track and keep your goals alive. The same often holds true for other areas in life, such as getting in shape, isn’t it more fun to do when you have a friend that will meet you at the gym and hold you accountable for sticking to your work out goals? So, some of the online tools focus on the social sharing element of goal tracking.

Best Online  Goal Tracking Tools of 2010:

GoalsOnTrack.com Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars $48/year subscription

This simple, easy to use tool does a great job of allowing you to track your goals, visually chart your progress and see reports, create specific action plans, manage daily tasks associated with your goals, track specific time spent, as well as keeping a journal for your additional thoughts and inspirations that you want to capture. You can assign visual pictures with your goals, set overall categories with specific goals beneath that category, and assign any type of progress metric you want to show your measurement (dollars, percentage, etc). It follows the S.M.A.R.T. goal model. You can print out your goals, your daily tasks, and really use this tool to get on track. You can set email reminders, import and export your tasks to CSV or for iCal format, and much more. Just check out their full list of features on the site. This tool costs money, yet I believe its worth the investment if you want a full suite of highly effective goal tracking tools.

SuperViva.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free
SuperViva is a social sharing goal or “life” tracking site that allows you to create  goals to share or keep private. SuperViva was created in 2006 (runs ads and accepts donations to support it). It allows you to set up weekly reminders to check in with your list of goals. Super viva offers something closer to the SMART goal method by allowing you to group your goals, set specific goals within an overall list, assign what “Life Dimension” your goal applies to (Personal, Family, Finances, Community, etc) and also set the start and completion dates, priority, effort needed and budget needed. You can mark a goal as completed, on the backburner, or remove it. There is a section to find ideas from the community and ‘get inspired.’ Nice overall concept for a free tool, however, I find it difficult to navigate and you cannot visually see and chart your progress on a goal.

Goalmigo.com Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Free

Goalmigo is also a social sharing goal tracking tool. You start by adding your goals, and adding who is going to help hold you accountable or your ‘Supporters’ for your goals. You enter your completion date, and can set up reminders in day, week or month increments. A great feature is that you can assign a tracking log (they have some already listed such as weight, calories, etc). You can assign tags to help you to share your goal in the social environment. Once you set your goals, you can mark them as complete and also add milestones in your “Log” which display in a bar chart format. Beyond that, you can visually see a reminder of how long you have remaining to complete you goal such as “One Month Remaining”. You can also add notes to your goals. There are ads on this site, but otherwise its a pretty clean and user friendly interface.

eLifeList.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free

eLifeList is another social sharing tool which allows public or private goal tracking. What’s awesome about this tool, is that it has very useful categories and goals already entered in it. I’m not sure if there are from the community or were created ahead of time, but they can help you get started. You can add descriptions, photos or videos to your list, and also set reminders to be sent to your email. The site is pretty user friendly, though some of the features you don’t edit until after you’ve set the goal, such as reminders. I would think you’d create everything when you are creating the goal. You can mark the goal as complete, and see a progress indicator (from 0-100%) of how far you are toward reaching your goals. From the design of the site, it appears to be focused on a younger demographic (perhaps college students?). Overall, it does the job for simple goal tracking.

LifeTango.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Free
LifeTango is a very clean and effective goal tracking tool. As the other tools, you can choose if you want public or private goals. You can sort by priority, date, and other categories. You have to manually update the progress you are at in your goal by a percentage from 0-100%.  Ongoing, periodic goals are considered “Tasks” and are tracked using their “Task Tracker” (as opposed to goals that you want to assign a specific due date for). And example of a Task Tracker goal would be to workout every day for 1 year. You would then set these recurring tasks and mark your progress daily. They assign stars that you click on to indicate that you have completed your recurring task goal (kinda cute like when you were a kid and got stars for getting something done). There is also a fun little sticky note for “reminders”. Overall, I like this site for their Task tracking but I think it is a little confusing for tracking larger picture life goals.

Stickk.com – Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Free

Stick is a tool meant to motivate you to stick to your goals through the use of accountability with other people and putting a bet or monetary value at stake if you don’t meet your goals. It is much more focused on coaching and pushing you to achieve your goals than any of the other tools. You start by setting a goal (Referred to as a Commitment Contract, much more formal and committed sounding!), then setting the ‘stakes’ or what’s at risk to complete it (You literally have to pay out money to your selected charity or person if you miss your goal deadlines), then you ‘get a referee’ or a person in your life to to push you meet your goals, and you can also add friends to help you achieve your goals. Many of their pre-set goals are around losing weight, quitting smoking, or other life-changing habits that it often takes a ‘coach’ to help with. However, it can be used for other goal tracking as well. You can set the category, whether it is a one-time or recurring event, get reminders and view your progress. Oh, and you don’t HAVE to set a “Stake” of financial value, you can still use this tool without the pressure of a stake. For many people though, I can imagine that this method (fear of losing your money!) works great for actually getting them motivated and on track. This is by far the most unique of the tools I’ve seen.

GoalsTogether.com Rating: 2 out of 5 stars Free

This free social sharing site offers the ability to create and track your goals, and share them with the community. You can choose to have private or public goals. You can search for other goals for people in the community. It allows ‘basic’ goals which are manually updated for progress, and ‘checkpoint’ goals which you set the checkpoints or milestones needed to attain the goal at the beginning of the tool. When you have completed a task in the goal, you mark it as complete by checking it off, like you would on a to-do list. Overall, I would say that this tool is very basic, and not all that useful for the serious person trying to implement a SMART goal process or anything much more than a task list. There are ads on this site.

43Things.com Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars Free
I saw this mentioned often as a goal tracking site, but it really isn’t. This site is really just a simple social site to measure trends for goals and resolutions with the answer to 1 question: “What do you want to do in the year 2010?”. To me, it seems similar to Twitter and many other social sharing tools, so who knows if it will be used a lot. Cute idea, but not that helpful for achieving your goals.

Which one to choose?
You decide. Just keep in mind, when searching for a goal tracking tool, I would recommend determining if you simply want to have to do lists, or if you are ready to have specific goals with associated tasks. Goal tracking is about all of the small tasks (from your TO DO Lists) that add up to one overarching goal. Sometimes, you may have random TO DO’s that don’t really seem like they fit into any goal, but you feel that they have to get done anyway. Go ahead and add them to the list and perhaps even do them, but first consider: WHY am I doing some task if it doesn’t help me reach any of my goals? This can lead to the type of self reflection that will ultimately help you to reduce the amount of mindless, or purposeless tasks that you are doing, and help you to find the best use of your time.

Let me know your thoughts on these tools or if there are some great ones that I have missed.

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Science has proven that people who express their gratitude daily are 25% happier and significantly healthier than those who don’t—and doing it takes as little as a minute a day! – Gratitudelog.com

GratitudeLog.com is a fun social site that takes the basic concept of short updates from sites such as Twitter, and applies it to a specific concept, Gratitude.

You are able to mark someone’s comment as “Awesome!” or reply to it. You can follow people and they can follow you. Beyond that, you can send people “Appreciation” gifts (for free), which are simply little icons with a thoughtful note (like you can send on Facebook).

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• People on this site really seem to respect the type of content that can be posted and shared, you will find inspiration from what other’s are saying!
• It can integrate with your Twitter account to post your updates
• There is something both cool and scary about publicly sharing your personal thoughts on your gratitude for your life

Cons:

• The list of updates on the main page shows those that you follow’s comments, but I find it somewhat difficult to navigate as a running list.
• If someone isn’t a member of this site, you can share a gift with them, but you can’t really interact much further than that… So, I suppose they’ll have to join!

I have made a pledge to myself to login and put something that I am thankful or grateful for every day. So far, day 5, I’m doing pretty good. Reflecting on what I am grateful for on this site has been  great, but the best part is that I am starting to expand that further into other aspects of my life through out the day. My husband and I have made a commitment (thanks to a posting I saw on this site) to express something we are grateful for to each other every day as well. Already, this starts off or ends the day with a smile.

No matter your religion, your spirituality or your place in life, it is without a doubt helpful to give thanks for what you have in your life that you appreciate. I am convinced that a commitment to maintaining a pattern of expressing my gratitude will play a key part in keeping me motivated and maintaining my perspective.

Related Posts

• June 23, 2010 -- Stop Chasing After Happiness – Choose Happiness
• January 6, 2010 -- 5 Steps to Happiness with a Personal Finance Twist

Easily Keep Track of Family Addresses, Birthdays and Events Together

Around the holidays, I always send out emails to family members and friends alike in a frantic attempt to mail holiday cards. Why do I keep repeating this process? Because people move, or I get forgetful and don’t update the many places that I store addresses.

I was thinking about starting a Google Doc to share a long list of family contact information, but before I did, I did a quick search to see if there were any useful online tools that already solve this issue for me.

And of course, there is! FamilyCrossings.com

At Family Crossing you can get a free or premium account. You can ask your family to join, and then everyone can store their addresses as well as pictures, videos, and also very handy, a family calendar of events. I’m very much hoping I can convince my family members to at least use the address and events calendar. I’m thinking that if I put videos of my daughter on there and share them, that might just be enough to entice them to start using the site.

Beyond those features, you can also store family history, recipes, chat, and more. I don’t know that my family will utilize ALL of the features, but it will be a huge help if we just can all update our addresses, birthdays and key events on the family calendar!

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Thesis Demo Site — See the Thesis Theme in action!
Buy the Thesis Theme

My Take on Why Every Blog Under the Sun Seems to be Using the Thesis Theme

When I first decided to start blogging about my financial journey a little while ago, I found blog after blog after blog (and I could keep going) that uses the Thesis theme for WordPress, developed by Chris Pearson. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to fork over the money for a premium theme. A free theme would work right? Sure, but not if you want to do anything slightly custom to the design without editing ALL of the code. And not if you want to stop wasting lots of time tweaking and not actually blogging.

After struggling with free themes, even as a web designer that knows some PHP, CSS, etc, I was getting frustrated trying to get all the plugins and add-ons that I wanted to use to play well together.

So, I purchased the developer license. Out of the box, its a nice theme. If you want to customize it, you do still have to put the work in.  I wouldn’t say its been simple to get it customized so far, and I have had a few “oops” I just crashed my site moments, however, I do agree with the masses that once you get the hang of using the hooks, Thesis provides one of the most customizable, well documented and supported blog (and content management website) shells or structures that I have been able to find.

Thesis takes out the guesswork for you with a standards compliant, search engine friendly, well supported theme.

I tend to agree with Ben Cook at WPBlogger who thinks that the Thesis framework could and should be the end of premium WordPress themes. Instead, what’s needed is skins or essentially, custom designs that are compatible with Thesis, whether they are free or paid or custom. (Of course people will continue to have healthy competition I hope!)

Theme vs Framework vs Skin – What Does it All Mean?

The word THEME is actually not accurate in describing Thesis, as a typically WordPress theme is specific to a certain use and is not often that flexible with structure.

Thesis provides a SHELL or FRAMEWORK, built using the php programming language. It has been developed to be solid enough that it does an excellent job of separating design from functionality. It lets you customize without changing the bare-bones structure. If you upgrade to a new version, (free to do) you simply replace the new files and you will maintain the integrity of your site design without headache. Thesis designers and free Thesis ‘skins’ are cropping up all of the place.

I’m not a developer, I am a designer, so I very much appreciate that myself and other designers have the ability to spend more time on aesthetics and design than on structure.

The SKIN, on the other hand, are free or paid or custom designs that make the thesis framework on the site unique.

Thesis takes into consideration search engines, browser compatibility, user-friendly navigation and design options, and is very very customizable.

Plugins & Widgets

I still use a lot of other plugins and widgets to customize my site. Some things you can do with the Thesis Hooks, and some things are just easier or more thorough to use a plugin. For example, you can insert your Google Analytics code in Thesis, but if you use a plugin, you can customize some of the outgoing links that will be displayed and have more options configured from within your Admin. So, all in all, I still believe its worthwhile to install plugins. (Social plugins, Database backup plugins, etc. I’m happy to share the specifics of these if anyone wants me to!)

Thesis-specific plugins that prove useful and are downloadable in WordPress include the Thesis Open Hook Plugin which allows you to paste custom hooks and code by section of the site as well as the Thesis Import/Export that allows you to transport your settings.

I’m not even close to done with the customization that I want to do with my site, but I am satisfied that I picked the right framework.

Thesis Demo Site — See the Thesis Theme in action!
Buy the Thesis Theme

Thesis Intro Video

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Credit.com Offers a Different Perspective from CreditKarma.com

Credit.com offers an additional resource that can complement your use of CreditKarma.com (read my review) or other credit report services.

Though Credit.com doesn’t offer as much detail or tools as CreditKarma.com, it did give me a higher overall score, which I found interesting. It ranked me as A to A- for all categories, where as on CreditKarma.com I had D in a few different categories such as length of open debt. From what I’ve read, the discrepancy is based on the recency of the data as well as which credit agency it is using to determine your score, and supposedly CreditKarma doesn’t go back in date as far as Credit.com does.  This factor alone is enough to take a closer look at Credit.com for accuracy.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Credit.com determines your score to be based on the following categories:

• Payment History (35%) Simply put - you have to pay your bills on time.
• Debt Useage (35%) Keeping low balances and having higher limits for your debt increases this value.
• Credit Age (15%) If you have accounts that have been opened for a while, this helps this score. (CreditKarma and Credit.com have very different perspectives on this)
• Account Mix (10%) Types of debt that you have (mortgage, credit cards, other loans)
• Inquiries (10%) Its a good idea not to have too many inquiries to your score (I’ve read that if you shop around, say for a mortgage, and have multiple pulls of your credit in a 2 week period, this doesn’t affect your score as much, but don’t quote me on this)

Keep in mind that for the full detail on actual accounts that are included on your credit report you’ll have to purchase one or get your free annual report. Under the FACT Act you are required to have access to at least 1 free credit report a year, and you can get that at http://www.annualcreditreport.com. This looks at the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. They will also report on court records for lawsuits, judgments and bankruptcy filings.

You can also possibly obtain your free credit report from your local credit union. The one I work at in Boulder provides a review of your credit report free to its members.

Its always a good idea to check your credit report, if at minimum to monitor and ensure that you don’t have any fraudulent activity. Also though, to learn how to improve it as I am.

Here’s a nice comparison: http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/2009/09/30/credit-report-cards-credit-com-vs-credit-karma/

What do you use to monitor your credit score and credit report? Do you use a credit monitoring or  identity theft service?

Related Posts

• November 23, 2009 -- Review of Free Credit Score Analysis Tool: Credit Karma
• January 21, 2010 -- My Greatest Financial Fears Explained

Think Twice Before You Cut Up Your Old Credit Cards

A Truly Free Credit Score and Helpful Analysis of the Factors Affecting Your Credit

Unlike many of the ‘free’ credit score sites out there that say they are free, Credit Karma truly is free.

Credit Karma provides secure access to your credit score with many features that help you analyze how your debt and payment has affected your overall score.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Not only does this tool provide you with your credit score, it shows you:

• A Report Card of the factors that affect your score and where you fall
• Your score and how it shifts over time with charts and graphs
• A snapshot of where your score is compared to the national average
• A comparison of your credit to other members of the Credit Karma community
• A credit simulator that suggests how changes will impact your credit score (My score went up 8 points if I added a new credit card with a 3500 limit, crazy!)
• They also have helpful debt calculators such as mortgage affordability, debt payoff calculators, etc

What I found most interesting was the section called “Report Card”. It ranks certain criteria that is used to determine your credit score from A through F. It was very helpful for me, because I realized something critical in the way I have been managing credit cards and how I will manage them moving forward.

I have to admit, I was one of the typical college students that fell prey to the open 3 or 4 credit cards during the freshman orientation. I didn’t spend a lot on these cards, but when I wised up, I took the advice of someone that I should close any cards that I’m not using as that negatively affects my credit. So, I’ve been doing that over the years. When I don’t want a card any more, I close it. WRONG!

It turns out I have a “D” score on my credit score (which is overall “good” right now at 729) for Average Age of Open Credit Lines as well as Total Accounts. I’m very intrigued by the fact that doing something as simple as keeping some of my unused credit cards open will improve my credit score. I had NO idea. And as such I always close old cards that I’m no longer using.

Another thing I found interesting was that if you opened and did a balance transfer, with the simulator your score went down. However, if you just open a new credit card, your score goes up. I suppose this is because it indicates that you can handle more debt.

I highly suggest trying this tool out, if you are willing to overlook the offers and sales pitches on the page, it is a great way to actively monitor and improve your credit score.

Related Posts

• November 24, 2009 -- Review of Free Credit Score Analysis Tool: Credit.com
• January 21, 2010 -- My Greatest Financial Fears Explained

FiLife: Social Media and Financial Help at its Finest

FiLife, a partnership with the Wall Street Journal, provides an amazing tool for community interaction. From questions posted to the community via Twitter, reviews, comments, a blog and the option to become a writer in your area of expertise, it offers an wonderful and engaging opportunity for people to connect and share information around finance and money matters.

I posted a question regarding finding the best options for a 529 (college savings account) and within a day got two very thoughful answers to point me in the right direction. It is so awesome that there’s a community (or many of them) out there of people that are simply interested in helping out. I very much enjoy the email updates that are sent when something is updated. It reminds me of Facebook in its ability to engage, but for your finances, obviously.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

So far, I’ve use the Twitter @AskFiLife to ask a question, answered a few polls, and added some comments to articles.

Beyond that, I tried out their “Action Plan” to see what they would offer for budgeting suggestions and tips.

My Financial Expense Breakdown on FiLife

As you can see from this pie chart – they gave me a decent breakdown of my expenses.

They then followed this by showing me which of my expenses were ‘fixed’ or expenses that it is difficult to change, and which were flexible.

Unfortunately for me, most of my expenses are pretty fixed, so that’s where the life changing steps are going to have to take place soon (ie sell our house or find a way to get more income). Our house is on the market, so hopefully things will pick up for that after the holidays. In the meantime, we are plowing away at getting the right accounts and knowledge to take the steps we need with saving and investing when our expenses do decrease.

Overall, I’ve joined quite a few forums such as wisebread, the motley fool and some mom related ones, but I have found this community format to be the most useful and intriguing to date.

Does anyone use FiLife? What other community site and forums do you like for personal finance?

Related Posts

• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• December 21, 2009 -- Be the Change You Want to See in the World
• November 14, 2009 -- Top 3 Barriers in My Journey Toward Financial Freedom
• November 12, 2009 -- Who Am I Writing For?

moneyStrands Free Online Budgeting and Money Management Software

The last in my series of online budgeting evaluations, moneyStrands, provided by Strands Labs, Inc. (developed social recommendation and personalization technologies), combines a modern approach to personal finance with widget style designs, and a personalize virtual spokesperson, Monica. Its a secure and free online tool, and auto-imports your accounts.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Customizable dashboard for RSS feeds and other interests
• Printable PDF summary (I love this feature, even though simple, a lot of other tools don’t allow you to print!)
• iPhone App
• Personalized recommendations
• Ability to customize your categories
• Community options to share and discuss with others, compare your spending with other people that have similar habits to yours

Cons:

• For the way my mind works, it was hard to know what some of the icons were for, and how to find what I was looking for
• A lot going on, too much information unrelated to budgeting, saving and investing. Why would I want to have retail offers if I am interested in saving and budgeting? This product must be geared at a demographic that wants more than just money management
• In my opinion, the boxy widget style design is not as user friendly as other tools such as Mint or Thrive

Overall, moneyStrands has a lot of functionality for a free tool that may appeal to many people. For me personally, I am not interested in the format of thier special offers for retail stores, credit cards, or tips and I don’t particularly like the design of the widget format, or the icons that they use. I want SIMPLE and to the point, and this interface does not offer that.

For Your Reference: Here’s another nice review and how to:
http://personalfinancesoftwarereviews.com/moneystrands/

Check it out for yourself and see what you prefer.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools

Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: Thrive

A refreshing design and helpful tips gives Thrive an advantage that Mint does not offer, namely: Advice.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Auto imports (almost) all of your accounts
• Simple, user-friendly design
• Awesome customer service (This is a huge plus for a free tool!)
• Does a better job auto-updating accounts and accounting for multi-factor authentication than Mint
• Easy to use and remember categories of your expenses and income
• Credit Compass – estimates your credit score and gives you recommendations for improving it
• Budgeting tools and debt management tools that allows you to set specific goals for and calculates how much to save per month to reach that goal within a certain time period
• Once you have a few months of trending, it can predict how much you would need to live per year on your current expenses, as well as an interesting one of how many days you can survive without a job given your asset/liability and income/expense ratios

Cons:

• Does not yet import all of my credit union loan accounts (neither does any other site, so what do you do?)
• Does not allow you to manually enter any asset or liability accounts if they cannot find your online account
• It learns your categorizations, but I would prefer to also have an option to manually save re-categorized transactions for the future like Mint does

I’ve heard that many people are fleeing to Thrive or alternatives since the purchase of Mint by Intuit, and the speculative rumors that Mint may switch their back-end system from Yodlee. I would say that there are definitely some great alternatives to Mint out there, but there is no 1 answer that fits all needs. In fact, I’m think about using a combination of Mint and Thrive, as they both offer different perspectives that can help me organize and simplify my finances.

Update: In hearing back from Elisa at Thrive, I was made aware that the suggested products that Thrive offers are not based on affiliate commissions, but are truly intended to fit the needs of the user. They find matches for savings and loan products that are based on what is available in the marketplace, not on their commissions. To me, this is a very useful distinction from other companies.

Another Update: I have used this for a while now, and I do find the categorization difficult. Also, they give some real tough love advice. It may not be something you want to hear

Thrive website: http://www.justthrive.com

View the tour at: http://www.justthrive.com/tour

Related Posts

• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline

Review of Online Personal Data Organizer Tool: Orggit.com

As part of my journey to get financially fit and organized, I found an online tool, Orggit. Orggit provides a secure platform for storing your personally sensitive information such as passwords, wallet information, health information and also a ‘filing cabinet’ which can be organized by folders for documents that you keep in your ‘off-line’ filing cabinet such as tax information, legal paperwork, etc. In theory you could shred all your filling cabinet documents once you uploaded them to this. (as long as you could find the time to upload them all, a daunting task for me). What I was suprise about when searching online is that

I cannot find another product that matches the features that they offer. Their fee is $50 annually, which seems pretty reasonable to me.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• User friendly interface
• Aggregates and cleanly categorizes a TON of personal information options (Even your family medical records, Insurance card infomration, social security number, immunization records, basically anything I can think of.
• Secure filing cabinet for any and all documents that you want to keep safe
• Emergency ID / Contact information (they mail you a copy of this to keep on hand)

Cons:

• I was hoping to use this for my password storage as well as the other features it offers. However, the other password tools that I reviewed offer so many more features (sorting, import/export, categorizing, etc), that I am tempted to use a separate tool for passwords.
• I am so tempted by the filing cabinet option, but also overwhelmed by the idea of having to scan in and upload my important files into my computer, then delete them from my computer. The amount of time committment for this is large and I would need to be pretty committed to it. However, its probably sort of like iTunes, its hard to upload all your old CD collections, but once they are there, you have them for good!

Overall I am so impressed with this innovative product, even though it doesn’t meet all of my needs for password storage. I heart Orggit.com!

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Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Passpack.com

Passpack has been around since 2006 and appears to be a very popular option online. Their approach is very interesting. They allow you to select the security level that you want to store your password information at from “single” lock to “triple” lock. This refers to the encryption levels that you want your data stored at. Single lock is good for logins that you do not have any personal information stored at, where as double lock is used for an added layer of security, and triple lock is the most encrypted for personal information storage. The only negative to encrypting your information with the higher triple lock is that it may take a little longer when you login places to “unlock” your password information.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Up to 100 passwords are free, annual fee therafter
• Browser ‘button’ for one click login to many websites
• Allows import/export of your info
• Desktop and offline options
• Password generator
• One time use logins
• Allows secure sharing of your passwords with individuals you trust
• Allows you to securely send private messages to people you trust
• “Clean your pack” option will clean up your tags, and erase duplicate entries
• They’ve released their own open source api to allow others to build and improve upon the interface (always cool!)

Cons:

• The format for passwords is the same no matter what type of password it is, it isn’t separated out by type, ie credit card, wifi network, etc. I liked that feature better in mitto.com for my purposes.
• I wish it were free for a few more than 100 passwords, maybe 250

Its inevitable for me that I would need to upgrade to a paid subscription, I’ll have well over 100 passwords quickly. The upgrade costs are written in pounds, but you can do the math! The next level up at 1000 passwords would do it for me, and would equate to about $20 a year.

Overall, Passpack would be a very good choice for your password storage, but I am glad that I am trying out many of these tools, as some features of one may appeal more than others depending on your priorities for type and amount of passwords that you want to store.

View a Video about Passpack:

Related Posts

• November 1, 2009 -- Safely Store Documents Online: Review of Best Online Organizer and Password Tools
• November 3, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Clipperz.com
• November 2, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Mitto.com

Day 9: Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Clipperz.com

Clipperz.com can be used to safely store your password and sensitive personal information online, generate secure passwords to use, as well as create passwords for one time use. The purpose of one time use passphrases are if you are concerned about using a public computer where there may be spyware or adware that could steal your login information. You can store web passwords, wallet data like bank account and credit cards and create your own custom ‘cards’.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Free
• Direct login configuration and browser ‘bookmarklet’ tool to easily and quickly use your passwords while browsing on the internet
• Import and Export of your passwords securely
• Password generator (that’s helpful!)
• It lets you delete your account completely
• One time use passwords

Cons:

• Initially I was confused by the navigation of the site, I didn’t realize that a “card” referred to any type of password/data. My bad, sorry about that.
• Folders or sorting of your ‘cards’ / passwords would be helpful
• You cannot yet share information with trusted people in your family, etc, but this is coming soon

I especially like the the feature that it lets you delete your account entirely. For the type of industry they are in with security and privacy being the most important feature, this makes a lot of sense.

View a Video of Clipperz.com

Related Posts

• November 2, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Mitto.com
• November 1, 2009 -- Safely Store Documents Online: Review of Best Online Organizer and Password Tools
• November 4, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tool: Passpack.com

Review of Free Online Password Tool Mitto.com

Pros:

• Easy navigation, simple, clean design
• Free
• Offers “enhanced security” for your cell phone (possible cell phone charges, but free for Mitto use)
• Many security measures (detail below)
• Allows “auto-login” for many top retail and popular websites (Amazon, Target, etc)
• Adds a browser plugin or ‘bookmarklet’ for easy access to top sites that you login to

Cons:

• Can’t print information (Update: Mitto’s CEO informed me that a secure version of this will be available soon)
• Mainly limited to passwords (not other personal data or info)
• Folder based categories would be a nice addition to the tags
• Slow loading for me from my home computer

There are many very innovative security features with Mitto.com. These include:

• Multifactor authentication (additional verification questions)
• Email verification phrase set by you to ensure that any emails sent from them are legitimate
• Display of your name, IP address, date, time, brower, operating system and country of last login
• Private and public computer settings
• And more I’m sure!

Now that I have used it a bit, I love the features of the mitto interface. Initially I had a difficult time getting my personal email address to work, and was not sure that I could use Mitto, but Arsen at Mitto.com found my Twitter review and worked dilligently that same day to correct the issue. I don’t currently use Mitto, instead I opted for Wallet (view my review) that is a desktop application on my Mac. However, I do think it is a good option for a free, secure online password storage tool.

What other password options have you used? I’d love your input.

Related Posts

• November 3, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Clipperz.com
• November 1, 2009 -- Safely Store Documents Online: Review of Best Online Organizer and Password Tools
• November 4, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tool: Passpack.com

Review of Online  Password & Document Tools

I need to get organized! This includes everything from better back up of my computer hard drive, to cleaning out my house of clutter, etc. Right now, I have important passwords stored all over the place and I don’t always use the best ones in the world for the sake of remembering them.  If I can get all my password information easily track-able and safely stored, I will be able to do more with my time moving forward.

Here is my criteria:

• Free (or minimal fee for value add)
• Safe (obviously!)
• Easy to manage and organize different passwords

Nice to Haves:

• Auto fill and auto import of new passwords from other websites
• Ability to store financial data as well (wallet, important paperwork)
• Prefer online tool (not downloaded software)

I decided not to review desktop tools (such as the popular Password Safe). The latest online password tools are advanced enough that they do not have access to your information. Simply put, they securely connect you with a database that stores your password information, but other people, browsers, etc are unable to access that information. Marco Barulli of clipperz.com refers to this concept as a “zero-knowledge” password manager.

Reviews of Top Free Online Data and Password Storage Tools:

• Mitto – View My Review Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Clipperz – View My Review Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Reviews of Top PAID or SUBSCRIPTION Online Data and Password Storage Tools:
(Make sure to check if back ups are for a Mac or a PC… I’m on a Mac running Bootcamp so I may need both)

• Passpack – View My Review (Annual fee for over 100 passwords) Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Orggit – View My Review. (Store Password, Wallet, Health and File Cabinet Data online, $49 per year). Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  This one is the only one that looks like it offers document upload and storage.

Paid Password Software Tool For Mac & iPhone

• Wallet – View My Review (Not Free – $20 for software and $) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

In the end, I ended up opting for a paid software download for my Mac with Wallet, its easy, safe, and the most user friendly for my needs.

Related Posts

• November 4, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tool: Passpack.com
• November 3, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Clipperz.com
• November 2, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Password Storage Tools: Mitto.com

Review of Free Online Money Management and Budgeting Tool: Yodlee MoneyCenter (moneycenter.yodlee.com)

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros:

• Free
• Automatically import your accounts (including my credit union account!)
• Calendar spending view (this is my favorite feature!) Helps show when I’m spending money, not just totals.
• Excellent reporting for spending, expenses, budget vs actual spending
• Import real estate, investments, rewards accounts, manage net worth
• Share account feature that allows you to show limited information to other users (such as your tax accountant)

Cons:

• Slow loading time
• Hard to navigate, not very intuitive user interface
• Pay bill feature doesn’t have a lot of bill payers, doesn’t allow payees that aren’t already in thier system
• When you re-categorized a transaction, you can’t easily save that category setting for the future

Yodlee Calendar

I was initially impressed with Yodlee MoneyCenter based on the amount of investment and account options that you could manage in the interface. However, a certain key feature that Mint had is lacking in Yodlee. As I mentioned above, if a transaction is imported in as un-categorized or had the wrong category, I can re-categorize it. In order to have similar transactions categorized correctly in the future, you have to create a rule in the “custom categories rules” tab. For me, this would involve a lot of going back and forth that I’m unwilling to do.

My Choice:
Although I love the calendar spending view chart, I have decided to use Mint for the simplicity and ease of use with importing my account information and trending. It has a few less options than Yodlee, but overall meets my immediate needs for budgeting. I recommend you give Yodlee a try if you are looking for a lot of features as mentioned above in my Pro list, and Mint or Thrive for a something a little more user friendly.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools
• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com

Review of Mint.com Online Budgeting and Account Aggregator Tool

If you are searching for a free online money management or budgeting tool, mint.com offers a very nice interface. It’s popular for a reason, its user friendly and easy to use. I thought it went without say, but perhaps not for everyone, you have to use online banking to use Mint and all of the online budgeting tools that I review.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Attractive, Interactive Charts

Pros:

• Easy of use, nice design
• Easy to securely import financial information (accounts for multifactor authentication, or in other words those extra questions in your online banking)
• Best online tool for remembering your rules for categories (Saves LOTS of time)
• Nice charts and graphs for trending, with drill-down options for more detail
• Great over all picture of your monthly net income and expenses
• iPhone App

Cons:

• Hard to account for one time or future planned expenses
• Budget tracker color codes are misleading for recurring exact expenses
• Budgeting tool isn’t that user friendly or helpful for sticking to a budget
• Intrusive partnership cross-sells with big banks (etrade, scottrade, etc)

I’ve imported my financial information into Mint.com and re-categorized my expenses. Overall, it serves the basic purpose of seeing where I’m spending my money, and will be good for showing my trending. It’s a very user friendly interface, easy to use and nicely designed.

Budgeting Indicator Bars

So far I’ve already realized quite a few things about where my money goes. I am way over budget on things that I didn’t realize like groceries. I thought we had that down to about $300 a month, but after a few Costco trips, that went down the drain. That being said, I have a hard time accounting for 1 time expenses in Mint. Its possible, but not that easy. Additionally, I am over budget on shopping by well a lot since I don’t really have a shopping budget. This will be the hardest thing to kick. I don’t really buy that much for myself anymore. But I’m always justifying something I need to buy for my toddler.

What I’m not impressed with is their way of managing one time expenses. They have a way to budget for 1 time or recurring expenses in intervals, but it doesn’t seem very realistic for my lifestyle. So, overall, I’d say that I like the design, ease of use, and simplicity of mint.com, but I feel like something’s missing. It just isn’t as ‘robust’ as I was hoping for.

Additionally, the budget tracker is nice, but it is distracting to see your budgeted categories in yellow or red when they are actually recurring exact expenses that you budget for each month. It shows that you are over budget if you have something that was a planned for large expense, but it happened to fall in a certain month. It would be pretty neat if it allowed you to adjust your budget on a monthly basis due to planned and unusual expenses, but also kept an expected budget. Or at least adjust the budget threshold percentages so that what you think is “yellow” or “red” could be set by you. As it is, you’d have to be way under budget every month to stay in the “green.”

Also, I realize that its free, so they have to make their money from advertisements and partnerships with financial companies, but its all over the place. It’s just a little too much for me. I’m all for obvious ads, or ads that aren’t totally intrusive, but when its interruptive, I get pretty annoyed. I get asked every time I click on the investments tab if I want to move my money to somewhere else. The way they say it is that they can help you save certain amounts of money by switching, but to me, its somewhat misleading that they design it to look like they’ll easily help you, but the true intention is to get you to open more bank accounts so that they earn a profit from their partnerships.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• October 27, 2009 -- Top Free Online Budgeting Money Management Tools
• November 21, 2009 -- Review of FiLife: Your Financial Lifeline
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter

Review of the Best Auto – Import Online Money Management Tools

I signed up and tried out various online money management tools that manage your finances. Here’s the list of the top 4 reviewed and my main criteria for my decision. (You have to use online banking to use these tools!)

My main criteria are:

1. Free
2. Import majority of my financial accounts automatically (no upload, manual, etc)
3. Easy to use, simple interface
4. Easy to interpret budgeting
5. Doesn’t require a lot of manual work to sort through the categories

Top Free Personal Finance Sites that Import (Almost) All Accounts:

• Yodlee – Read My Full Review Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Mint – Read My Full Review Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
• Thrive – Read My Full Review Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• MoneyStrands – Read My Full Review Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A note on a few other popular tools: Geezeo is now only for private Financial Institutions and Wesabe look great, but won’t auto import my credit union accounts (bummer!)

Update: I’ve been using a combination of Mint and Thrive for a while now. Great start, but I’m going to be on the look out for another budgeting tool. Neither of these give me all that I want for setting easy budgets.

Related Posts

• November 15, 2009 -- Giving Mint a Run for Its Money? Just Thrive
• October 30, 2009 -- Review Free Online Budgeting Tools: Yodlee MoneyCenter
• November 19, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tool: moneyStrands
• October 28, 2009 -- Review of Free Online Money Management Tools: Mint.com
• November 18, 2009 -- Budgeting for the Holidays and Avoiding Holiday Impulse Buys