Personal financial management meets the information age in this article that offers to do more with money. These four websites offer a full range for every preference, from the startup to the industry leader, and they're all free.
Mint.com
A site that boasts 600,000 members since September 2007, Mint.com is the rising star of the online financial management world that puts both usability and affordability before profit. Founder Aaron Patzer hit on his startup idea while mired in personal budgeting woes with Quicken -- a familiar story for many, except Patzer had two master's degrees in computer science and engineering.
Mint.com's features aren't remarkable at first: track checking, savings, retirement and investment accounts along with a budgeting application. The site also lacks money transfer capability, which puts it in the finance tracking category, but that disadvantage is also unremarkable. The pull for Mint.com is the clever handle of information. Add notes to transactions and custom categories to the monthly budget, receive text message alerts for impending bills, and even use patent-pending Ways to Save! software to analyze and curb spending.
Rudder.com
Nikhil Roy's startup, backed by Meakem Becker Venture Capital, aims to be the Facebook of online financial management through user control. Its premise is simple: subtract out expenses and let the user develop the financial applications for the balance.
Rudder.com's features are also simple: account tracking, budgeting, and bill alerts; anything more advanced like trend analysis requires adding a widget. For the moment, its limited features make Rudder.com a win for only one group, those who want simplicity that works.
Wesabe
Wesabe is the missing half of Rudder.com's Facebook approach: its members depend on each other to save money through a strong community forum. Wesabe is behind the others in terms of features such as an investments or loan tracker, but it has several pluses, such as transaction tags for tracking and account alerts send via Twitter.
One particular of Wesabe is its sharing policy; it has several ways of uploading financial information for each person's comfort level. Feel uncomfortable trusting bank details with an online site? Just input the balances by hand and delete all trace if it feels too risky. Unlike Mint.com, Wesabe handles all financials in house and doesn't allow information sharing with companies the user has no relationship with, which might be a boon or a flaw depending on whether the provider or a third party is seen as more secure.
Quicken Online
This industry standard is the incumbent target for all the fast-moving upstarts. Under pressure from sites like Mint.com and Wesabe, Quicken removed its $2.99 service fee in December 2007. Quicken's layout has all the familiar colors and the professional feel, complete with typical features and a pie chart of expenses. It offers email and text message alerts, and provides optimization for smart phones like the Apple iPhone.
Quicken Online suffers from few customizations, such as an option to add categories to the personal budget. The absent bill pay is a temporary given, but the lack of group transaction handling is more tedious when those upstarts make it so effortless. Overall Quicken Online is good for diehard fans who want a solid company, but its reluctance to support a free service over the for-pay desktop version makes for a bitter experience.
Summary
Online financial management as it stands is a mixed bag of give and take; no one service has the range and depth to be an industry leader. The choice between current providers hinges on the user, whether he wants Wesabe's community before Quicken's familiarity or whether she prefers Rudder.com's simplicity over Mint.com's rich features.
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