Kiplinger’s Six Best Budgeting Sites
Kiplinger.com recently posted an article about how to get your financial house in order online. They recommended six sites which accomplish a multitude of solutions, but the focus of the article was online budgeting. The six recommended sites were as follows:
I am most familiar with mint.com and have heard of geezeo.com and wesabe.com, but have not yet heard of the remaining three websites until reading this article. BudgetTracker and Budgetpulse seem to focus on manually entering budgeted accounts and also being able to schedule bill payments online (which you could easily do through your own bank account online. Buxfer is more of a group budgeting and IOUs among friends. It seems like this site is trying to capitalize on a social networking-type financial management.
All of these will be useful tools, but don’t get overwhelmed. The key is to read each website and determine which is best for you. I think the sites mentioned above are primarily free. You can also try out pay sites/software such as Quicken, etc. Once you read through each site and determine which fits your style best (and which you will use most frequently) pick one and stick to it. Usually it takes months before you can master a budget and/or personal spending/saving plan. Make sure you stick to it and see what works and what doesn’t. Many people derive complex budgeting and saving techniques only to find that after two months they stop doing it because of its complexity. Remember, keep it simple. I have found mint.com to be helpful, but really I like making a budget monthly and at the end of each month downloading my bank account into Excel, sort and segregate between accounts, and compare budget to actual. This doesn’t take much time, but is effective. If you don’t feel that you are tracking your budget well enough, you may want to consider analyzing a budget to actual on a weekly basis or utilizing the envelope budget system.
Happy budgeting!
About the Author: Mike is the founder of this site, www.mikefanelli.com He has extensive professional experience in accounting and financial analysis, and is currently a licensed CPA in the state of North Carolina.
A J G | Feb 13, 2009 | Reply
This isn’t related to the post but I thought I’d ask you a few questions about accounting.
I’m thinking about pursuing an accounting MBA. It features 33 hours in accounting which is what NY State requires for the CPA exam. I like crunching numbers and think well quantitatively. I’ve taken intro to accounting at the undergrad level and liked it.
My concern is related to outsourcing and technology. People have suggested that accountants may be replaced by computer programs or outsourcing?
Do you believe that accounting is a “safe” field to enter?
MF | Apr 17, 2009 | Reply
I would say accounting is one of the best and “safest” fields that you could choose from. The demand for CPAs is increasing and the majority of CPAs are retiring (I believe 75% in the next 15 years).