Which Financial Website is Best for You?

Smart Money asks which financial website is best for you and offers up these options:

• Wesabe.com
• QuickenOnline.com
• Mint.com

I use none of these myself.

I do use Quicken's desktop version mostly to track spending, investments, and net worth, but other than that, I don't use any website to do those tasks. I do, of course, read TONS of financial sites and blogs to get information and keep learning, but that's it. And I don't think there's one "best" financial website for me -- I think I do much better when I refer to several of them on a regular basis.

How about you? Do you have a "best" financial website for your finances?

Comments

[Crystal]

We don't use any financial services websites.

I read the following blogs on a regular basis:

www.freemoneyfinance.com
www.myopenwallet.net
www.thesimpledollar.com
www.frugalconfessions.com

I've been trying to branch out, but I seem to be picky. If I can't easily find what I want in a blog or am overloaded with ads, I quickly leave. I also leave really quickly if I see a whole bunch of grammatical or spelling mistakes...

[MoneyProgress]

I use Yodlee MoneyCenter (yodlee.com) all the time, and mint.com every once in a while. Real time account aggregation is extremely useful for me! I like to see all transactions in one place and I also like how they keep a history of everything so I can watch my net worth and search all my transactions.

[Brad]

Mint.com hands down! It works great for me to see all my transaction in one place. Now that they are owned by Intuit, they'll have more financing to grow and take over most of all Quicken users.

[MikeS]

www.freemoneyfinance.com
www.fivecentnickel.com
Excel spreadsheet

That's about all I use right now, probably should add a few more sites for information.

I'm happy with my spreadsheet in Excel and is fairly customized now with over 10 years of history. I'd hate to lose that.

[Crystal]

@MikeS
I like my own spreadsheet too! It's broken down exactly how I want it and has the last 3 years of our monthly expenses. I've taken a look at online software, but I rather spend 15 minutes a week on my sheet in Excel.

[Tim]

Like others, I don't use a website, I use a spreadsheet. I was using Quicken for years, but my bank recently started charging for access and $6/month is not worth it to me.

[Old Limey]

I think of a "Financial Website" as a site that provides a discussion of what's happening in the market and the economy and one that provides investment recommendations. Using this definition I believe that if the website is free then you get exactly what you paid for it, which is usually nothing more than self serving commentary and advice.

In the investment world there are no free lunches and if you want really sound and truthful information and recommendations designed to benefit you alone, it will cost you some money. I have been with Fidelity Investments for a long time and I am what they term, 'a private client' with a small dedicated team available 24/7. I have never asked for their recommendations, ignore the ones they mail me, and do all of my own independent research to arrive at investment decisions that best serve my exact needs. I have observed that the general advice provided by the large institutions is self serving, rather than for an individual client's benefit, the same goes for the seminars, free dinners with guest speakers at fancy hotels, and conference calls with fund managers. The only time I use my private client access is if there is a question about a discrepancy in an account or something about a transaction that I didn't completely understand. What I do use every day is Fidelity's outstanding "Active Trader Pro" software that accesses their website and database at fidelity.com and provides me with every last detail of the family accounts that I manage, their transaction histories, trade confirmations, monthly statements, quotes, ability to execute trades and research a mutual fund, a CD, a Bond, or an ETF.

Since Fidelity's database only shows about the last 2 years of account data I also use a computer program I wrote myself to keep track of my longterm financial data going back to 1992. I also never throw out income tax records, you never know when you might need an old one.

[Dr Dean]

We use quicken at home. My bank is too small for mint to access so far, so I haven't checked it out.

In addition to my blog, I of course check out this site (fmf) regularly, www.mybargainhunter, his new question and answer site- www.cashcommons.com, the simple dollar, and the Wall Street Journal.

I also read books on personal finance to stay up with what people are talking about.

[Eric]

Yodlee for aggregating...

As for PF blogs, I subscribe to way too many...but the big ones like GRS, TSD, FMF, FCN, Flexo, Bargaineering, and IWTYTBR to name a few.

[texashaze]

FMF is the best blog.

The WSJ is by far the best commercial site out there. It's worth the annual fee. The depth of reporting and accuracy surpasses anything out there - highly credible with a lot of data and tools.

[laura]

I don't like any of the personal finance web resources mentioned above. I do love my credit union's web interface. It's clean and simple. I don't like to see my money all at once so I have multiple accounts. I tend to spend more when the money is all together. but when the money is broken up between accounts, there's less of a temptation to spend.

For example, in a medical savings account sits our deductible for the cost of having our child: $3000. In another medical savings account is $2k for my husband's upcoming crown. In the checking is money for random incidentals and upcoming payments for vitamins and contact lenses that we need to make in the next few weeks: $1k total. I can't see my car account while looking at the medical account. If i had everything lumped together through mint.com, etc., i'd see a lump figure of $18k for all the accounts, not just medical. then i'd be tempted to spend!

The "Medical" account is one page with 3 line items (even though they are technically called accounts -- 2 savings and a checking). I think of all 3 linked accounts as one account: Medical.

I never have to keep track of anything. Medical items get paid for with the medical debit card. The next year for budgeting, i just add up the 12 withdrawal totals (one for each month) and divide by 12 again for an average. That's how much gets transferred in each month.

We never go over budget, we never have to worry if there's enough money in there for necessities and there's no work involved other than remembering to segregate medical items in the cart.

I only have 4 personal accounts: medical, house, car, spending. default is the house. I love my system.

[Mike]

Mint.com, hands down. Its ability to track my spending trends & net worth changes is exceptional.

[Laura]

Like you, I use the Quicken desktop version. I am such a numbers nerd with it and love it when a new month starts so I can take a look at how I did for the month.

I don't bother with Quicken Online since it doesn't sync with the desktop version, and it's going to become integrated with Mint.com anyway. I tried Mint.com for a little bit, but for some reason it wouldn't pick up all of my Citibank accounts.

I subscribe to way too many PF blogs...many of the same ones in your blogroll but haven't added many new ones for quite a while. I am not finding a lot of "new" information so much anymore as still subscribing because I like the reminders of keeping on track.

[Financial Services]

I thinks these are all nice sites for financial help. . I also find another one Logontoyourmoeny, which provides Account receivable, Commercial collection, pre collection, legal services, outsourcing services and many more. . .

Keep touch. .

Thanks for sharing with us

[chris]

I currently use Yodlee and Mint to track money and keep everything in one place (used to use Quicken desktop software). I watch Credit Karma for credit scores and use Excel for budget (soon I'll switch completely to Mint for this too).

[Karl]

I really like Mint.com too, it's not perfect, but the newer budgeting features made it a lot more useful for me.

[Mark]

I've used them all, but NONE of them are able to access all my financial accounts and keep them up to date. MyYodlee comes closest. Quicken cannot link Sam's Club Discover, and refuses to link my Schwab Bank savings account. RBC (formerly Centura) doesn't work well, and has to be constantly reset. Mint does a good job, but all of them use Yodlee aggregator to access accounts, so if one account is linkable on Mint, it should also be linkable on MyYodlee.

Asking them to add accounts, despite telling them how big the bank or credit account is, just gets ignored. I even send them my login link, and they send me a reply that they're working on it. That was a year ago.

[pfstock]

I also use Yodlee, and I don't use any of the ones mentioned in the SmartMoney article. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Yodlee because I have had problem with the service over the years. But, I consider it a necessary evil since I have over 30 accounts to keep track of.

[Norma]

I was not happy with mvelopes early on. Either I was a block head or it was difficult to use. I gave it a 3rd try last year. I am very happy with the results. They have worked many of the bugs out as far as downloading financial transactions. There's a new feature for accelerating and tracking mortgages. I can print one of several reports to have a hard copy of our budget history. I'm still unable to link one of my retirement accounts but I believe that is the difficulty on the RA end and not mvelopes. Probably the biggest difference and the best feature is I know immediately when I'm over in any given account. I'm satisfied...

[Ryan]

I love Mint.com it has been a great tool for my tracking expenses, budgeting, and its a great one stop place for me to see my net worth, debts, investments, and trends and transactions. There are intermittent problems I have experienced with Mint. There seems to be intermittent problems with a few banks such as ING Direct and Capital One that occasionally prevent Mint from accessing this data. Despite this I am still very happy with the services at Mint.com and I appreciate their blog posts on issues including why the problems are occurring and what they are doing to fix them. Mint is also constantly working to improve and expand their services.