Do You Adaptu?

Update: Adaptu will be closing down on February 20, 2013. If you are a current customer, consider downloading your transactions before then. If you’re looking for a similar service, consider Mint.com.

Would you like a free, secure, online money management and budgeting tool that comes with the ability to see your finances on a calendar, compare your finances to others, as well as participate in an encouraging online community? Well, there is such a place. You can find it at adaptu.com.

What is Adaptu?

Adaptu is an online money management and community site (currently in beta). They are a wholly-owned subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group Inc (i.e. The Standard). They have four main components to their suite of tools:

Manage My Finances – The is the core software tool that Adaptu offers. Here you can automatically add your accounts and detailed transactions to a financial account aggregator, allowing you to quickly see your net worth, account balances and spending categories (i.e. cool charts, etc.). It’s here that you can also see your finances in calendar format, allowing you to project expenses and income. I gave this section a try a few months back and I’ve been impressed with how simple it was to add in accounts and visualize my financial situation.

My Investments – I haven’t tried this section, but it allows you to add your investment accounts and see them all in one place, view performance, etc.

Investor Center – Want news and more detailed tracking information about your market investments? This is the section for you.

Financial Comparison – Once you have your accounts added to the “manage my finances” tool, you can compare your spending to others in the Adaptu community and to averages across the U.S.

Adaptu Financial Comparison

The Community at Adaptu

Adaptu is truly a financial education community that also happens to have a few money management tools. They are all about bringing people together to share and discuss their finances. Within their community you have the opportunity to contribute to forums, polls, groups, and even create your own blog posts and video. It’s really an open framework ripe for creating a community of people ready to improve their financial situation. Their main areas of community are centered around these big topic areas: money management, education, career, marriage, family, property, health, retirement, and legacy.

If I could make one small improvement to the Adaptu layout, it would be to the navigation bar. I would drop the sub-categories from the nav bar and only focus on the landing pages for each big topic area. Adaptu has a lot going on, and the more they can do to simplify, the better.

The Video Tour of Adaptu

The folks at Adaptu really get video and have put a lot of resources into providing videos that not only educate you about the site, but educate you about financial topics. Their Adaptu Pulse! and member profile videos are great. Recently they put together a video tour of their site, which I think helps to explain what they have going on.

If you are using Adaptu, I’d love to hear what you think about it? Have questions about their tools and community? Ask away. Jenna, their community manager is constantly stopping by my site to participate in conversation, so I’m sure she’ll be able to help you.