PT Money » Organize Your Finances

Mvelopes: Automated, Online, Envelope Budgeting System (Plus Bill Pay)

PT — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:29:58 +0000

This week (or two) of budgeting reviews continues as I take a look at Mvelopes. Mvelopes is an automated, access-from-anywhere, budgeting tool based on the envelope system of budgeting. It also comes with bill pay.

Upfront, it’s important to tell you that Mvelopes is a subscription based system. So, along with all the nice features, you have to pay a monthly fee. Albeit a very low fee. But Mvelopes is a solid budgeting tool and has been recognized as such: PC World gave them a World Class Award – one of The 100 Best Products of the Year. Here’s how Mvelopes describes themselves:

“Mvelopes is the most effective online personal finance and spending management system ever. Mvelopes Personal is an online budgeting system that makes it easy to create an effective personal budget and track every aspect of your spending as it happens. It will help you always know exactly how much you have left to spend, instantly know the impact of every spending decision, effectively manage credit card spending, and quickly create an easy to use household budgeting plan.”

What You’ll Get with Mvelopes

Financial Account Aggregation – See all your accounts in one place and visualize your financial situation at a glance. This helps you track your net worth effectively.

Traditional Envelope System – Mvelopes, as the name suggests, is built on the idea that at the beginning of the month you put your income into different spending folders (or envelopes). Then you spend the rest of the month using the money from the envelopes. This helps you to spend every dollar before you earn it. That way you can make sure you spend it on things like savings, debt reduction, and giving. Mvelopes sets this up automatically for you each month once you’ve done the initial setup. You can quickly transfer money between envelope (drag and drop), and you can even take into account credit card usage.

Online Based – No download needed. It’s online-based software. You log in to your account from any PC or Mac or mobile device. This is the big advantage Mvelopes has compared with You Need a Budget 3.

Bill Pay – Another big selling point for Mvelopes is the bill pay feature. I’m not aware of any other budgeting software that lets you do this. Pretty handy.

Community – Mvelopes has a very robust community of users who all interact via the community groups and forums. You can also get training, live support, articles, and even premium life coaching services. You can also make some referral money through Mvelopes. They have a refer a friend program where you can earn $15, and your friend saves 20%.

Free E-Book Download

The folks at Mvelopes created a free E-Book to get you motivated and help you start using the Mvelope system. It’s called Money 4 Life. That link is a direct download. Right click and “save as” to put it on your computer and read it at your convenience.

First Steps with Mvelopes

I tested out Mvelopes using their free trial and I walked through the first steps. Be aware that you will need to sign up with a credit card for the free trial. You just need to set yourself a reminder to cancel in the event you’re not happy.

When you first sign up and get into the system, you’ll need to add accounts your financial accounts (link bank and credit accounts using online credentials), automate your bill payments, set a spending plan, fund your various envelopes, and finally, set up mobile phone access.

So there you have it. Mvelopes looks like it has some great benefits to offer for those people who want an online system to help them manage their spending and create a better financial future. If you’ve used Mvelopes extensively I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple Passionate Approach to Money

PT — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:30:56 +0000

A new financial guidebook just became available that I really like. It’s called Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money. It was created by Baker from Man vs Debt. I was able to get an advanced copy of the guide and thought I’d share a bit of my thoughts on the book. First, here’s what you’ll get with the complete package:

Unautomate Your Finances: What’s Inside?

A comprehensive 83-page eBook, featuring “The Unautomation Theory”, “The Science of Unautomation”, and “Applying Unautomation”. Over 25,000 words dedicated to providing everything you need to adopt a simple, passionate approach to money.

A 27-minute video interview with Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net. Baker interviews Leo on how he applied the principles of simplicity and minimalism to dramatically turn around his financial life. Powerful insights from a leader in simplicity, blogging, and productivity.

A 29-minute audio interview with J.D. Roth of GetRichSlowly.org, one of the top personal finance blogs on the web. J.D. joins Baker on a call to discuss his own financial recovery story and what it’s like now that he’s in the “third phase of personal finance”.

A 2-page, custom-designed PDF version (printable) of the minimalist budgeting system discussed in main guide.

A bare bones Excel template for those who want to take the minimalist budgeting system digital.

Free Extended Updates! Over the next 6 months, Baker will be releasing sample case studies, FAQ’s, and exclusive interviews… for free!

That’s a lot of information/inspiration for the small fee that Baker is charging. Read more about Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money.

My Thoughts on Unautomate Your Finances

First, don’t be thrown off by the title. I’m a huge fan of saving more money using automated techniques, so I didn’t know if I would like the message in the book. But Baker isn’t against using automated tools like direct deposit and bill pay. What he does stress is keeping things simple and doing it consciously.

But he doesn’t stop there with his message. His guide goes into great detail, giving you specific steps for simplifying your finances by spending consciously, simplifying your budget, and he shares his own debt reduction techniques which he’s used to pay off thousands of dollars in debt. This guide will no doubt challenge what you’re currently doing with your money and your life.

I know Baker and I know he’s put a lot of hard work into this guide. Give a listen to his video and see if you connect with his message. If so, I encourage you to pick up his guide. Unautomate Your Finances: A Simple, Passionate Approach to Money.

You Need a Budget 3: A Principles-Based, Powerful Budgeting Tool

PT — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:47:29 +0000

Several readers have expressed their love for the download-able budget software, You Need a Budget (YNAB). I had to include it in this week of budgeting reviews. YNAB 3 was recently released in beta. I downloaded the free trial version to my computer last night and gave it spin.

You Need a Budget is what I would call a zero-based budgeting tool. The software allows you to “give every dollar a job” and get beyond living paycheck to paycheck. I would describe it as a principle-based, straight-forward budgeting tool with an easy-to-use (and enjoyable to look at) interface. Here’s a look at the budget function:

YNAB is Not a Complete Money Management Tool

Something I quickly discovered about YNAB 3 is that it isn’t a well-rounded money management tool, like Quicken or Mint. But it’s not really trying to be that. YNAB is a budgeting tool. The creators really understand the psychology behind budgeting and “getting ahead”, and they incorporate that into the software.

For this reason, YNAB isn’t for the person who has a lot of stocks or real estate to track. Nor is it really for someone with a small business to keep track of. It’s not personal accounting software, plus budgeting. It’s simply budgeting software.

YNAB’s 4 Rules of a Money Management Methodology

You Need a Budget is built on four principles, or rules as they call them. They are:

Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck
Give Every Dollar a Job
Save for a Rainy Day
Roll with the Punches

It’s these four rules that set YNAB a part from the competition, I believe. If you are a Dave Ramsey fan and believe in the power of the zero-based budget, then this software is right up your alley.

Read more about YNAB’s four rules to budget by.

What’s New in YNAB 3

YNAB 3 just rolled out replacing YNAB Pro. Here’s what’s new…

Available Funds Roll Forward – Any available funds that you have not budgeted roll forward to become a part of next month’s starting buffer.
Drag and Drop to Order Categories – I noticed this right away on the budget screen. You can arrange the categories to prioritize your view based on you most important categories.
Other new features include: transaction search/filtering, improved reporting, and overspending flexibility

YNAB has a Passionate Following

Check out this recent comment from a reader,

“I have YNAB 3 (beta), and I cannot say enough about this budgeting software. IMO it is the BEST user-friendly budget software I’ve ever bought. It’s worth every penny. I think the four rules are the foundation from which to go by when starting a budget.” – Jo

YNAB Community and Personality

There’s much more to the YNAB website than a download button. The creator of the software, Jesse Mecham (@jessemecham), has developed a large set of online resources to help you. There’s a blog, which he personally contributes to. A series of Whiteboard Wednesday posts where he shares specific budgeting methods and tips. Very real stuff. Also there are support forums, live online classes, an online university, and several videos to view which will show you how the software works.

This software looks like the real deal. To try the YNAB 3 software on your computer, risk free for 30 days, just click the You Need a Budget banner below. You can also download the 7 day free trial version.

Budgetpulse: Free, Secure, Online Budgeting Tool

PT — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:19:43 +0000

I thought I’d kick off this week of budgeting software reviews with my review of Budgetpulse. They hit the scene last year and have come on strong as a major player amongst the free budgeting tools.

With Budgetpulse you can set up a budget for your finances, manually import banking transactions, create a dashboard style view of your assets and liabilities, and create and fund individual savings goals. And you get to do this all for free, and without ever sharing any personal information.

What Does Budgetpulse Offer?

Create a Budget – Budgetpulse has a nice budgeting feature that allows you to set a budget amount for each spending category. I tested it out today and found it was easy to set up the budget amounts.

Import Transactions – You’ve got to see how you did against your budget, right? That’s where this feature comes in.You can manually upload or input your actual transactions. I had the most trouble with this feature. I tried importing a month of transactions from my ING DIRECT Electric Orange account using the QIF and CSV data file types. I was never able to get the CSV file type to upload, although I’m sure it was user error. However, I did get the Quicken file type (QIF) to upload. But I still had to manually enter all the categories. This took a bit of time, but this is what you’re going to get with a manual budgeting tool.

View All Accounts in One Place – There is also a dashboard you can set up that will have all your asset and liability accounts in one place. You’ll get a quick snapshot of your net worth. Like importing, this has to be done manually, which can take some time and effort to set up and maintain.

Without Security Risk – Because Budgetpulse is manual, no personal information is needed. No connecting to bank accounts. You don’t even have to use your real name at anytime. The only thing that has to truly be yours when you set it up is your email address.

Uses Different Currencies and Time Zones – Budgetpulse comes with different currencies you can use. So it’s not restricted to USD.

Beyond Budgeting: Additional Features

Savings Goals and Fund-raising – Budgetpulse has a Goals section where you can set up different savings goals. You can also share these goals with friends and family (like, SmartyPig). Others are also able to contribute to your savings goal, turning it into a fund raising tool if needed. If you want more information on this feature, Craig Kessler explains the savings goal function on the Budgetpulse blog.

What Others Are Saying About Budgetpulse

Budgetpulse Offers Savings Goals by The Centsible Life
Budgetpulse Online Budgeting and Financial Management Software by Moolanomy
Budgetpulse Review by FiscalGeek
Bugdetpulse’s New Fund-raising Feature by Green Panda Treehouse
Raise Money with Budgetpulse by Free From Broke
Budgetpulse Review by Cash Money Life

How Much Does Budgetpulse Cost?

Right now Budgetpulse is completely free. Although, they do intend to release a premium version of the online software in the future. I doubt this would affect current users.

What Makes Budgetpulse Different?

There are a few factors that stand out for me. First, Budgetpulse is free to use. Second, I really like the interface. It’s clean, fresh-looking, and quick. Lastly, I think Budgetpulse differentiates themselves with their:

Savings Goal Feature - I don’t think any other budgeting tools have this type of feature.
Multi-Currency Use – Use whatever currency you like.
Secure Use – Some people aren’t yet comfortable using automated financial aggregators like the one Mint.com offers, which require you to hand over your banking credentials. Budgetpulse is manual and impersonal (with the exception of the optional public savings goal feature), making it a perfect option for the risk averse.
No Ads or Product Push – Most other free online budgeting tools come with a back end product push. Budgetpulse is free of any commission-type suggestions or even simple ads.

In my opinion, you won’t find a nicer, manual, online budgeting system out there that is also free like Budgetpulse. To check it out simply visit www.budgetpulse.com and sign up for free.

Question of the Week: How do You Budget?

PT — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:46:09 +0000

Do you do a formal budget?

I use a combination of things to stay on top of my spending. I my look at my checking account every other day, I occasionally plug my financial data into Quicken to see the overall picture. I also know which categories are most likely to get out of hand. So, I spend my budgeting efforts focused on those few categories.

Next week I’m going to explore some of the best budgeting tools out there. I’ll look at Quicken, You Need a Budget, Mvelopes, BudgetPulse, and possibly some others. But today I just wanted to get your opinion.

How do you budget? Do you use software? A simple excel file? Not at all?

I polled a few friends to see what they were doing. Here are their responses. Be sure to leave your response in the comments below.

“I don’t budget. Everything get automatically split up into savings, mortgage payments, bill payments, etc. and the remaining amount is available for use or it can stay in the savings account. I don’t recommend this to everyone though.” – Pinyo from Moolanomy.

“I am a huge fan of zero based budgeting. I started with an elaborate spreadsheet but now I use You Need a Budget which I feel is the best of breed. That was money well spent to help me keep track being the geek that I am.” – Paul from Fiscal Geek

“I use a spreadsheet to maintain our budget. We have essentially taken the “cash envelope system” and turned it into an “electronic spreadsheet envelope”. We also live off of last’s month’s income so we are not living paycheck to paycheck. Here’s a video of my budgeting system.” – Kevin from No Debt Plan

“I don’t really budget these days. Bills, savings, and investments are 90% automated so whatever is left is essentially what’s budgeted for day-to-day expenses. If there’s anything left over the excess usually gets pushed to savings. Budgeting proved helpful in the past when money was tight and we were in debt, but with automation and spending less than we earn a strict budget isn’t necessary now.” – Jeremy from Generation X Finance.

“We budget monthly in an excel spreadsheet. It includes our income, expenses, and line items for all irregular or annual expenses. As I pay bills, I subtract each amount and add the leftover to the following month. It’s actually a very fluid process and doesn’t take much time. Once a year, we update our budget based on our spending patterns in Microsoft Money and any upcoming changes.” – Madison from My Dollar Plan

“I’ve gone through periods where I’ve stuck to a budget and periods where I didn’t budget at all. I’ve found that I’m able to save more money when I’m budgeting than when I’m not. Currently, I’m using YNAB 3 to keep track of my budget, and it’s working really well.” – Lynnae from Being Frugal

“Our family uses a zero based budget in an excel spreadsheet to make sure that every dollar is spent to either a spending, saving or giving category before it ever hits our accounts. We try to have monthly budget meetings as well to go over problem areas, and adjust as we need to. We also use Microsoft Money as a desktop software, but we’re looking for something new as it gets phased out.” – Pete from Bible Money Matters

“I do a very loose form of budgeting. Mainly, I just keep extra money in my bank account (a couple grand) so that I don’t have to track all the small bills and expenditures. I know I have always enough for those. This saves a lot of time. I also monitor the bank account level on a spreadsheet and check it either monthly or when I want to make a large purchase or debt payment. Then I will do a quick calculation to make sure I have enough money for that big item.” – Mike from ABCs of Investing

“Ugghhh. I don’t budget in general. I track my spending patterns and habits at Mint to look for any category that gets out of control (I’m looking at you “Fast Food”!). I do budget for specific events or trips (such as my wedding coming up).” – DebtKid

“Since both my income and expenses are fairly unpredictable, I generally try to save as much money as I can in my one standard banking account. Every month I put a set amount towards my travels (50-100$ or so) and towards my retirement (about $100). I’m not a day trader but I have money set aside for stock purchases. I also have a high amount of my money in certain stocks, which I’m fairly passive with my management of. I’ve automated certain bills to my credit card but I still prefer to pay some manually. I do this to ensure that there are no discrepancies. I keep my online income in a separate ING Direct account high interest savings account. I’ve also created a separate sub-folder when I have random savings. Then there’s those times where it’s a friend’s birthday or something really fun pops up and everything I ever learned about budgeting gets thrown out the window.” – MD from Studenomics

“We currently do have a budgeting system for our household. Every bill that we can is ran through our Amazon Visa Card to get as many points as possible. We pay the card off each month in full to prevent in any interest accruing.All our bills are setup for direct pay to help organize our financial life. The only sort of budget that we kind of do is keep track of my business revenue and expenses in an Excel spread sheet. That is done primarily to help us to keep track of how much tax we should have withheld for our quarterly tax payment.” – Jeff from Good Financial Cents

“Creating and using our spending plan (budget) was essential in getting our finances in order… without it success would have been much more difficult, if not impossible. Creating the first budget can be tedious and difficult but each subsequent budget is easier and eventually your finances can practically run on auto pilot. We started with a paper budget for the first few months, then switched to a budget spreadsheet solution for ease of reproduction.” – Matt from Debt Free Adventure

“We budget using pencil and paper. We use last month’s income to start each month and shoot for zero-sum (spending every dollar of it at the beginning of the month). We round up on any expenses and round down any income to make things simple to grasp quickly. We use cash for discretionary spending and our debit cards (or checking) for any fixed, regular bills. We also keep a second sheet of paper for any irregular expenses (that surprise us or occurs less frequently than monthly). Anytime one pops up we record it on the master list. At the beginning of each month, we look over our master list and double-check if any “sneaky” expenses will hit this month. Two blank sheets of paper and a pencil! That’s our system.” – Baker(s) from Man vs Debt

Strike When the Iron is Hot: Advantages of an Automated World

PT — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:13:37 +0000

Money. We think about it when we buy things, when we go to work, in our business dealings, in our conversations at home with family. Money plays a big role in our lives.

Yet, even though we think about money a great deal every day, we spend very little time actually doing something productive regarding our personal finances. That’s because we don’t always have the motivation to do something.

Every once in a while though, we get inspired. We read something or have a conversation or simply find time in our schedule. We get all fired up to get our finances in order: to save more, get rid of debt, or start investing.

It’s crucial that we use this moment to really make some big changes in our finances. Who knows when the time or inspiration will return. We need to strike when the iron is hot.

In the past, it was easy for this flash moment to come, us make some changes and then move on to the next thing, with those changes not having any lasting impact on our success with money.

Now more than ever, it’s so easy to take advantage automated tools that once set in motion, can have a permanent impact on our finances. Let’s look at a few things you can do to act next time the motivation to do so is there:

Aggregate your accounts at Mint.com. Set this up once, and then return periodically just to check your progress.
Enter all your bill due dates into PocketSmith and get reminders when a bill is coming due.
Log into your Electric Orange checking account and set up as many automatic bill pays as you can. Consider setting up auto-withdrawal on the remaining bills.
Set up a direct deposit to a savings account. Start small, but make sure this is a separate savings account and not where you do your spending.
Increase your 401K contribution percentage. At least get the company match.
Create an automatic withdrawal to a Roth IRA. This is easier than it sounds and can help you achieve tax diversification in retirement.
Transfer your high-interest credit card debt to a zero percent credit card.
Set up an automated debt reduction plan using a tool like Debt Goal.

The good thing about today’s financial world is that you can find the motivation once, set it all up, and then forget about it for a while. You don’t have to rely on discipline or trying harder next time.

Now there are still some things that will prevent you from taking action. Along with automatic savings tools you’ve got information overload and what can seem like too many choices to make. My best advice here is to keep things simple, use trusted tools, and start small with all your efforts.

Photo by Andrei!

4 Rules to Budget By

PT — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:37:11 +0000

I recently stumbled across these four rules by YNAB that you can use to help drive your budgeting process. They create a nice framework of standards to shoot for when you’re first getting started with your finances.

Strive to Live Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck

At some point in our lives, we all live paycheck to paycheck, whether it’s just out of college, or after a financial hardship. In other words, we need the next month’s paycheck to cover next month’s expenses. There is no reserve. You’re not “a step ahead”.

As long as you consistently spend as much, or more, as you earn you will remain in this state. How do you break free? How do you stop living paycheck to paycheck? There are two approaches to take: either reduce your spending or increase your income. Actually there’s a third approach: do both.

Regardless of your approach, if you do it consistently from month-to-month, everything else being equal, you will stop living paycheck to paycheck. As for your budget, you get beyond paycheck-to-paycheck by budgeting less money in expenses than you receive in income.

Give Every Dollar a Job

Giving every dollar a job is assigning every dollar that comes into your budget (i.e. income, found money, lotto winnings) a specific place to be used. “Give every dollar a home” is the phrase Dave Ramsey uses, I think.

For instance, let’s say you have $5,000 in income. To give every dollar a job, you would assign money to your known (fixed and variable) expenses, giving, saving, and even assign money to some unknown or unexpected money.

At the end of your budget process, you will have $0 left over. This does not mean you haven’t saved or given though, because you have specifically assigned dollars to those categories. And because there is zero left over, this is often called a “zero-based budget”.

Save for a Rainy Day

The save for a rainy day concept is a familiar one. We should each set aside some money from month to month that is reserved for the unexpected. This can be for a job loss, car repair, medical expenses, lump sum expenses, whatever.

Everyone at some point is going to experience an unexpected loss or need to pay for a big expense all at once. By saving for a “rainy day”, you’re more prepared for when that time comes. I typically refer to this as an emergency fund.

Roll with the Punches

Got to love a good boxing analogy. Rolling with the punches is all about taking life’s financial ups and downs in stride. Budgets are not about perfection. They’re about improvement. Creating a budget sets up a standard in your life. Sometimes we don’t live up to that standard. That can be because we failed or it can be through no fault of our own. The key is to have the standard in the first place. Then, make it up next month and not give up.

Believe me, even people who live and breath personal finance every day make mistakes with money. It’s how you respond next month, and over your entire financial life, that makes the difference.

Hat tip to the folks at You Need a Budget for sharing these 4 rules. If you are in the need of a proven budgeting software system, be sure to take advantage of You Need a Budget’s 7-Day Free Trial.

Photo by bigburpsx3

Download These Free Financial Spreadsheets

PT — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:34:35 +0000

Today I thought I’d share a couple of spreadsheets with you to help you stay on top of your finances. They’re oldies but goodies. I’ve shared these individually in the past, but with the new year I though you might could utilize them both. These sheets will hopefully add to your overall financial organization efforts. I’ve provided a brief explanation about each one, and some links to download the sheets. Ignore the old website branding.

All-In-One Personal Finance Spreadsheet

First up is my all-in-one, dashboard-style spreadsheet. In general, this sheet puts all your personal financial information in one simple, printable spreadsheet. Here’s what’s included:

1. Personal Balance Sheet – This is simply a listing of all your assets and liabilities. It totals up to give you your personal net worth.

2. Personal Income Statement – This includes your income and all your recurring expenses. While this isn’t a full-blown budget, it will help you to visualize what you “have to” pay each month.

3. Financial Goals – It’s important to keep your financial goals in mind when your viewing net worth and income vs expense. This keeps the big picture in mind.

4. Online Log-in Credentials – If you’re worried about security you don’t have to use this section, but I like to have all of my log-in information in one spot so that my wife could pick up the pieces if something happened to me.

This sheet will help you:

1. See your entire personal finance situation all in one spot. I believe a necessary starting point for making the most of your finances is to know exactly where you’re starting from. This sheet will give you that view.

2. Help a loved one in the case that something happens to you. If you’re the one source of financial knowledge for you family, you need this sheet or something like it stored away safely in the event that something happens to you so that your family can take control of your finances.

Article About the All-In-One Spreadsheet

Download This Sheet:

All-In-One Financial Spreadsheet (Excel)
All-In-One Financial Spreadsheet (OpenOffice)

Monthly Expense Tracker

Up next is the monthly expense tracker. This sheet will help you avoid late payments and overdrafts by tracking all of your monthly recurring expenses and showing you how they will affect your balance at different times in the month. This sheet includes a rolling calendar of recurring monthly expenses and income, as well as, your total available balance projected out for 30 days or more.

More on how this spreadsheet will help you:

1. Avoid Late Payments – Since you list out your monthly recurring expenses by payment due date, you’ll be able to quickly reference which bill is coming due at what date.

2. Prevent Bank Over-Drafts – Since the sheet contains a running balance, you’ll be able to roughly predict what your balance will be at various points in the month. This will give you a bit of warning so you can shift some money around from a different account and avoid an overdraft.

Article About the Monthly Expense Tracker

Download This Sheet:

Monthly Expense Tracker (Excel)
Monthly Expense Tracker (OpenOffice)

PocketSmith, a calendar-based financial planner, is basically an automated version of this tracker sheet. Check it out if you want something more advanced.

While the sheets are by no means perfect, they’ve both helped me at times. Hopefully you can add them to your own financial tool belt and make some use of them too. If you have any questions or suggestions about the sheets, feel free to use the comments below…

Guest Posting Party

I’ve been doing some guest posting on other blogs lately. Something I plan to make a habit of in the coming weeks and months. Some of my latest posts include:

Should I E-File My Taxes or Mail Them? at Four Pillars.
How Do I Set Up a 529 College Savings Plan at ABC’s of Investing.
Organize Your Files for Tax Time at Finance for a Freelance Life.

Thanks to the host blogs for giving me the opportunity.

Blog Carnivals I Was In

The Festival of Frugality at Ultimate Money Blog. The Festival of Frugality at Cooking Manager. The Best of Money Carnival at The Centsible Life. The Carnival of Debt Reduction. The Rich Money Habits Carnival at Rich Money Habits. The Festival of Frugality at Ultimate Money Blog. The Carnival of Financial Planning at The Skilled Investor. The Tax Carnival at Don’t Mess with Taxes. The Carnival of Personal Finance at Cash Money Life. The Best of Money Carnival at Studenomics. The Money Hacks Carnival at Passive Income Now. The Carnival of Personal Finance at Get Rich Slowly. The Festival of Frugality at Sweating the Big Stuff.

Be on the lookout for the first edition of the International Personal Finance Carnival.

Use Google Docs to Save Big and Make Life Easy

Austin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:29:14 +0000

Two weeks ago Google Docs unveiled a new feature which allows users to upload any file type to their account, essentially making Google Docs your flash drive in the cloud. We all have emailed a file to ourselves for quick access, but this is Google’s way of clearing your inbox and organizing your life for free.

Since it was first introduced in 2006, Docs has shown that it is the future of word processing. With its tight integration with Gmail, Google is in for the long haul when it comes to how average people like you or I write, present, and organize our lives.

Google even has an answer for those people who are afraid of relying on the internet to hold their files. Google Gears allows you to have access to your files when offline by syncing them with your computer’s hard drive.

I’ve been a Docs user for almost two years now and I suggest them to all of my friends for the speed, easy Gmail integration, and cloud computing capabilities. In college I would create a Presentation (Power Point) for a speech and instead of putting it on a flash drive, I would just open it on the computer in the classroom. I could use Docs Document (Word) to start a paper in the library, edit it in my dorm room, and then finalize it that weekend when I visited my parents at home.

3 computers, 1 document, and no worrying about a faulty flash drive.

Right now, Google Docs offers uploads for any file up to 250 MB and you’ll get 1 GB of storage for non-Docs files like pictures, videos, or original files you don’t want to convert.

The best part? You can get more storage for dirt cheap. $0.25 for 1 GB every year.

With Google’s growth it’s also more than possible that the amount of free storage won’t dramatically increase over the next couple of years. When Gmail started in 2004 it offered 1 GB and now it’s at 7400 MB.

Google Docs could do away with flash drives in the near future.

So how can Google save you money?

- Does away with word processing software

Savings: $150 (Microsoft Office 2007)

Docs has the capabilities to save and send files as Word documents (.doc), Open Document formats (.odf), Rich Text format (.rtf), and PDFs. This way you can send a file to a friend, colleague, professor, or boss and you can customize it to their computer standards. You don’t have to spend time worrying about compatibility issues.

Microsoft Office includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Google Docs has their own version of each of these programs. They’re stripped down, efficient versions of Microsofts, but they’ll fit the needs of 98% of people who need to use these programs for their daily lives.

Would I write a manuscript on Docs? No. But you’ll be hard pressed to find situations where Docs won’t fill your word processing void.

- No need for flash drives

Savings: $50 (assuming 5, $10 flash drives)

Flash drives are like Pringles, you can’t eat just one. But in the case of flash drives, “you can’t have just one”.

I have at least 3-5 flash drives in my apartment at any given time. They’re cheap and easy, but they’re becoming unnecessary for the types of files that Docs can handle. I don’t see there being any reason I’ll ever buy another one with the new Doc’s upload capabilities. They accept any file and it’s even easier not having to worry about losing the flash drive, getting it damaged, or it breaking.

Docs may take some getting used to for people who have relied on desktop word processing software for decades. Regardless, the Docs team is innovating online word processing at a rapid speed and pushing out exciting features almost weekly. If that’s not enough for you, at least you won’t have to buy any more flash drives or software that sets you back a couple hundred bucks.

Check it out here: Google Docs

This article was contributed by Austin, who lives in Japan where he teaches English and writes about personal finance for twenty-somethings at Foreigner’s Finances.

The Benefits of a Joint Checking Account For Your Relationship

Austin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:00:17 +0000

In this post, Austin, from Foreigner’s Finances, shares his thoughts on the benefits of a joint checking account.

I like to have control over my money. I like to know where it is at all times and I don’t like lingering IOU’s. So when my girlfriend of two years and I started living in the same apartment complex last year and sharing groceries, it caused some tiffs.

On top of that, we were over the chivalrous stage of the man buying all the meals and instead splitting dinners out. We were constantly trying to figure out who paid last, who owed money, and who was paying more. It always seemed to cause a $15 headache.

Fortunately, ING DIRECT’s Electric Orange Checking Account came to the rescue and we quickly became a 21st century couple.

We both already had ING DIRECT savings accounts, so we decided to open a joint checking account with them. There are plenty of online checking accounts that you can open up right now:

Top Online Checking Accounts

Bank	Rate	Review	ATMs	Rewards
FNBO Direct Online BillPay Account	1.25%	FNBO Direct Review	840,000 PLUS locations - 4 Free Withdrawals Per Month	None
PerkStreet Financial	0%	PerkStreet Review	37,000+ free ATMs through STARsf®	2% Cash Back
ING DIRECT Electric Orange	0.24%	Electric Orange Review	35,000+ free ATMs through Allpoint™	None
Ally Interest Checking	View	Ally Bank Review	All Fees Refunded	None
EverBank FreeNet Checking	2.25%	EverBank Review	All Fees Refunded if Balance >$5,000	None
E*Trade Checking	0.15%	Pending	All Fees Refunded	None

How Our Joint Checking Account Worked

1) We could easily pay one another with a shared account.

We linked our respective savings accounts to the joint checking account. If I owed my girlfriend $22, I would transfer $22 from my savings account to our checking account. The transfer was automatic, and then she could immediately transfer the $22 directly from the checking account to her savings account. If we had two computers, the transfer would take less than 30 seconds and we no longer had to worry about lingering IOUs.

2) We got a debit card and used it for joint purchases.

With the joint checking account we each got a debit card. At the beginning of the month, we would each transfer $100 or $200 to the checking account to cover any shared purchases. This was great for groceries, dinners, gas, and anything else we bought and shared because it was split 50/50 every time. Not only were there no longer any money fights, but there was no need for any discussion because it just became normal to pull on the ING checking debit when we were buying something that would be shared.

A Word of Warning About a Joint Account

This little time-saver can be great for married couples, those soon to be married, or longtime girlfriend/boyfriend, but it’s definitely not for every one.

Make sure you have a committed and trustworthy relationship with your significant other before you decide to link your accounts. ING made online banking easy, but this ease can also cause a relationship fight to escalate into a boyfriend stealing $2,500 from his girlfriend’s saving’s account. It sounds comical, but don’t be naive and think your relationship is indestructible.

Regardless, linking to a joint checking account just might be the money hack your relationship has been looking for.