As a busy mom of 4 I know it can be hard to find time to manage your money, but since moms manage (and spend ;)) most of the money in families, it's a good idea to share money management with your spouse.
One of the easiest ways to keep track of multiple accounts is to use an online money management system. You basically enter your usernames and passwords (don't worry they aren't stored in a place anyone can get to them), and these handy sites upload your balance and transactions for you.
Who online money management is for: couples with many accounts, who are tech savvy, or use smartphones.
Who might consider sticking to pen and paper: couples who handwrite a budget, or use only cash, those who aren't tech savvy, or don't get online frequently.
Of the dozens of sites on the web, I have 3 I favor heavily.
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Mint (FREE): Mint.com is a fantastic site. In fact it is SO good it put QuickenOnline out of business! Owners of Quicken, Intuit, recently purchased Mint, though the management team has stayed on. Mint has the most easy to use, gorgeous interface. You can manually upload accounts, but most accounts can be set to automatically upload. That means when I log in I get a snapshot of my account balances, my budgets, and my net worth.
Pros: Mint has a great iPhone app that I use frequently. Mint sends emails to you when a payment is due, or you are approaching your budget limit, or account limits.
Cons: Occasionally Mint has some hiccups, and some of the features I wish I could turn off, but mostly it's a fantastic and pain-free way to manage all your accounts in one place.
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Wesabe( FREE): Wesabe.com brings a social aspect to money management. Have a question about the site and features, someone from Wesabe will answer you, maybe even the CEO! You can also ask questions of the many dedicated community members. Wesabe's interface is very smooth, and it works similarly to Mint.
Pros: Wesabe has fantastic graphs. I love how you can customize the graphs to see what spending vs. earning or pie charts that show how much of your spending goes towards debt, housing, etc.
Cons: Some banks don't play well with Wesabe, and require uploading. It can take some time to set it up the way you want, depending on how much data you upload it could take a few hours.
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Pocketsmith(FREE plans, and pay plans for $5 or $12/month): Pocketsmith.com is a bit different than my other recommendations. Pocketsmith is all about uploading. Every time you get on you upload your info. What makes it unique though is it is based on a calendar, so you can enter expenses, income, etc. and it projects your net worth growth.
Pros: Clean, easy to use interface. Ability to forecast instead of only looking back at past spending.
Cons: Uploading info, I'm not a fan of work in general and uploading multiple accounts is time consuming.
What way do you manage your money? Do you use online tools, software or a good old pad and pen?
Kelly
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