I like money. I like money management (hey, I’m a personal finance blogger). I like free stuff (who doesn’t?). When you put all those together, you get some of the best free online money management tools to be found.
I’ve talked about it before, but since it is the new year, I thought I would once again highlight some of the best free online money management tools I’ve found. Why online? Well, I have been moving more and more of my stuff to the cloud (so I can access it anywhere from any device), and I’m sure a lot of people have been to. It’s also useful for money management for college students. Why? Because you are always moving around, so having your finances in the cloud is great!
Here are some of my favorites, as well as some that have been mentioned before, but I haven’t used.
Mint
Mint is still the industry leader in online personal finance, and it has a lot to offer. It connects with all types of accounts, and it is adding more everyday. It is really good about tracking and categorizing your spending, and helping you stick to a budget. Where it lags is tracking your investment performance, as it seems to have a hard time following investment accounts in general.
Follow this link to check out Mint.
My Favorite: Personal Capital
Personal Capital is the newest player on the block in online personal finance software. It is very similar to Mint, except that is has much more powerful investing tools. Personal Capital is actually an investment firm that offers this software for free. I like it because it has the visuals of Mint, with more powerful investment tracking options, similar to Quicken – but it’s free! You can check out my full review of Personal Capital.
Honorable Mentions
I haven’t tried out these online money management tools, but readers have chimed in about them in the past, so you may want to check them out:
Readers, do you use an online money management tool? What do you recommend?
Robert Farrington is America’s Millennial Money Expert® and America’s Student Loan Debt Expert™, and the founder of The College Investor, a personal finance site dedicated to helping millennials escape student loan debt to start investing and building wealth for the future. You can learn more about him here and here.
He regularly writes about investing, student loan debt, and general personal finance topics geared towards anyone wanting to earn more, get out of debt, and start building wealth for the future.
He has been quoted in major publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox, ABC, NBC, and more. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes.
I don’t use any online money management tools, although I have checked out Mint and will be looking in more detail at Adaptu. (I’ve just taken a quick look at that so far.) I guess I’m just a spreadsheet kind of person 😉
Spreadsheets are nice and simple, but these new sites update everything automatically and make it so easy!
Hey Jackie – Have you given Adaptu a try yet?
Manilla sounds like a good thing to check out. I the ability integrate mileage accounts sounds like a nice extra.
It is very handy. I almost wish all three – Mint, Adaptu, and Manilla would combine!
I’ve heard about SmartyPig. In fact I checked it out once because some of my friends were using it and loving it. But I figured that you can just set up a separate bank account with the same success rate.
I use Yodlee and am pretty happy with it.
Yodlee is by far best to me. Close contest is with mint but, mint doesn’t have banking institutions from many other countries which Yodlee has.
Interesting, I never knew that!
My Yodlee review is coming up in a week. There, I’ll write more of its features.
well , i dont use any but i will be checking mint and yodlee
I haven’t tried Adaptu but I really Wantu (get it?? lol)
I like Smartypig because I can post a widget on my Facebook page for family members to deposit into. I most use Smartypig for kids’ savings accounts. I did a review of it quite awhile ago. https://www.thedebtprincess.com/2011/01/07/smartypig-a-fun-way-to-save/
SmartyPig is different in that it is an actual bank, right?
Jessica – Have you given us a try yet?
Love the “Wantu” 🙂
I have mint.com but I can’t say I use it too much. I usually go into every site individually which can take a lot of time because I have many accounts that each do something different for me.
I still use MS Money simply because I like being able to access stuff offline. If Mint.com or Adaptu did an actual downloadable program that also synced with their website, I would be more inclined to use them 🙂
I always thought that way, but now that I use mobile devices more and more, it is great to have everything on the cloud.
These are great tools but I’m still a fan of my own spreadsheets.
I use Mint.com to track all of my income and expenses. I discussed my process in depth at my site. In my opinion, Mint.com does the tracking and the budgeting extremely well. The area where it falls short is in the planning and goals. Its tools are weak and hard to use. I’m intrigued by the strategy of Manilla and am going to look into it some more. I like the idea of integration more areas into the planning software than just bank account balances and transactions. Great post.
Hah – how prophetic Kraig! .. just came across this 12 month old comment 🙂 .. I’m glad we turned up!
I’m not sure if this really relevant to the blog but I use Clover (an APP you can download on smart phones) and it allows me to track my money. From bank accounts, to Amazon, to what people even owe me. It’s pretty cool and invite only. I’ll leave a link and whoever is interested can read a little more on it since I am sure I didn’t give all of the best information. Enjoy!
https://www.clover.com/a?inv&t=1dny1x72bdgj1
P.S. That link holds 16 invitations left.
-Ashley Morrissey
ashleymorrissey90(at)yahoo(dot)com
Thanks for mentioning Adaptu!
It’s funny, I was all about Quicken for the longest time even with reconciling being a pain. Then Mint came out and I haven’t even looked elsewhere until recently. As it turns out, there are a lot more budgeting tools out there (like you mentioned) and they aren’t just Mint knockoffs. A lot of them have unique approaches that are really well thought out. I’ve gotta check some of them out like Manilla and I’ll let you know what I think!
I started out using LearnVest.com. It really helped a novice like me to break down and visualize my budget. But after using it for a few months, I noticed it did not update in real-time as quick as I liked. It lagged a little and that was not good for someone really trying their hardest to watch where every dollar everyday went. So I switched to Mint and found that it updated almost immediately and have used it ever since (almost 2 yrs now). Although I do have to say LearnVest’s goals section is way more user friendly and LearnVest also has wonderful articles and worksheets and surveys/checklists for all areas of finance (budgeting, retirement, savings, investing…) So I find myself reading and learning from LearnVest and using Mint for my daily finance allocations – budgets, bills, loans, and savings.