The newest ways to manage your money don’t require expensive software. They are web-based—you can log into them anywhere—even on your phone. And, best of all, there are many free options to help keep your budget in check.

One of them is moneyStrands (moneyStrands.com).

moneyStrands.com is easy to use. You enter your account information and moneyStrands breaks every expense and deposit in each of your accounts into different categories (home, insurance, auto, shopping, groceries, etc).

Clicking on the details tab allows you to see your account broken up in a color-coded pie chart. Each “pie piece” is a different category and you can easily change the time period you are looking at (anywhere from the current month to “ever”).  If you feel that you are spending too much in one category you can set up budgets and have moneyStrands.com track your progress. You can also schedule alerts—no more overdraft surprises!

But what makes moneyStrands.com really stand out is the ability to anonymously compare your investing and spending habits to other people within your demographic, or with similar traits.

Answer a few easy questions and the program compares your income and spending habits with relevant sub-groups (e.g. students) within the community to see how your expenses match your peers. moneyStrands.com uses social recommendation technology to help you find the best ways to invest and save money and to recommend things for you to buy. You can view your comparisons by category in either a bar graph or bubble chart.

moneyStrands.com offers a variety of widgets that you can activate, including: recommend financial products, tips, favorites and what to buy.  Another neat widget is the “financial condition” widget.

It’s an easy-to-read graphical representation of your financial situation. If you hover over the graphic it offers an explanation: “Your financial condition is excellent when your average monthly expenses amount to less than 30% of your monthly income.”

Web-based means immediate access to all of your accounts: bank, credit cards, and investing accounts. You can log in at home, at work, or anywhere you have Internet access. moneyStrands promises that their site is just as secure at any other banking or investment site.

Their website promises that security is a top priority. moneyStrands.com is free. They also offer a free mobile app for the iPhone.

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Free online money management software: moneyStrands

In these difficult economic times, everyone is seeking a better way to manage their personal finances. And at a time when even the newly elected president can’t be separated from his wireless device, two undergraduates from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an open source solution that combines smart personal financial management with your smartphone.

The computer science students, who are part of the Rensselaer Center for Open Software (RCOS), have developed an application for Apple Inc.’s popular iPhone that allows users to log, track, and manage their personal spending.

The application is called Vault, and it is available for free to anyone around the world seeking a better way to manage their money. The code used to develop the software is open source, which means that there are no restrictions on distribution or modification.

Developers Amit Kumar and Devin Ross, juniors majoring in computer science, describe the application as “Quicken for the iPhone.” It seeks to replace the check register at the front of personal checkbooks, a financial relic that students like Kumar and Ross have never even owned.

“People are always carrying their phone everywhere already,” Ross said. “We saw the potential to centralize a task that many people could use daily.”

The software has a place to add expenses in different categories. Some categories, such as groceries, are automatically programmed in the system, while other categories can be added by the user. The application then logs the transaction and modifies the user’s account balance. The application also uses GPS to locate the closest bank branch, and then allows users to directly link to their bank’s Web site or place a call to the bank.

According to Kumar and Ross, one of the main benefits of the system is that no personal account information needs to be logged into the application. This protects the user from identity theft if the phone is stolen.

“Creating this application gave us really direct work experience that most undergraduates don’t get,” Kumar said. “It was the first opportunity that we had to go beyond just learning how to create good code to learning how to create a great user interface and build the code around that.”

Vault is currently available for free download from the iTunes Store. The project source is located on http://code.google.com/p/rpiiphone/source/browse/ and the development blog can be found at http://rpiiphoneproject.wordpress.com/ .

Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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Student open-source software brings personal finance to the iPhone

Shelley Elmblad

Online personal finance software is very convenient because you can use it wherever there is an Internet connection. And, these free top three online personal finance software choices offer security features for your personal finance data. With online software, you never have to install anything on your hard drive and software updates are done for you on the software company’s servers.

Online Personal Finance Software Benefits

Each of the top three online personal finance titles have a different feature focus, so look them all over and visit the web sites for more details. And remember that when you use online personal finance software on a public computer, you must log out and close the browser window before leaving the computer.

How is This Personal Finance Software Free?

ClearCheckbook is completely free but accepts free-will donations. Mint and MySpendingPlan are also completely free but each gets a cut on any of the money-saving offers presented to you. The offers on Mint.com are hidden unless you click on a tab to view them. MySpendingPlan offers are more upfront and in your face.

ClearCheckbook

ClearCheckbook is free online personal finance software that is far from bare-bones free software. ClearCheckbook has many features to manage personal finances.

ClearCheckbook Features:

• See all transactions, overall balances, reminders and notices on one page in ClearCheckbook.
• Supports account transfers and split transactions.
• ClearCheckbook spending limits provide a way to create a personal budget.
• Search transactions by date, keyword, account or category.
• Track your spending in ClearCheckbook with charts, graphs and spending vs. saving for all accounts.
• Security: you do not enter your account numbers into ClearCheckbook.
• Reconcile accounts and use time-saving recurring transactions.
• Personal finance alerts and reminders arrive by email.
• Use CheckBot to update your account while on the go with AIM, ICQ, MSN / Windows Live, Google Talk and Yahoo! Messaging services.

Get ClearCheckbook free personal finance software at ClearCheckbook.com.

Mint

Mint is free online personal finance software that offers something truly different: Mint tells you how you can save money, and it has some nice automated features.

Mint Features:

• Mint automatically updates your banking and credit card transactions, eliminating the possibility of forgetting to enter transactions.
• Mint automatically categorizes transactions as they are downloaded.
• Label transactions to be able to quickly identify expenses that are related to work, hobbies, meals out, etc.
• View all banking and credit card transactions and account balances side by side.
• Mint works with 3,000 U.S. banks and credit card companies.
• Compares cash and debt for quick overall financial reporting, and Mint offers spending histories.
• Email and SMS alerts let you know about low balances, large purchases and other financial activities in your accounts.
• Security: firewalls, encryption and authentication procedures protect your personal finance data.
• Mint tells about banking and credit card deals and money-saving products and services you could benefit from using. This information is kept out of the way under the Ways to Save tab.

Get Mint free online personal finance software and learn about managing personal finances at Mint.com.

MySpendingPlan

MySpendingPlan online personal finance software has strong personal budgeting features and a focus on building savings.

MySpendingPlan Features:

• Detailed budget set-up.
• Manage budgets and spending for groups or for your household.
• Bill tracking with email reminders from MySpendingPlan.
• Set up savings goals in MySpendingPlan and track progress toward those goals.
• Shopping features include shopping planner, online shopping deals, shopping lists, savings recommendations, online and in-store coupons.
• Security: MySpendingPlan uses strong data encryption and does not require account numbers to be entered.
• Pre-made templates for standard personal budgets or for planning for large, infrequent expenses.

Get MySpendingPlan free online personal finance software and personal budgeting tips at MySpendingPlan.com.

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3 Free Online Finance Software Programs

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I haven’t wrote about it yet, but something happened end of last year (few months ago) which is changing everything in my life…
I got an job offer to do a project in an accounting company. I refused, but made a counteroffer: give me ownership in this company and count me in.
So they (this small company had 3 owners) discussed it and then it happened: they welcomed me into their team

My role in this company is now to develop everything: their working process, change the software etc. I started to prepare these things end of last year (in December) and now back to the title of this posting: it has been two great, I would even say fantastic days working with this team (with me now there is 6 people). I honestly have to convince that I never have worked in such a organization with so good working climate. It’s just fantastic. I’m already waiting to get back to office… (what I can do Friday, as I have to do an exam in my university Thursday in another city) .

Why would somebody be so greasy that they would give away ownership in their company?
With this concrete example I can explain that…. in 2006/2007 I made my Final Paper for my bachelor studies at Estonian Business School. I made it about financial accounting and it’s future opportunities using more IT possibilities. The instructor from university side was Enel-Eha Ristkok. At the same time she owned this particular accounting company. So basically this making of this Final Paper (research and discussions) built trust between us. So now she asked me to come and bring it into reality what I wrote… And also she is in my Cashflow Club :-p

Basically we have now an accounting company where people understand the logic behind Cashflow game…..

And as Robert Kiyosaki wrote somewhere 6 habits of getting rich and staying rich, I remember the first one: Hire an accountant. Now I have team of accountants (some with experience more than 20 years).

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Two days with accounting