As the lives of the average American becomes more and more digitally based, online security has become a bigger and bigger issue. For many years, there were constantly stories of identity theft and hackers breaking into credit card company databases. The tales of people losing their life savings or companies surrendering millions of pieces of customer information scared many people into being hesitant about what they put into cyberspace. And for the most part, this has been good advice. There’s obviously no reason to be cavalier with one’s information. As technology has improved, online personal finance software has become more and more popular which has advanced to where it is now able to pay bills, analyze spending habits, and assess taxes. These features are very attractive, especially to people who’ve had a hard time budgeting on their own. But these people are often concerned about security, so its important to consider all of the features of online personal finance software to see if it makes sense from a security perspective.
Online personal finance software features the ability to automatically pay all bills each month on a specified date. This is one of the best features of online personal finance software, but it is one that scares a lot of people. People must submit their checking account information as well as the account numbers for whatever bills they would like to automatically pay. One of the reasons it is safe is because generally the information is stored on the person’s computer, not on the software company’s site, and is then used to pay the bills. Since many banks have offered this feature for years, a lot of people are comfortable with it.
Tax information is also a pretty private matter to most people. Online personal finance software can automatically sift through tax returns and analyze where deductions were missed and the best strategies to use. In some cases, the software can link to the checking account with the auto bill pay feature to deduct the amount of tax owed and transfer it to the IRS. This seems incredibly handy, especially to people with very complex taxes, but having all of that information in one central location seems frightening to some people. It really shouldn’t, especially because most people use a tax preparer and the information is kept at their office anyway. In the case of the online personal finance software, at least it’s kept on the person’s own computer. As a feature to assist with budgeting and other aspects of economic life, online personal finance software has been extremely helpful to many people. There are still concerns about how safe data is. Generally, as long as a person is smart and doesn’t give away their passwords and has good anti-virus software, everything should be incredibly secure. As people warm up to the reality of life in this century, more people are becoming accepting of having online personal finance software help with their financial well-being.
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What personal finance software should I buy?
I am looking for a personal finance program for budgeting and tracking investments but everything I look into seems to track everything monthly. I get paid bi-monthly and want to budget bi-monthly. Anyone have any recommendations?
About Author
Jeff Nelson gives advice on money management. His advice helps you to eliminate your debt faster. To make online budgeting easy and set up your Online Personal Finance for each category you are targeting, visit www.mint.com.
thank you.
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/103507/Thirty-Five-Minutes-to-Riches
Above article provides some basic information on raising your credit score.
Personal financial advice is hard because it has to be tailor made for you. To make it simple, do the following:
1. Build an emergency fund worth 3-9 months of your monthly income (based on age, income, etc).
2. Contribute to a 401(k), IRA or some sort of retirement vehicle on a regular basis (10% or more of income is a general rule of thumb if you start prior to your mid 30s).
3. Reduce expenses that are not "needs" if you have a hard time doing steps 1 and 2 (Ex. I have a $3.49 coffee everyday at work in the morning and a $1.07 iced tea each afternoon. If I stopped those expenses I could save nearly $5 each working day which would be ~100 dollars in a month).
If you are saving money regularly, feel free to spend some. For instance I use ~60% of my monthly post tax income and save the other 40%. When I am banking 40% each month I can afford to spend money on the "wants".
The Automatic Millionaire
The 5 Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me
Seven Winnings Steps to a Seven Figure Fortune
The Science of Getting Rich
Try looking at books by Suze Orman. She's got a real good, common sense approach.
A degree in finance, accounting, economics, business and Law would be nice (advanced, masters or PhD). Than go out into the real world and become very wealthy by investments. Than start your own hedge fund and people will pay you to invest their money.
Why should I take advice from some one who is poor and knows less than I do.
Most states require you to get a license but many don't. You can be a financial adviser tomorrow with no skill, knowledge or abilities. People should do the research their self and read books and publications and take charge of their finances verses some stranger that does not give two darns about you; they just want to make fees and commission.
You can learn the 101 basics of good money managment, how to save and invest (what mom and dad should have taught you but many don't). Than you give out advice for a fee. You can do that as a freelance or work for some bank or investment house, as a financial adviser. There are lots of them and many don't know squat. I would sooner take advice from some of them as I would the kid making my Starbucks.
Most of the basic info is available in books and even cable TV: Suzy Orman, Jim "mad money" Cramer, MSNBC business channel, Bloomberg, The Economist & Wall Street Journal. There are lots of good books on investing and building wealth. Bottom line is earning money the old fashinon way, work for it and save it. People want to do nothing and get a check and produce nothing. That is the problem with our economy, we don't make anything any more. Of course getting into a high paying profession through advanced education is a way to go.
Finance Manager is kind of a vauge job description and career. You are talking money for giving out advice on how to handle money, not only invest but plan for the future, college funds for kids, retirement. They usually work for some investment bank (Like the 4 that went out of business putting 1000's of financial advisers on the street).
Most financial advisers are sales man, like car sales man. They are trying to get you to buy something so they can make fee's and commission's. They often will point you to things that MAKE THEM MONEY, not you.
You can get you stock boraker licence. You have to take some classes and a test. There are different levels and its not too hard, but stock broakers are a dime a dozen. Again many are looking for work this week. Many individual's can buy stocks online. Of course the 401k plan at work is best for most. There they have managers that are suppose to know what they are doing run those accounts. It is putting trust in others however.
The BIG jobs on Wall Street go to guys and gals with MBA's from an Ivy league school. Plus some healthy nepotism and good old boy recommendations.
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So my advice to any one is STUDY READ and RESEARCH, you can do a better job investing money than some stranger that really just wants his fees and commission.
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If you don't have a intellectual curiosity about this stuff don't become and finances adviser. Also the idea is help others not yourself. Do us all a favor and don't tell others what to do with money if you don't have a clue or the proper attitude.
OK, my first stop would be google.
Next, I would get myself educated about budgeting here:
http://www.freebudgetkit.com/
Then I would get smarter about investing here:
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/planningeducation/general
As to figuring out where your little cash goes to, only you can do that.
Every time you spend a penny, write it down. Write down when, where, and what you spent your money on. At the end of the month, tally it up into several categories. (Be as specific or broad as you want, fast food could fall to dining out and entertainment, or could be listed separately, your call)
At the end of the month, I will bet you will be very surprised to find out exactly how much of your take home pay you spend on unnecessary stuff in the $2 – $10 range.
I did this several years ago, and discovered that I was spending over $200 a month on coffee, bottled water, and snacks. Never realized that the $1.75 a day on a Starbucks would add up quite that severly.
Make a 12 month file. With Jan.-Dec. Keep all of your receipts!!!!!!! And bills. Or money order receipts. Each time you buy something add it to your caculations for that month and keep it in the month you bought whatever in it. When taxes need to be filed you'll have how much money you have spent in each month and the receipts. Some stuff can be deducted. Like cell phone bills and gifts to others and you have to have the receipts or money order receipts or checks to prove it.
I am not sure which site you are talking about, but I use http://www.expenseregister.com and it does the categorization of expenses, has tools to set up a budget, reporting, etc. I use it mainly because I can review all my spending in one place. expenseRegister is free too.
I have found something related of what you are looking for, it works fine for me.