This is the ninth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.
You probably already use online banking, online bill pay, and maybe even mobile banking on your phone. I’m going to show you a few other neat tools that you might not know about that can help you get your finances in better shape.
Mint – www.mint.com
Mint is a very popular financial tracking site. You add all of your accounts to it, and it’ll keep track of where your money goes. They’ve got some great budgeting tools, and lots of nice charts and graphs to help explain everything.
They also have an iPhone app so you can keep an eye on your finances on the go. Here’s a quick look at how to get started with Mint:
Credit Karma – www.creditkarma.com
You hear all of the commercials for FreeCreditReport.com, but it’s not free. However, you are entitled to an annual credit report for free each year, which you can get from AnnualCreditReport.com. Credit Karma takes it a step further.
They’ll show you your updated credit score each month, and give tips and advice on how to improve it. Being able to track it over time can be very valuable, and their advice can be quite useful if you don’t know what steps you need to take to improve your score.
Here’s a review of how Credit Karma works:
Freshbooks – www.freshbooks.com
Freshbooks is a slick invoicing tools for small businesses. I use it quite a bit for invoicing clients, and it’s a great tool. It’s only free if you have a few clients, but they monthly fees beyond that are very reasonable. If you do any kind of invoicing, it’s a great tool to use.
Shoeboxed – www.shoeboxed.com
Shoeboxed is a tool to help you manage your receipts. If you need to keep up with receipts for any reason, this is a great way to do it. You can scan (or photograph) and email them in, or bundle them and send them through the mail. They’ll track the totals, and put it into a form that you edit, sort and print.
They even have a new iPhone app, but the pricing gets weird. You can only upload 5 reciepts through the app, but you can send unlimited receipts via email from your phone. Why the difference? That aside, it’s a good solution to consider if you deal with a lot of receipts.
Outright
Outright is a competitor with Mint, in that it tries to track all of your financing. It connects with Freshbooks and Shoeboxed, which is great, but it doesn’t automatically connect to many bank accounts. Having Mint pull in that information automatically is wonderful, and missing that feature in Outright is huge. It’s “coming soon”, but there’s no sign of it yet.
So there you have it — five great options to help get your finances under control. Most people won’t need all five, but hopefully one or two them will be useful for you.
Are there any other great tools that you use to track your finances? Let us know in the comments.
This is the ninth in a series of posts in the Organize Your Digital Life series.
