Online Money Management

In today's tech-savvy environment, there are more options than ever for online money management.

For quite a few years now we've been able to access bank accounts and pay bills online. We can check our credit card accounts, mortgage balances, make payments, and even apply for all kinds of credit. So why not do personal budgeting and track spending online as well?

It's not for everyone; your personal budgeting style has a lot to do with which online system you like best, or whether you even decide it's an option you want to explore.

As we've discussed elsewhere on Home Budget Help.com, you may prefer to stick to paper and pencil and use manual envelope budgeting to keep your spending under control.

You may be perfectly happy with your Quicken program or homemade Excel spreadsheets.

But, if you're like a lot of folks and manage your finances on the internet, you now have several great options for managing your budget online.

Some of the benefits of managing your money online are:

• Manage your money from any computer, at any time
• Download and track transactions from your accounts automatically
• Service tracks your budget for you
• E-mail, text, cell phone and Twitter alerts are usually available

Of course, there are drawbacks, too. You have to be willing to put your financial information online. Most don't feature printable reports. Many small bank and credit union accounts may not be available for downloading. Interfaces aren't totally user-friendly or self-explanatory. Some services are based around online communities and social networking, like Facebook, or forums. You might prefer to stay anonymous.

Below are some of the more popular online money management services. If you see a piggybank rating, click the link to the online money management service for our review. Highest possible piggybank rating is 5.

Please note that some of these online money management sites are free; some are not.

Mvelopes.com

4.5 piggybanks

This is our personal choice when it comes to managing our personal budgeting. We've used it for over five years now. We think it combines the best of both worlds: envelope budgeting, and online money management. We love computers and we're tech savvy, so it really fits our style.

(I manage my consulting and virtual assistant business accounts using desktop Quicken Deluxe.)

Mvelopes offers real-time management of virtual "envelopes". Your envelopes are "filled" each payday, with cash allocated to each. As you spend money (transactions from your checking, savings, investment and credit card accounts), your envelopes are "emptied". Of course you can make manual adjustments to your Mvelopes set-up at any time, right down to the transaction level.

You can track net worth with Mvelopes, but you won't find sophisticated investment analysis, tax analysis or other personal finance features here, like Quicken offers. Mvelopes does have a mobile module, forums, live customer service and personal coaching.

Mint.com

Geezeo.com

Wesabe

NeoBudget