Image Credit: Freedigitalphotos.net

PFM, OFM and Online Banking— managing your finds online is all the rage these days, and if you want to get a handle on the big picture that is your money, you really should consider adding these to your personal finance repertoire. I’ve been using the Mint.com OFM now for about two years, and I’m a big fan.

Here’s how to navigate the world of online financial tools to find the one that is right for you.

Know the terms:

PFM: Personal Financial Management

OFM: Online Financial Management

Aggregator: pulls information from many sources to display them all in one place. (A non-aggregating platform would require a lot of data entry).

Know your style.

• Do you want to manage cashflow, or see the big picture or meet goals?  Depending on what works for you, you’ll have better luck with different platforms.
• Do you use obscure banks or tiny credit unions? Depending on the types of financial institutions you’re working with, you may be able to use a broad-scale aggregator or need a subscription-based system which can provide the level of customization that you need to add in those smaller financial institutions.
• Collect all of your account information – logins, passwords, etc to begin the process.

I’m pretty lazy about this, so I selected an aggregating financial management platform. I use Mint.com but there are several others out there. If you choose to use an aggregating platform, you’ll have to use all of your user IDs, passwords and security questions and answers to connect your accounts via the PFM platform you select.

What’s out there?

While not an exhaustive list, here are a few of the available platforms and their abilities and details.

*GreenSherpa is the only PFM platform that I am aware of which will manually add in a smaller bank or credit union for a user, in addition to the standard list of banks available to the back-end aggregating software that most PFM platforms use from a company called Yodlee.

What can a PFM do for you?

While a system like the envelope system can keep you on budget, a PFM can track long-term trends for you easily. For instance, in our household, we noticed that on average, our entertainment expenses were about $200 higher in the summer months. Why?  No AC in our house! We were always at the mall or the movies hiding out from the heat. As a result, we saved for two months and bought a freestanding air conditioner, which has kept the summer budgets in much better shape.

In Mint, I can track how much I spend on a category, or even with a particular vendor (a key measure of success for me is reducing the volume of transactions at a favorite local coffee vendor that rhymes with five-bucks).   I can also plan ahead for goals such as retirement, and funding the kids’ college and getting out of debt. It keeps me honest with myself and gives me a good picture of where I’ve been.

My Goals

I still start the budget out on paper every month, and then transfer it to Mint.com’s budget screen.  From there, I watch the green bars turn yellow as they approach their budgeted amount, and red as they hit it or go over.

With my husband and I working separate shifts, it also helps as a great way for us to check-in on the budget on days we can’t sit down and go over it. Since it matches our bank accounts by automatically aggregating everything, what you see is really what you get…or “got” as the case may be.

Are you using an online budgeting system? If so, which one? What do you like and dislike about it?  We’ve used mint.com for two years now and the only thing that still seems to be missing is cash-flow projections, though we really know that fairly well. It would be nice to be able to enter our income projection into it, and work from that (this is why we still budget on paper first, and then adjust budgets every month). Otherwise, we love it!

This is what I’ve been waiting for in a finance application

This has been the application I’ve been waiting for. The interface is slick, and the auto-updates of your accounts seamless. I easily added my wells fargo checking accounts as well as a few of my personal credit card accounts. Once I get my financial situation a bit more stable (if that ever happens), I will definitely be using mint to manage, monitor, and analyze my spending.

Main Interface

The main overview of your accounts gives a great snapshot of your latest transactions, alerts and more. Obviously my financial health is bad (and I haven’t even imported all my accounts. Mint.com can’t handle collection accounts)

Analyze Spending…easily

Mint.com makes analyzing and tagging transactions really, really easy. Sadly, it recognizes (truthfully…grrr) that my “most frequented merchant” is “overdraft fee”. Darn!

Favorite Feature

Probably my favorite feature is the ability to receive text messages when an account reaches a certain threshold. For example, lets say you want to receive a text when your checking account falls below $100.

Bugs and gripes

The one feature of mint that seemed to annoy me (that I probably just need to tweak a bit in my settings) was the e-mails I would receive of “large deposits” in my bank account. That’s great and all, but I got an e-mail this morning of a large deposit, that was dated August 28th. Not exactly current.

More Screenshots

Main Tabs

I need to update some of my “tags”

I don’t know about you, but I love Mint.com for keeping track of the household budget. I love that I can check it with a mobile device or online.  With my husband and I working separate shifts, we don’t always communicate about money and budgets very well, so this way we both check in regularly to see how we’re doing.

I love seeing the daily and weekly cashflow alerts and budgets. I also love the mobile alerts when a balance is unexpectedly low. (For instance: this week a client’s check in one of my deposits bounced! I wouldn’t have known for three days without Mint alerting me.)

Mint has added some new features that users should be aware of. (And if you haven’t tried it yet, perhaps these features are just what you need!)

Cash tracking

Typically, I withdraw $270 per week. That buys groceries, gas money for my husband and I and a little bit of pocket money for each of us. Everything else is a check or online payment. Sometimes it is hard to keep tabs on where that $270 in cash all went if the envelope ledgers were not kept up properly (we use the envelope system here).  Even then, I had to go through and tell Mint how to divide up the cash.

Now, Mint can handle the cash, and all cash transactions land in the proper budget category. If you’re a mobile user, you can even select your purchase location from GPS. (See examples).

Just log in, enter the amount of cash spent along with the location and it records.

Credit: Mint.com

Checks

You can record a check you’ve written, and even before it’s cashed, it will record in Mint.  No more wondering what’s out there waiting to clear. (This is going to make balancing my checkbook go so much faster!)

Image credit: Mint.com

Pending

Did you charge or promise funds that haven’t been accounted for yet? Just log them here.

Image credit: Mint.com

Mint.com Bill Paying Issues

Nov 23, 2010

Before Mint.com was acquired by Intuit, they had a history of slow payments to contract bloggers for content and advertising.

Since the acquisition, thousands of dollars has gone unpaid to at least a half dozen personal finance bloggers, including $1200 to one blogger alone.

“The process was running really smooth until Intuit took over. As of now, November will be 9 months of them not paying me. They keep saying they are going to pay, but I’m kind of getting fed up with it which sucks, because I really like Mint”
- Personal Finance Blogger

Another blogger on neglect at Mint.com,

“Working with them up until the last few months for me hasn’t been that bad. They were always slow in paying, but they always paid.

In the last few months, however, their slowness has turned into outright neglect -and multiple emails garnered no response. Finally they have gotten back to me and I expect to be paid within the next couple of weeks, but it has been a long time coming.

I really noticed things getting slower in the last 6 months or so especially since they were bought out by Intuit, and things at their company started changing, and i think a lot of bloggers were just falling through the cracks. They told me that systems were changing, and that they were trying to come up with a new to make the payments happen, but it probably slower than it needed to be.

If they can get things squared away and a new process working, i’ll be happy to continue with them, but the last few months have left a sour taste in my mouth” – Blogger currently owed $1200

From Mrs. Micah @ Finance Freelance Life,

“FWIW, 2 days ago I closed my Mint.com account and in reasons for closing said 1) I wasn’t using it any more but that I’d probably have let it stay dormant except 2) I heard that they had owed thousands of dollars to bloggers who’d advertised for it and hadn’t paid them in over 6 months. And that I thought it was a shoddy way to run a business.

I’m actually pretty sure that they owe me money from last winter, but it was so long ago and I don’t even know if I have the e-mails and it’s too much of a headache to dig those out. So I just said bloggers.

Dunno if that was in any way helpful, but I figured I’d vote with my membership.”

I’ve been sitting on this post for nearly a month now, debating on what to do. But after following up with multiple bloggers who have still not been paid…it was time.

I guarantee I’ll be getting an e-mail from someone at Intuit within a few hours of this post asking how they can fix this.

But it shouldn’t take a public flogging for a company pushing financial fitness to pay it’s bills.

Disclosure: I use Mint.com often. I was an early beta-tester of the site, and to this day I probably login a half dozen times a month. I’ve never taken payment or done any paid advertising for them.

Update: I have reached out to a contact at Mint.com for a comment. I will post it here when I receive a reply.