How to Choose the Best Free Personal Finance Software

Free Personal Finance Software

Free personal finance software is widely available on the web, and sometimes it can seem difficult to decide which of the free personal finance software programs would work best for you. Below, I describe three of the programs that I find most effective, and provide links to each of the free personal finance software programs.

Instructions

Step 1

Financial Budgeting Software
The free personal finance software that is best suited for people who want a stripped-down, but powerful program with few bells and whistles is called Yodlee Money Center (see below for link). This free personal finance software is so powerful because all you have to do is input your financial account information, and the free personal finance software automatically pulls all of your financial information together on one convenient page. You can easily create reports to analyze your spending, investments, and net worth without having to keep track of all of the numbers individually. This free personal finance software also allows you to create a budget for yourself and it tracks your spending so that you can make sure you stay within the spending limits that you set.

Step 2

Online Accounting Software

If you are new to the world of personal finance, or would simply like to use free personal finance software that holds your hand a little more than Yodlee, you may want to try Mint (see below for the link). Mint is another free personal finance software, that has all of the features that Yodlee has, but in addition, it analyzes your transactions to find places where you can cut expenses from your budget. For example, this free personal finance software will see what you are paying for your monthly cell phone bill, and let you know if there are any cheaper offers available. Some people prefer to use free personal finance software that doesn't send them advertisements based on their spending; however, I find that Mint helps me identify ways to save money that I might have otherwise missed.

Step 3

Trust Accounting Software

The final piece of free personal finance software is a solution that you can use if you are not comfortable allowing free personal finance software to store your account information. Use Google bookmarks (see link below) to keep a list of links to your financial accounts. Now you will be able to access this quick list of links from any computer without giving your passwords to a third party company. You can then copy your transactions to a spreadsheet program, such as Google Documents in order to crunch some numbers on your own.

Tips & Warnings

• Some people are concerned about the security risks of giving their passwords to a third party company. However, I find that the two companies mentioned above take great pains to encrypt your data, and after using these services for over two years, I have not experienced a single security glitch.