The Muse

I have a guest post at Bargaineering – check it out and join in the discussion there. It tells of my experiences with Prosper.com, which should be indicative of the experiences others might have with the emerging social lending networks.

        

fowlerjk finances guest post, money, websites

Today I played with the “tags” field in Moneydance. It’s the counterpart to Quicken’s “classes” field.

In Quicken, I had two classes for our two vehicles. I did that primarily to track fuel consumption, as I was curious to see the difference between my Accord and my wife’s Civic Hybrid. I didn’t put much thought into classes beyond those two. When I saw the “tags” field in Moneydance, I immediately thought of how I’m used to tagging things – Delicious bookmarks, Wordpress posts, iTunes songs, Journler entries, et cetera. That made the wheels start turning.

As of right now, I’ve added two tags: “vacation” and “fuel hedge fund.” Money I’ve pulled into a couple of savings accounts expressly for some upcoming vacation time is tagged…vacation. The fuel hedge fund is one of two automatic transfers to online savings (FNBO). As it’s an internal transfer (two Moneydance accounts), I can’t subcategorize it – so tags work perfectly. (The fuel hedge fund is the difference between the amount we’ve budgeted for gas and how much gas actually costs. I analyze this each month and adjust the transfer amount accordingly. This prepares us for price increases at the pump. I borrowed that idea from Ramit Sethi.)

Oh, about the fuel consumption – my wife spent about $1000 less on fuel last year than I did.

        

fowlerjk life money, software

I posted yesterday on my new finance tracking software, Moneydance. This is a follow-up post.

After transferring my accounts from Quicken to Moneydance, I spent a good bit of time making sure everything transferred correctly. Minus a few snags in my investment accounts, everything went smoothly.

Initial impressions:

• I find the home/root screen to be the most useful portion of the program, aside from my next point. Quicken was able to give me an accounts window, but it just didn’t provide the information in a meaningful way. Now I have one screen with my accounts grouped by type, a transaction calendar, investment watch, quick budget analysis, and reminders.
• Extensions make Moneydance the Firefox of finance software. Other users develop extensions to make the program better for them, which helps us all out. My favorite is the Credit Card Paydown Calculators. It calculates the payoff time for all active credit cards, given any sort of variable you want to throw at it.
• The interface has an OS X feel that Quicken could never muster. Moneydance is written for OS X, Linux, and Windows, and seems to have a native GUI for each platform.

This is $40 well-spent.

        

fowlerjk life finance, money, software

After using Quicken for several years, I’ve come to the point where it’s no longer much use to me anymore. We have so many different accounts in our household (multiple savings, checking, investment, etc), and Quicken just doesn’t lay it all out in a way that is helpful. The last Mac version seems very half-hearted, and with Quicken, there’s no such thing as an upgrade. One has to buy the full version every time.

I’ve been looking for Quicken alternatives for a few days. I’ve tried a few and settled on Moneydance. As I get more familiar with the program, I’ll post my observations. So far, I’m impressed with its interface. I want to be able to see my financial health at one glance, then drill down for more specifics. This is exactly how Moneydance is set up.

        

fowlerjk life finance, money, software

Jim Wang at Bargaineering has a concise guide to the popular social lending networks. When I first became involved with social lending through Prosper, it was the only shop on the block. Now there are competitors, each offering their own twist to the social lending business model. (One not mentioned in this review is Kiva, which is a charitable lending site. You don’t earn returns on your money  but it’s a good way to help people off their feet.)

I financed our back yard work through Prosper and got an outstanding rate, far below even the local credit unions. I’m considering dropping some money into LendingClub and earning a nice return when the time is right. In either case, I’ve saved (or earned) myself the difference in what the banks would charge (or yield) by borrowing (or lending) directly.

Given the current worries over bank instability, I’m curious to see which way these P2P lending sites go. Will individuals be less likely to trust other individuals, in fear of loans that will default, or will the distrust in banks fuel a rise in P2P lending? Only time will tell.

        

fowlerjk business blogs, lending, money, p2p

In the last of a 4-part series, Penelope Pince provides pointers (not a bad run, eh?) on being a good customer and helping businesses keep costs down. That ultimately saves you money. For example, returning grocery carts to the holding pens–or better still, inside the store–reduces the risk of damage by runaway carts and potential store liability. A few extra seconds of your time could prevent a chain of events that would ultimately cost store customers more.

        

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