Tag Archives: geezeo

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Mint.com Launches Financial Fitness Feature: Interview w/ CEO

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Mint launched a cool new feature today that helps you plan your financial fitness strategy. Y’all know I’ve been a fan of Mint since their private beta in 2007, and it has been exciting to see them grow over the past few years.

The new feature is brilliant from a business standpoint for them. Continuing on their money-making concept of high-profit referrals to financial accounts, the financial fitness tool suggests places to tune up your fiscal health. I hate the term win-win situation when describing product features, but if there ever was one it would be this, and all of the related features Mint rolls out.

Mint CEO Aaron Patzer took the time to chat with me via phone yesterday to show me the new feature and answer my questions.

The new feature is basically a page that offers 12 different steps to get your finances in order, and you get points and other sorts of rewards for getting closer to your goals. Game theory at its finest. For us personal finance bloggers / blog readers, the steps are not enlightening in their own right. (Check your credit report. Get cheap health insurance. Set up an emergency fund. Pay off debt.) But what is really neat about this feature is that Mint can access your bank accounts and tell you exactly what you need to do where to get financially fit.

Patzer admits this feature is designed mostly for 20-somethings who are in debt and not 30 or 40 somethings who have more complicated finances, adding that in the future they will add even more features to help people without debt look at ways to grow their networth and invest.

“The next phase of Mint is financial goals,” Patzer told me. “It’s what do I want, when do I want it? I want to retire by 50, put my kids through college, what are trade offs for all those goals, what do I have to save each month in order to achieve them. How can Mint help me find ways to save for my longer term goals?”

(I’m looking forward to that!)

I grilled Patzer a little bit on if the offers are really the best for the users (or just the ones they’d make the most profit on) and he said that they do get offers that are actually good for users — for instance, they went with Annual Credit Report which is “truely free” as opposed to FreeCreditReport.com which costs money after seven days.

With 1.1 million registered users, it looks like Mint won’t be going anywhere. While there are lots of other personal finance startups out there, their only real competitor these days seems to be Quicken Online. But that product, while similar, is really suited for a different audience… one that’s older, and that might not be so hip to the web. Plus, 40% of Mint’s users are using their recently-launched iPhone app. (That actually says a lot about the type of person who would use Mint, since the iPhone crowd, which I don’t currently belong to, is definitely a cult-like group of uber hipness.)

One interesting point Patzer noted is that their female adoption has gone up since they launched – it started out as 85% guys, 15% gals and now they’re at a 60/40 split. Count my mom in to that mix, I signed her up for Mint and am teaching her the ropes of personal finance that she needs to learn now that my dad has taken ill. It’s also nice to hear that other women are really getting empowered to take charge of their finances with the help of Mint.

“Even if you go to Quicken Online or Microsoft money, the color scheme, product design… the way it’s positioned is for 45 to 60 year old man that has a half million dollar networth and manages stocks all the time,” said Patzer. “Mint is really more about where do you spend your money, where do you cut back, and that appeals to a younger audience and to women.”

There are still some features I hope Mint adds, and some kinks that need to be worked out, but overall I’m still a fan. Will keep y’all posted on new features they roll out, as long as they keep me posted. Thanks to their PR firm for reaching out to little ‘ol me for the interview, and for Patzer to take time out of his busy schedule to chat.

PF Tools & Tips

Digital Finance February: Yodlee, Mint, Geezeo, Cake

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Despite prior raves about various digital finance sites, I’m ultimately still left unsatisfied with my current offerings.

I think what I want is simple. Sure, I’d like some cute features and nifty community learning options. But what it comes down to it, I want an online finance site that:

1. Shows me my checking and savings account data in REAL TIME (not 6 hours ago, not 3 days ago, but as in up-to-the-minute updates).

2. Includes my investment earnings and losses for the day/month/year. Cake has a great feature showing me how I’m performing versus the markets and other users. I imagine once investments are on the site, this feature can’t be too hard to implement. I’d even be happy without it.

3. Budgeting tools. The sites are pretty good now at coming up with such tools. I love Mint’s budget breakdowns. But it’s not really helpful in the way I need it if the data isn’t actually up-to-date. It isn’t helpful if I have to go sign into BankofAmerica.com and breakdown my monthly spending just to keep on top of everything AFTER I sign into Mint or any other second party bank account tracking site.

4. A *bonus* would be if the site provides me with legitimate ideas on how to save money. Not like Mint, that tells me if I switch to a $47 a month Verizon plan I’d save $x per year when the fact of the matter is, the only reason the month cost me so much at Verizon is because I went over on my minutes. In fact, I’m ALREADY ON the plan they recommended. If your recommendations are going to be wack, I recommend not recommending at all. How’s that for a recommendation?

Cake.com
My latest find, thanks to a friend, is Cake.com. This site is… howdoyousay… hypothetically awesome for investors. That is, if it worked properly. (I’ve added my Sharebuilder account but am having trouble adding my Vanguard account). It’s not really like Mint, Geezeo or Yodlee at all, so it probably should be compared separately… although if Cake really wants my business, they’d simply have to add my savings and checking accounts so I can track all my money at one place. And really my Vanguard account would have to work too.

Mint.com
By far, Mint still has the best UI. I love Mint, I really do. But I’m getting impatient waiting for them to add investing accounts. If Cake, Yodlee and Geezeo can all add investing accounts, and if Mint is built on top of Yodlee’s architecture, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to add investing accounts. Maybe they’re not focused on 24-year-old “old fogies” like me that enjoy putting some of my monthly income into Sharebuilder and Vanguard. But I like to budget my monthly income based on how the market is doing (obviously this month I’ve been failing at that!) I think Mint is going to be amazing in the long run. They’ve already added a bunch of nice features (like a chart showing me how my spending on different things compares to other people in the area). But, come on Mint, add my investment accounts and maybe figure out how to make my data “update” as in “update currently” and not “update what my bank statement looked like yesterday” and I swear, I’ll ask you to marry me.

Geezeo
Aw, Geezeo, Geezeo, Geezeo. I really want to like you. I found you and Wesabe first, and you were much better than Wesabe. You even have investment accounts now. But there’s something about your UI I don’t quite like. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m having trouble adding my Vanguard account on here too, or, when I tried to add my ING Direct Savings account and waited about 5 minutes for it to process, you told me “Heavy traffic is causing delays. Please try again. If you think this is a problem with Geezeo, please tell us by making a Support ticket.” I feel like there are just too many bugs on the site for it to be worth my time right now. Updates are just as delayed as any of the other sites. The UI is sloppy too. Mint, on the other hand, has such a nice design, with screen real estate divvied up quite nicely. Geezeo kind of looks like a kids toy. And the useful features are often buried at the bottom or hard to find.

Yodlee
Despite being boring (yawn) and basic (blegh) Yodlee is still my top digital finance choice. Why? On Yodlee, at the very least, I can see data from all of my accounts including Bank of America (checking, savings & credit card), ING Direct, Vanguard, Sharebuilder, Paypal and Prosper. Data is still a bit delayed, which bugs me, which means I still have to sign into BankofAmerica to check my current checking account status, but I can deal. At least I can see everything in one spot.

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November Expenses (as tabulated by Yodlee, Mint and Geezeo)

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Yodlee tells me…

Rent: $1050
Other: $675
Clothing: $199.07
Telephone: $156.61?
Online Services: $136.20
Auto: $97.36
Health: $73.12
Cable: $62
ATM/Cash Withdrawls: $40
Gasoline: $31
Uncategorized: $927.47???


Mint tells me…

No Category: $2,216
Shopping: $891
Entertainment: $32
Healthcare: $35
Business Services: $104
Personal Care: $119
Food & Dining: $137
Auto: $198
Bills: $260

Total: $3992

But then… after I try to figure out why my expenses are so high for November, I find that the month is counting two month’s worth of rent (why is nov 1-nov 30 counting a check cashed on dec 7?)… so $1050 should be subtracted from that.


Geezeo Tells me…

(as far as I can tell there’s no easy way to pull up one month’s worth of transactions and find a category breakdown in Geezeo.)


Wesabe tells me…

I need to upload my bank statements for the past five months or so. Uh, no thank you. Why bother with uploading when all these other sites do it automatically?

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In short, all of these online personal finance sites are still far from being perfect. I don’t need fancy social networking capabilities, I just want to be able to track my monthly spending (accurately). This would require the ability for me to go in and manually change the transaction date (or what month it should be reported as).

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Well, Don’t I Feel Important?

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This week I was interviewed for a Newsweek.com article on online personal finance sites like Mint, Wesabe, Geezeo, Yodlee and all the rest. I didn’t expect for my quote to end up in the lede. Ok, so here goes my anonymity, but I think it’s worth pointing to a personal finance article where I was quoted on my personal finance blog.

The thing is, my quote on there isn’t exactly right. It’s not wrong either, it’s just that I didn’t say “I’ll stick with that” when I was talking about Yodlee. I basically was saying that for now, I’m sticking with Yodlee because they have all the features I want. As soon as Mint ads the ability to track my mutual funds and such, I’ll go back to using that site. Actually, I still use that site, but I use Yodlee to keep track of my net worth since it’s interesting to see how my overall savings goes up or down depending on how the market is doing.

The funny thing is, Mint is powered by Yodlee’s back-end software, so they’re both very similar sites. It’s just that for one reason or another, Mint has yet to add Yodlee’s full functionality to its site. But I have a feeling they will at some point, and the day they do is the day I stop logging into Yodlee.

I wouldn’t mind so much that my quote says I’m going to stick with Yodlee, except I recently wrote this glowing review of Mint for a technology blog I used to work for — and I didn’t just change my mind. But if anyone read both articles, I’ll sound like a hypocrite. And no one likes a hypocrite.

Oh well.

PF Tools & Tips

Got into the Mint beta!

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However, I’m sworn to secrecy about its inner workings. But I will say – extremely vaguely – that I’m very excited to see what the Mint team has done. There’s a few kinks that still need to be worked out, of course – that’s to be expected in private beta, but I have a feeling Mint will end up winning me over amongst all the PF sites out there (I’ve also used Wesabe and Geezeo thus far.)

If you want your own invite, go over to http://www.mint.com and ask for one yourself. 🙂

PF Tools & Tips

15 Ideas for a Better Personal Finance Site: My Big Hopes for Geezeo, Wesabe, Mint

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I’m still going back and forth between Wesabe and Geezeo. I’m curious to see what Mint has up its sleeves. For the time being, the sites don’t offer exactly what I want. Since I don’t have the time or skills to code my own perfect PF site, I figured I’d write out what the site would be like…

1. Sign In – would auto save my name, securely, on my computer.

2. Accounts – site would automatically update all of my accounts, including checking, savings, CD’s, and mutual fund accounts.

3. Graphs: Home Page would display relevant graphs/charts regarding my monthly spending versus income. Detailed graphs would be available to customize. For instance, I could place a graph on my homepage that would chart my monthly gas spending.

4. Tagging: each item would auto tag accurately as close as possible.

5. Tagging, part two: Retagging (or adding more tags) to items on a statement should be easy, and not require any additional drop down windows. Each item should include an entry text box where tags can be added. Each tag would autosave after a space is inserted. Double word tags would not require quotation marks. Tags would be separated by commas.

6. There would be a way to alter the date posted for income/spending since often I deposit my checks late or pay bills late. I still want to track these payments/income based on the month they should be posted for.

7. Graphics: Have little images for each basic tag.

8. Have separate tag/box to mark as “to be reimbursed” and a reminder to check that reimbursement has gone through

9. Optional income breakdown chart, for those of us who earn money from a variety of sources

10. Comparison on mutual fund income/losses versus other user’s investments.

11. Easy mobile access to my accounts.

12. Ability for all the accounts to “understand” each other. So if I transfer a certain amount of money from checking to an investment, it is not posted as spending for the month (it can be counted in separate investment category)

13. Budget tools: Ability to create charts w/ predetermined expenses, to know how much extra cash to spend/save per month is available.

14. Ability to pay bills directly through site, including cell phone bill and cable bill (I know this is a long shot, but It’d be nice)

15. Widgets and graphic saves that include graphs of above information that can be easily pasted in my blog.

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Am I the Only Person in the World Who Doesn’t Want an iPhone?

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Forget the price tag (which is the primary reason why I won’t be buying an iPhone anytime soon), I’m not all that inspired to shell out any amount of cash for Apple’s latest hot gadget anytime soon. Why? I don’t need a fancy phone. I do need one that rings, takes voicemail, and allows me to text message my friends. My crappy Verizon flip phone isn’t really satisfying these needs either, but why spend $600 on a new iPod with phone capabilities?

Ok, so most websites look gosh darn purty on the iPhone. The comparable view on my tiny flip phone handset dek can’t compare to what Apple has done with its display. This image of Geezeo’s mobile site on the iPhone almost makes me want one…

And the Google Maps feature… and the hours I’ve spent lost driving up and down the roads of Silicon Valley… almost has me reaching for my credit card en route to a bad Apple splurge. But I’m waiting for the next generation of iPhone. I look at the clunky first-gen iPods and I can only imagine how much better the iPhone will be in its next few incarnations.

In other related news, I’m getting a (free) Blackberry for my new job. I’ve never owned a Blackberry, so I’m sure owning one will make me feel rather professional, as will my new (expensive) 30 minute train commute into the city.

Anyway, speaking of Geezeo, I’m still patiently awaiting all of the features the site promises to eventually have. I’d love to have one spot to track all of my money, from checking account to my Vanguard investments. And what would be even better would be the ability to make widgets and graphs based on my spending to post in this blog. I’m not sure if that type of thing is in the works over at Geezeo, but it would sure get rid of the headache of attempting to manage my finances in multiple locations, including Excel – in order to make chart graphics. That’s not happening today, though, so off to Excel I go for a recount of June’s spending and income.

PF Tools & Tips

Personal Finance Online: Geezeo versus Wesabe

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I was Googling “personal finance widgets” when I found myself stumbling on two personal finance network startups. I found Geezeo first, and then through minimal research found out about its competitor Wesabe. The process to sign up for Geezeo was much easier, so for the time being I plan on using that site to explore the world of online personal finance social networking.

While I haven’t had a chance to surf around the site yet, thus far I easily imported my checking and credit card account information to my main page. I’m a little nervous about throwing my banking passwords at any web startup, as I’m sure while 99 percent of them have the best intentions, any little error in security could equate to a depletion of my bank accounts. And that would be so not cool.

In any case, I’m really tired of dealing with Bank of America’s “My Portfolio” tools — which have so many bugs they’re actually discontinuing the feature. Now that I’m attempting to move some funds over to a Roth IRA and Vanguard Index Fund again (the first attempt fell through, I guess I didn’t enter my checking account in correctly) it would be nice to track everything in one spot.

My biggest qualm with Geezeo at the moment is that they don’t support brokerage accounts yet… so for now, I can’t actually access my Vanguard or CD accounts. They’re obviously working to enable this feature soon, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and be patient. At some point my patience will run thing and I’ll check out Wesabe.

On another note, what’s up with the names of these sites? Maybe they have some deeper meaning, but I’m confused. “Geezeo,” what’s that about? It makes me think of some old geezer. If anything, I do get a general idea of being a poor old geezer, and wanting to save for retirement. Meanwhile “Wesabe,” which likely means something in another language, just brings to mind the hot green sauce that comes alongside Sushi. And what does that have to do with personal finance? Is it because Sushi is so gosh darn expensive? 🙂