Guest Post: Mint vs. Wesabe

Filed in archive Tools on February 27, 2008

I've always fantasized about calling a sports radio show simply for the thrill of saying "Long time listener, first time caller" but I've never had the courage to do it. So I applaud the guts of today's guest author Troy Bryant - "Long time reader, first time blogger." (If you're interested in guest blogging on this site, read this and shoot me an e-mail.)

Troy's looking to wisen up on personal finance & is trying out the online tools at his disposal. Today, his thoughts on two of them...

So this is how my New Year usually begins:

January 1 - Make a resolution to organize my personal finances

Late January - Throw the resolution out the window and go back to tracking expenses through the receipts on the floorboard of my car.

I think this year will be different. I found a couple of new online personal finance sites called Mint and Wesabe. How it works is this-these sites upload your expenses from all of your bank and credit card accounts, categorizes them, and then shows all that money you've blown in graphs and charts. (There's also a goals or tips feature on these sites-to help you change your evil spending ways.)

Here's my experience so far...

Mint - I tried this one first, but didn't make it past the homepage. Once I logged in for the first time it asked me to add my accounts (bank and credit card), which you do by choosing your bank from their list and entering your username and password as if you were banking online. Unfortunately, they either didn't have my bank listed, or the bank they did have wouldn't load correctly-looking through the "Help" forum on the site I see that it's not uncommon.

Anyway, the gist of Mint is this: it automatically loads and updates your expenses from all your bank and credit card accounts every night. It then puts it into graphs and pie charts to show where your money is going. You can also set budgets for each category (e.g., restaurants) and it will show when you go over budget. It also compares your spending habits to other Mint members. Finally, and maybe most importantly, it'll look at your credit card and bank account interest rates and tell you where to find a better rate.

Wesabe - I had better luck with Wesabe. Although I still couldn't connect to my bank accounts, this time I was able to download a simple spreadsheet from my bank and load it into Wesabe. Once loaded, it categorizes the expenses automatically. It graphs spending (and earnings) by day, week, month, etc. Wesabe is different in that they throw in the social network aspect. You choose goals (such as eat at home more) and you get tips created by fellow Wesabians for that goal.

Oh, and if your expenses are too depressing, there's a button on the site appropriately labeled "I'm freaking out". Click it and a slideshow of cute little kittens pops up! (Ah, I feel much better now...)

My take: All in all, these new online personal finance sites are a work in progress, but on the other hand they are free. The biggest problem is trying to upload accounts to their site. It's cool being able to aggregate all your accounts in one place and the reporting and budgeting tools are worthwhile. Also, since these sites are brand new, users have a big impact on their development-they're open to suggestions for new features.

If you've tried one of these sites let me know how it worked for you. There's also a plethora of similar new sites out there that I haven't tried...Buxfer, Geezeo, BillMonk, and Expensr.