How do you manage your money? Not simply going to the bank and depositing your checks, but actually managing your money? How do you keep track of how much you’re paying for essentials and utilities, and measure if that’s too much? How do you keep track of who owes you money, and who you owe money to? How do you figure out how to maximize the money you’ve got, whether by getting a better return on it, or simply putting it to work somewhere where you know it will do some good (for you, for your friends & family, or for the world in general. How do you decide how to invest your money? Do you rely on professional advisers or do you go it alone? If you don’t have answers to any of these, or if you are looking for a way to better handle your money, you might want to consider these startups:
Mint – A financial management company and toolset that provides a simple and automated way to track spending, as well as find both lower prices on monthly services (such as gas, food, and utilities), and higher rates of interest on savings accounts and other monetary set-asides. Winner of the TechCruch40 conference in 2007.
Economic Security Plannner – A tool to help you plan for both the most likely and worst-cases in your financial future, enabling you to construct a retirement plan that makes sense, based on the uncertainties that may exist in the future.
REX agreement – A unique financial arrangement that allows seniors to cash in on their home’s equity without a loan, by turning over a percentage of their future equity changes to the lending company. The site has calculators and detailed explanations of how the process works.
Tripit – A travel/points organization designed to build itineraries more easily. Email the plans you wish to make to Tripit, and they will build you a master itinerary with all travel and booking plans included, which you can then look over and approve/use.
Equity Key – Another debt-free means of generating money from the equity in your property, tailored specifically for seniors. Like REX, Equity Key offers a lump sum of money in exchange for a percentage of your home’s future appreciation, thus leaving you with no debt and no drain on your present equity.
Prosper – A community lending and borrowing system set up to allow peer-to-peer lending between individual consumers. Users post either the sort of loan they are looking for, or the sort they can afford to offer, and the company mixes the available loans together into a single master-loan for the borrower.
Billmonk – A free site aimed at helping you easily track what is owed, not necessarily money, with roommates, friends, landlords, and family. The site enables you to remember (for example) who owes who lunch, who borrowed that book you’ve misplaced, and how much you owe your relatives for various purposes.
Dimewise – A cheap, web-based Financial Management option, simplifying the information you will receive, and enabling you to more easily keep track of your finances.
Foonance – An expense-tracking website that helps you make a virtual bank, and set limits on spending. Create what’s called a “Money Store”, a virtual repository of money, and then log transactions in and out of it, to easily track in and outflow.
Fundable – A website that assists you in generating online funding for any project through a collections campaign, or conversely, to donate money towards what you see as worthy causes. Used for everything from student films to recovering from a personal disaster.
Pledgebank – A pledging system that permits the internet to assist people who wish to pledge to improve their lives or those of others. Make a pledge with the condition that you will do it, only if a certain number of other people pledge to help in some way (not necessarily with money), or browse existing pledges and assist as requested in making it happen.
Kiva – “Loans that change lives”, a program by which people can loan money to entrepreneurs around the world using micro-loans through local credit or banking institutions. Relatively small amounts of money can make possible drastic improvements in the lives of would-be entrepreneurs in third world countries.
Virgin Money – A lending service associated with Richard Branson that compiles various non-traditional sources of lending, primarily a form called “Circle Lending”, meaning notarized, legally-binding loans between friends and family, a method which often means far more manageable rates than otherwise would be possible.
Lending Club – An online lending community and lending match software suite with which people can borrow and lend money directly to one another within the network, garnering better rates and bypassing traditional banking fees.
Zopa – A UK-based “Social Financing” site, pairing lenders with borrowers from within the community and offering guarantees to ensure lenders retain their investment. Worth a look.
Risk Metrics – Experts of financial risk management for both Wall Street and consumer-level investment, who can help potential investors better understand and manage the risk that is entailed in their investment strategies and portfolios.
Billeo – Password, shopping, and billpay assistance programs that permit people to handle more of their financial errands online. Affiliated with Wells Fargo Bank.
Wesabe – A network site for people who want to share experiences and recommendations about personal financial decisions. Essentially an account and money management site paired with an online financial community of other consumers, who assist one another in finding deals and avoiding pitfalls.
Cake Financial – A place where you can track your performance in the stock market or with your investments and follow the actual portfolios and trades of both various “top-performing investors” and your network of selected friends or trusted investors.
Zecco – A free trading community and web brokerage firm, promoting specifically their $0 trades for all users above a certain minimum balance (and for the first ten trades per month). Also offers market data tools, opinions and insight.
Covestor – A real-trade sharing service for proven self-investors, all of whom undergo a screening process before they are allowed to participate in the community, thus offering a source of high-quality analysis by other people who manage their own money. If you meet the criteria, it’s worth a consideration.
ProQuo – A personal information protection company, helping to put consumers in control of their own personal information, allowing them to receive the offers they want from various marketing sources and (more importantly) eliminate the ones they don’t.
1-800-pharmacy – A unique mail-order pharmacy that offers customers easy access both through a toll-free number and website, and gives customers rebates on their pharmaceutical and health & beauty purchases, as well as credit for referring others.
Smart Hippo – A new company that develops innovative applications for connecting consumers with financial service providers. They claim to be the first ever website that allows individuals to use the power of a community (and bulk buying) to save money when shopping for rates on financial products and services.
