Posts Tagged ‘money’
My Year-End Financial To-do List
December 9th, 2009
The month of December--or as I like to call it, the month of "Holy crap where did all my money go this year"--is not only a time of holiday shopping, it's also a time of bank account reckoning. Over at Lifehacker this morning, I ran down my end-of-the-year financial routine for keeping things on track going into the New Year. Here's my list of Essential Year-End Money Moves.
Save Cash with Web-Based Money Managers
August 25th, 2009
My latest story for Macworld tackles one of the more interesting types of new web applications: it's called Save money with Web-based money managers. Online banking is one thing, but third-party financial aggregators like Mint and Wesabe really push the limits of consumers' willingness to take security risks for the conveniences of email notifications and simple budgeting capabilities. My research for this article is what inspired my post about why I stopped being paranoid and started using Mint. The conversation in the comments at Macworld is lively and informative; check it out.
August 7th, 2009, 22 comments
The idea of giving anyone my online banking usernames and passwords sends shivers up my spine. But my finances are more irregular than ever right now, so I've got to keep a close eye on them. For the last seven years, every month I dutifully fired up Microsoft Money (then later, Intuit's Quicken) on my computer to balance my accounts. Now that I'm freelancing, it's either feast or famine in my checking account, and that makes me want to jump off the roof instead of launch Quicken. When several months of personal finance denial went by without doing basic house-cleaning, I bounced a check. It was time to make keeping tabs on my money easier.
Enter Mint.com, a web-based finance aggregator. Given your online banking credentials, Mint logs into your accounts, fetches your transactions and balances for you, and arranges them into a single, well-designed dashboard. Back in October of 2007, Adam gave Mint a rave review on Lifehacker. But in the editors' private chatroom I said I thought it looked great, but that I couldn't bring myself to give it my online banking passwords. Last month, thanks to that bounced check, I finally bit the bullet. I'm glad I did.
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March 23rd, 2009, 6 comments
Stanford graduate Ramit Sethi's personal finance blog, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is one of Lifehacker's most-quoted sources of financial advice, so I was honored when Sethi asked me to contribute a bit to his new book, also entitled I Will Teach You To Be Rich. Sethi's direct, authoritative style (evidenced by the blog and book title) may put you off at first glance. But on closer inspection you'll find he's an approachable, sensible guy, not some jerk trying to sell you a "foolproof" make-a-million-dollars-a-month system.
In fact, the I Will Teach You To Be Rich book, which went on sale today, is an excellent graduation gift for the college students in your life who are venturing out into a horrible economy steeped in student debt. To get a taste of what it's like, download the introduction PDF for free.
When you do get the book, you can find my contribution on page 134, a short piece on how I automate my week-to-week transactions in order to set and track long-term goals. Here's a full reprint.
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Making Taxes Less Taxing
March 4th, 2009
Got to put on my personal finance hat over at Lifehacker this morning in my feature on how to squeeze every last dollar out of your income tax return. Six years of being a freelancer and tax time still stresses me out a little bit, but keeping better records and having a trustworthy accountant helps alot.
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