Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Why I Don’t Use an Online Financial Tool

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I don’t use any online financial tools.  And it’s not for the reason you’re probably thinking of.  It isn’t because I’m afraid that my information is going to get stolen and some hacker is going to run off and steal all my money to buy the country of Dubai.  It’s not that I don’t find them to be useful.  In fact, I find them to be quite useful.  For most people who aren’t me.

Actually, the reason that I don’t use any online financial tools is that very few (read: none) of them seem to connect to all of my accounts.  I’m not a person who likes having only half the picture.  I like to see everything all at once.  Not half here, and half there, or one account here, and the rest over there.  Everything.  Part of this is my fault.  I use all kinds of accounts.  Most of them are online accounts and usually show up in any of the tools that I try and connect them to.  But, I also use some local accounts.  Those local accounts are usually the problem.

Ready For Zero

I tried using this not that long ago.  They’re a sponsor of the Debt Movement, and have glowing reviews around the web for their tool.  And, from what I’ve seen of the Ready for Zero tool, it does look like a pretty cool tool.  It allows you to set up your accounts, get them set up into a payment plan similar to a debt snowball and then helps you optimize that plan for the best bang for your buck.  Only one problem.  My local Credit Union accounts aren’t linkable.  If I can’t include a good portion of my debt accounts in the plan, it throws off the entire plan.  How can I expect the tool to give me accurate information if it doesn’t have accurate account information to go off of?

Adaptu

Adaptu is a little bit like Mint.  They both allow for linking all of your accounts (deposit and loan) and then their tool gives you a full overview of your finances.  There’s more to both, of course, but I stopped investigating when I couldn’t link up all of my accounts.  The culprit in both cases was, again, my local Credit Union account.

There are other tools, but every one of them I’ve tried has had a similar problem.  In most cases, it’s the local CU that is causing the hiccup.  Is that fair to the tools?  Probably not.  Really, it’s more of a poor reflection on the local institution than it is on the tools.

Yes, I could move my finances to another institution and probably start using some of these tools.  But, I’m lazy.  For a long time, I was forced to have an account there, so it made sense to just use it for all of my banking.  Now that I’m not required, I find that I just don’t want to tackle having everything changed to a new institution.  What a hassle to change automatic transactions, re-enter all my bill pay stuff, and then link a new account to the myriad of other places that I have accounts.  It’s just easier to not do it.

Except when I want to use an online tool.

Do you use any online tools?  Have you ever had problems with getting your accounts linked up in them?  What did you do about it?

The Debt Movement

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I often get asked why I started this site.  And my response is always that it was a great way for me to share some of the things that I was learning as my wife and I struggled with our debt.  All of the things that we were learning through books, trial-and-error, and online that helped us, I tried to fold into some post here.  My goal in sharing these things has always been two-fold.  The first part is that I wanted someplace to record what I was learning.  The second part, and the part that keeps me writing here, is that I wanted that information to help someone else.  The more places it can be found online, the better.  I’ve always felt that it has a bit more weight when it’s coming from someone who’s lived (lives) it.  Nearly 5 years into the life of this site, we still struggle with debt sometimes.  We still have lots to learn.  Today, I’m going to share something that I think has the potential to change a lot of peoples lives.  It’s called the Debt Movement.

The Debt Movement is the brain child of Jeff Rose. Last year, he brought us the Roth IRA Movement, and the Life Insurance Movement.  Both of those were meant to bring the entire personal finance blog community together to talk about one subject on one day.  I think both went very well.  Jeff has raised the bar a bit this time around.  The Debt Movement isn’t just about educating readers on a subject.

What is the Debt Movement?

It’s a 90 day challenge.  Officially, it starts on February 1st, 2013 and will run for 90 days.  Participants, like you and me, are challenged to aggressively reduce our debt over that 90 days.  The goal is to help people payoff Ten Million dollars worth of debt in those 90 days.  It’s a lofty goal, but I think it can be done!

In addition to the challenge, Jeff has rounded up a group of sponsors who are sponsoring a Debt Movement Scholarship.  As of right now, the total is around $10,000 and is likely to grow as the movement gains speed and gathers new sponsors.  There’s an application process, as well as a few rules, but certainly something to look into.

Jeff has also partnered up with Ready For Zero.  Ready for Zero is a company that has created some pretty sweet tools for paying off debt.  Once you’ve signed up, you can enter in all of your information, along with payments, interest rates, and balances, and their software magically (or mathematically, I can never keep them straight) puts together a debt payoff schedule for you.

What do you say?  Will you come along on this journey?  Let’s pay off some debt together!