Three money management tools to look into this 2013

20th December 2014

How do you manage your money? One coin, at a time? It's all right for your grandfather or father to manage money the traditional way. But with so many personal finance/ money management tools available online, you simply have no excuse to still stick to the paper-pencil method. After all, if you are on Facebook and Twitter and reading this story online on Firstpost, we already know you are tech savvy.

Why tools: Today, we have multiple bank accounts, a few loans running, then there are credit cards, debit cards, insurance premiums, mobiles bills, mutual funds, stocks, taxes and expenses, and like to look into. And handling all of them the traditional way is hard. Hence the need for online money management tools.

What's on offer: From a money management point of view, today we need three things: gathering all our financial data in one place; keep track of our overall portfolio in real time; and tools that help us with budgeting and tracking our expenses.

Here are a few online tools which you could use this coming year, to bring some method to your money management madness.

Perfios.com: Is an online money management tool. Once you register with the tool, you get to view all your financial accounts at this site.

Which simply means, no more remembering multiple login IDs and passwords. You can track various financial accounts via this tool, right from balances in your savings accounts, to credit cards.

Even investments like mutual fund shares, insurance policies, loans and FD. You can either upload all the e-statements manually or simply link your various accounts to be auto updated to the tool. You can also use the tool to file your income tax returns online. Moreover, you can use the tool, to run various reports to know your income and expense pattern.

This tool lets you know the amount of capital gains you've made on your investments in equity and mutual funds and also know your total tax liability. The tool allows you to set reminders and alerts for various bill payments and insurance premium reminders and like, so no more late payment fees, thanks to the bill payment reminders. And the best part is that you need not pay a fee to use basic services at Perfios. But you will have to pay for their gold and premium packages.

Moneycontrol.com: If you like to track your investments, that too via live price updates, Moneycontrol's Portfolio Manager tool is for you. You get to see a consolidated view of all your investments, right from stocks, mutual funds, unit-linked insurance plans (ULIPs) and the like. You get to track as well as update your mutual funds systematic investment plans, as well as track dividends on the investment you have made.

Moreover, the tool also helps you know the status of the capital gains you made and your tax status. You can see how your individual stocks and overall portfolio performed against various indices. That's not all. You get to create various watch list for stock, mutual funds, commodity as well as futures watch list. In short, if you are looking for account aggregation, real time view of your investments and financial planning, check this tool as soon as possible. (Disclosure: moneycontrol.com and firspost.com are part of Network18 Media and Investment Ltd.)

Trackeverycoin.com: If you are some one who usually has more month left at the end of your salary, you probably are not sure where your money goes. This means, you need an expense tracker. Trackeverycoin is one such tool which helps you track your daily expenses, income, savings as well as remind you about bills and company reimbursements and the like.

The tools allow you to add/ edit and modify categories of both expense and income, right form regular expenses like fuel, mobile bills and the like, to shared expenses such as your dinner bill with your mate. You also get to use "I owe you" feature, where you can note the amount of funds you owe.

Then there is "You owe me" feature which shows the funds people owe you. The tool generates monthly reports and emails you the same. Simply put, if you are serious about knowing where your money goes this tool is an excellent start. It not only tells you know where and how much you spend, but give an overview of your spending habits. And, as they say, tracking expenses is the first step to getting money matters straight.

So, in 2013, check out these tools for better money management.

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