TooMuchGreen

In todays global financial meltdown we’ve never been as aware of our cashflow, I’m certainly more on the case than I’ve ever been although do suspect moving from a regular job with a regular wage dropping in month in month out to a more *interesting* income stream may have contributed somewhat, in fact yes, most definitely.

Online Banking is the norm these days but if you’re like me you may also keep your own separate tally (I’m the sort of guy who keeps all his ATM slips for weekly input into my own records). There’s a whole shedload of personal finance packages out there with the apparent best ones obviously to pay for if you want to install them onto your computer (“Quicken” for example, admittedly free online but only US based as they request a ZIP code, plus it’s all listed in $) however me being me and this being Too Much Green I do of course have a really nice free alternative from the cloud (where else), this post will not only save you money it will help you to keep track of the cash you already have.

I use an online (cloud) service called ‘Moneytrackin‘ which is clean, simple and intuitive, however it’s other big pull for me is it’s total anonymity (depending on how you configure it). You can set yourself up as Yogi Bear if you wanted with an account named “Yogis Picnic Basket Fund”, it doesn’t matter as you’re only keeping a tally of numbers, it’s simple and effective (to coin a phrase).

You can set up as many accounts as you like in multiple currencies (Boo Boo’s college fund or Ranger Smiths Retirement), you can add tags and categories, view graphs and expenditure forecasts, set up periodic transactions, transfer between accounts and projects, set monthly limits and both export and import data in CSV or XLS format, the service also provides a public API should you wish to link in with third party applications.

I really like it, it’s free, it’s cloud based and there’s an iPhone/iPod Touch app, what more could you want.

It’s just a shame the Picnic Basket Fund isn’t doing as well as it was, ING emailed this morning with their new interest rate – a whopping 1%, jesus, this time last year I was pulling 6.5, mind you that was from an Icelandic institution, what fun I had when that all went tits up.