A quick little finiancial checklist to start you off right. This was first shared by Scott Adams and I though I should add it here. This is from Scott Adam’s book “Dilbert and the Way of the Weasels.” He goes on to state that annuities are a bad idea. Whole life insurance is also a bad idea. Investing in individual stocks is a bad idea. Investing in managed mutual funds instead of an index fund is bad. The list goes on but that is the idea. Tell me what you think.

1. Make a will if you haven’t already done so.
2. Cut up those credit cards as they are the things of evil.
3. Seek and get Term Life Insurance if you haven’t already done so.
4. Fund your 401K to the maximum amount.
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum amount.
6. Buy a house if you wish to own one and only if you can afford it.
7. Always stash away at least six months worth of expenses expenses in a money-market account.
8. Take all other money and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund and do not touch until ready to retire. I like to use Sharebuilder to do this.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Who doesn’t love the web? The web now grants us specials on savings accounts as well. All major banks have special interest rates on account that are web based. Key factors that should be looked at for Online Savings Accounts are Website reliability/security and customer support. Listed below are rates as of December 18, 2008.

• FNBO Direct. No fees, no minimum balance. 3.25% APY.
• E*TRADE Bank. No fees, no minimum balance. 3.01% APY.
• ING Direct. No fees, no minimum balance. Orange Savings Account 2.75% APY. Electric Orange 3.05% APY. Orange CDs – 12-month CDs 3.50% APY.
  Note: ING Direct offers a $25 bonus to new customers who deposit $250 or more. Once you have an account you can earn $500 by referring other customers.
• HSBC Direct. No fees, no minimum balance. 3.00% APY.
• CitiBank Ultimate Savings. No fees, no minimum balance. 2.75% APY.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The buzz is that there is a contender to Quicken and it is web based and free. You can check your finances anywhere and at anytime you wish. It has a nice look and feel with speed from the Ajax backend that it was built on. I am no super finance guru but I will give the review that I feel best with for average to intermediate users.

Advantages

• Fast.
• Free.
• A rival to Quicken even in its beta stage.
• Easy setup.
• Accessible anywhere.
• Beautiful Ajax design.
• Tons of graphs and charts.
• Easy way to see trends.
• Nice feature named “Ways to Save.”

Truly one of the best rivals to Quicken and it is free to use with no installs to worry about. It is built on a web technology that allows it to load various parts of the web page in an auto update way. I just added my user name and password for my various accounts and waited a short minute or less for account history to be updated; then I was ready to rock. They added a plethora of charts and graphs to show spending habits in a glance. You can even check spending habits as easy as just viewing your personalized trend reports page. Mint.com truly tries to make personal finance as easy as checking your email. A good feature that I really like is the “Ways to Save” money section. I love it because what it proposes to do is automatically check different banks and get you the best rates that it can find all automatically. I feature still has some bugs but it shows a lot of promise.

Disadvantages

• Didn’t know my credit card info like interest rate and total rewards.
• Misclassified a Countrywide Mortgage Payment as an Electronic Boutique Purchase.
• Still in Beta.
• Suggestions to save money section named “Ways to Save” needs work.

With all good things there are the disadvantages or the minor short comings. I plugged in my information for one of my credit cards and up to now it doesn’t know the exact interest rate or APR. Mint.com also tries to categorize all info automatically but still false short in this aspect as well. One of my mortgage payments was classified as a Electronic Boutique purchase but was then replaced by transfer. The suggestions to save money is still a major point but however still needs some work as well. I don’t want to be too mean because the web application is still in beta.

Conclusions

All I can say is try it out and see what you can get from it. It’s free and over round pretty good. Just remember that it is in beta still so don’t go by everything that it has to say without first thinking it thoroughly through. That goes especially for the ways to save money section.

Popularity: 76% [?]