Personal financial services are designed to help you get a handle on your money. You can use them to get a handle on how much you have, how much you owe, how you spend what you have, how much you save, and how to spend your money differently in the future. The best track your expenses and account balances for you, allowing you to focus on the much tougher stuff, like figuring out a budget or planning a strategy to get out of debt.
The most popular of these services work on the premise that better money management comes through centralization and visibility. If you can easily see all your accounts and spending habits in one place, you'll be better equipped to make good decisions and stay within your budget.
Intuit's Mint.com is a prime example. It's one of my personal favorites and a PCMag Editors' Choice for personal finance. Mint shows you the big picture, such as your net worth, as well as the minute details of every transaction that hits your credit and debit cards. It even connects to PayPal. It also lets you pull back to see the bigger picture, categorizing all your spending in pie charts and bar graphs so you can see whether you spend too much on, say, entertainment, dining out, groceries, or other flexible expenses. If you decide Mint is the service for you, you might also want to read my piece on How to Track Cash With Mint.com.
All the services mentioned here run on the desktop or in a Web browser. Many of them have companion mobile apps, but they are not exclusively mobile, as, say, Qapital or Checkbook are.
Mobile personal finance apps can be an important component, however, because they give you access to your financial situation when you're out in the world and perhaps spending money. That's just the time when you want to be able to see the balances of your bank accounts and credit cards, check where your budget stands, and so forth.
Although some might assume personal financial software is all about budgeting, that's not necessarily true. One of the apps that made this list, for example, is called OfficeTime, and it's designed to help small businesses with a very particular kind of financial matter. OfficeTime is time-tracking software that records how much time you spend in different programs. When you start a timer, you can set it to measure your time spent and multiply it by a price. It's great for professionals who charges by the hour. OfficeTime can port the minutes and hours it measures into invoices, too.
Another more unusual personal finance tool, called Doxo, is a digital filing cabinet as well as a bill payment hub. Doxo automatically collects electronic statements from all kinds of providers, from utility companies to banks, and other businesses. It saves them in one central account. Doxo also has a bill payment feature that lets you schedule bill payment to various providers, again, all from one place. You can also upload to your digital filing cabinet other kinds of family and household documents, such as medical bills. It certainly is an invaluable tool the next time you have to dig up months' worth of statements for a loan or a legal matter.
One very important concern many people have about dealing with their finances online is security. Typically, personal finance websites and programs use 128-bit bank level, or 256-bit military-level encryption, and are verified by TRUSTe, VeriSign, and MacAfee. And apps that pull detailed information from your accounts have read-only access, meaning they can see the information, but they can't change the information. It's impossible, for example, to move money around using Mint.com.
Is there a risk to using an online personal financial service? Sure. Should it prevent you from actually using these apps? No. Is it possible that the payoff of getting your head around your debt, spending habits, and net worth is greater than the risk of fraud? Absolutely. Set a strong and unique password, and put your fears aside. If you're really paranoid, however, there are some financial apps that are offline, or at least have the option to be, such as YNAB (which stands for You Need a Budget).
Here are our favorite programs and Web apps for managing your finances. If you're also trying to organize the finances of a side business, you might also want to check out our feature on The Best Online Accounting Services for Sole Proprietors.