Quicken & Mint Killer

[MachineGhost]

Run, don't walk, to http://www.personalcapital.com/ right away!!!  Just ignore the advisory junx.

Their online account support is impressive.  Intuit is so out of touch, I don't know how they're going to be able to stay in business.

Ironically, Intuit was advertising PC within Quicken.  Idiots.

[fi50@fi2023]

I have been using Personal Capital for some time now and I have to say it is very impressive.  I also use Quicken.  Before that I used Microsoft Money.  At some point I will probably stop using Quicken based upon Personal Capital's great service.

Jason

[MachineGhost]

I'm not quite there yet, but its really nice not to have to enter, say, LendingClub transanctions by hand.  I do think PC needs to offer better customization of the portfolio so its more PP friendly.  It's a downer that TreasuryDirect isn't supported.  Stupid government.

[dualstow]

I heard about Personal Capital here and on other sites a long time ago but I've been too lazy to switch. Maybe I'll try it this month.

[Pointedstick]

I like it! Seems snappier and more reliable than Mint, and it's definitely better at figuring out investment stuff. The transaction categorization tools are fairly primitive, though.

[WiseOne]

I gave up on Mint quite a while ago.  It has become totally useless for many reasons - most notably, when you log in it takes forever to update.  You have to log in, leave it until it times out, then log in again an hour or so later.  And let's not even mention the errors in the budget and trend data.

I started using YNAB and really like it.  You can use it as a complement to something like personalcapital or mint, but I found that I don't miss the functionality that much.  It would certainly be nice to have all accounts accessible on one screen for the monthly budgeting and spreadsheet session, but there is something to be said for logging into all your accounts once a month.

And there's also something to be said for not checking your investments too often :-).  Once a month may even be too much!

[PP67]

I looked at PC pretty hard a while back but just couldn't get past giving out my user name and passwords to all my financial accounts...

How did you come to peace with the security exposures?

[WiseOne]

Simple.  Just assume that your social security number and other personal information is already in many sets of nefarious hands.  Which is almost certainly the case.

The answer isn't security, it's monitoring.  That's a big reason for tracking all accounts once a month - and your credit report as well (check out CreditKarma).  If you report fraudulent transactions within that amount of time you should get your money back. 

I've been thinking about going ahead and subscribing to Lifelock.  The free options still leave a few holes.

[dualstow]

I wrangled some previous threads, in case anyone's curious:

alternative to mint? { WiseOne; Oct 2014}
mint unreliability { Pointed Stick; Jan 2015 }
mint { Greg; 2012 } personalcapital not mentioned in this brief thread.
new PPer needs guidance {  Matthew19; June 2015 } if the link doesn't get you to the right page, start at reply#28

[mathjak107]

i do everything right through fidelity full view which uses YODLEE.

[dualstow]

i do everything right through fidelity full view which uses YODLEE.

Interesting. I hear that Yodlee is going to partner w/ Vanguard. I'll edit in a link if I find one in the next few seconds.
No link found, but:
* (hearsay sans link) https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=174708
* a warning from Vanguard which may become obsolete:

A word about aggregation services
You may experience issues using financial aggregation tools, such as Mint.com, CashEdge, or Yodlee, if you sign up to receive security codes. You may not be able to view your accounts through these tools. Also, you may receive a security code when the aggregation tool attempts to log on to your accounts.

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insigh ... ity-122014

Oh well, that's all for now.

[mathjak107]

i have everything i could tied in . it is amazing how it tracks every dollar i spend now because in some shape or form it passes through fidelity or full view .

i used the expense analysis and called up how much we spent in food . it was mind blowing . it recognizes many vendors and categorizes the transaction automatically

[dualstow]

That sounds cool. Unfortunately most of my grocery spending is cash at farmer's markets, thus I have to enter it by hand.

[dualstow]

I keep losing this thread because it's in Permanent Porfolio and not Other Discussions.

Anyway, there's an interesting article about Yodlee in the WSJ from August:

But when bank customers use those tools, Yodlee has another way of making money: The company sells some of the data it gathers from credit- and debit-card transactions to investors and research firms, which mine the information for clues about trends that can move stock prices.

“Yodlee can tell you down to the day how much the water bill was across 25,000 citizens of San Francisco” or the daily spending at McDonald’s throughout the country, says Peter Hazlehurst, Yodlee’s former chief product officer.

http://on.wsj.com/1NdDRFx

I won't quote the article wholesale here, but the bit called "Identifying Scott" is an eye opener.

[mathjak107]

That sounds cool. Unfortunately most of my grocery spending is cash at farmer's markets, thus I have to enter it by hand.

i use cash just for gas and eating out so i know any atm cash is for that . everything else is credit card , direct payment through fidelity  or check so it is pretty easy to get ideas on what you spend where . 

[MachineGhost]

I looked at PC pretty hard a while back but just couldn't get past giving out my user name and passwords to all my financial accounts...

How did you come to peace with the security exposures?

They use an independent third party vendor such as https://www.fiserv.com/customer-channel ... ation.aspx that takes care of all the access and security stuff so its never at or up to the actual firm.  This is actually much more secure than Quicken which forces all connections to go through their own internal servers and up to their unmotivated lazy bums to fix issues (they punt a lot).

[MachineGhost]

Simple.  Just assume that your social security number and other personal information is already in many sets of nefarious hands.  Which is almost certainly the case.

The answer isn't security, it's monitoring.  That's a big reason for tracking all accounts once a month - and your credit report as well (check out CreditKarma).  If you report fraudulent transactions within that amount of time you should get your money back. 

I've been thinking about going ahead and subscribing to Lifelock.  The free options still leave a few holes.

Just remember monitoring is reactive, not pro-active.  It will only alert you after the fact of any kind of theft, not prevent.  If you want prevention then you need to put on a free fraud alert or pay for a credit freeze on your report.  I have a fraud alert and Citi Double Rewards didn't even blink, so I'm not sure how useful it is with today's automation.  OTOH maybe Fidelity Amex did deny due to the fraud alert; haven't got the rejection letter in yet to know.

[MachineGhost]

i do everything right through fidelity full view which uses YODLEE.

Tell us more about this.  How does it compare to Quicken and PC?

[MachineGhost]

A word about aggregation services
You may experience issues using financial aggregation tools, such as Mint.com, CashEdge, or Yodlee, if you sign up to receive security codes. You may not be able to view your accounts through these tools. Also, you may receive a security code when the aggregation tool attempts to log on to your accounts.

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insigh ... ity-122014

Vanguard is so behind on technological innovation, I wouldn't my breath.  Whatever data aggregator PC is using supports security codes and questions.  I'm only having a problem with Coinbase as to authorize a device you need to be in the same IP range as the requesting IP.  Not sure who's at fault, Coinbase or the data aggregator.

[dualstow]

That sounds cool. Unfortunately most of my grocery spending is cash at farmer's markets, thus I have to enter it by hand.

i use cash just for gas and eating out so i know any atm cash is for that . everything else is credit card , direct payment through fidelity  or check so it is pretty easy to get ideas on what you spend where .

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't you use a card for dining out since you can get the cash back and most restaurants take cards? The only reason I use cash for groceries is because using a card is either impossible or frowned upon at the outdoor markets.

[WiseOne]

I'm seeing more and more merchants at farmer's markets accepting cards.  You might want to ask at the place where you shop.

I got away from using cash to buy groceries when I was living in West Philadelphia, and going to the grocery was a great way to get mugged.  The criminals knew that you had cash when you're headed to the market, and groceries when you're headed back home.  I found another place to shop but also switched permanently to using plastic.

[dualstow]

I'm seeing more and more merchants at farmer's markets accepting cards.  You might want to ask at the place where you shop.

There are some, but people who use a card at those tables get dirty looks from other customers, including me. 

[mathjak107]

That sounds cool. Unfortunately most of my grocery spending is cash at farmer's markets, thus I have to enter it by hand.

i use cash just for gas and eating out so i know any atm cash is for that . everything else is credit card , direct payment through fidelity  or check so it is pretty easy to get ideas on what you spend where .

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't you use a card for dining out since you can get the cash back and most restaurants take cards? The only reason I use cash for groceries is because using a card is either impossible or frowned upon at the outdoor markets.

the answer is tradition .

because it goes back to the original structure my wife and i first had when we got married  .  being 2nd marriages we each had our own accounts  and our own set of bills we came with .

eventually all the credit cards we kept were linked to her account  since she did almost all the shopping for the two of us  .  one of my things i paid for was eating out and gas for my car  which i always used cash for .

it kind of just became our structure  forever and 15 years later i still pay cash for the things i always did since none of our cards are linked to any of my accounts .

we are both joint owners on all the accounts but the bill paying structure kind of stuck although it makes no logical sense at all ..

[dualstow]

we are both joint owners on all the accounts but the bill paying structure kind of stuck although it makes no logical sense at all ..

Tradition has its own logic. I'm just a bit surprised that you wouldn't apply for a card in your name and reap the benefits.
At the same time, it can be liberating to use cash sometimes, for several reasons. I can think of 3 off the top of my head, but there are more.

[mathjak107]

i do have cards in my name but we made my wifes account the original  core account we would pay bills centrally from and i would just shuttle cash in for them . so i never had any cards linked to any other account since we use one fidelity cma account as core . all bills are paid from this one account . the only exceptions were gas and eating out  . so it would involve shuttling more cash around to the other account  when it came time to pay them .

at this point it is silly to change things so for the  once a week or so we go out cash is fine .  i am not thrilled with using cards in restaurants anyway . i do not like someone walking away with the card  out of sight . i have enough fraud issues from time time without introducing a credit card i can't watch being processed .