Tools - Manage Money Wisely - Wesabe!

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]

Editor's Note: This post was published at the Carnival of Investing #55.

There are millions of websites enticing us in various ways to spend our moolah! In comparison, the number of websites showing us ways to save money is not so significant. Most of them offer generic advice. Hence they are barely applicable to daily events of common persons like Joe and Jane.

It is truly a rare moment when we come across a service that delivers customized advice. Being very specific to an individual's circumstance the advice tends to be more practical and useful.

Dear friends let us introduce Wesabe. It has launched a novel approach to provide better value for our money. Let us try to answer the following:

• Diligently balancing our checkbooks - anyone?
  
• How much have we spent in dining out past 2 years?
• How much did we spend at a particular restaurant, for example Olive Garden, over last 3 years (no matter which credit, debit card or check we used)?
  
• Are we spending more than what other people spend in clothings on an average? Any specific ways to spend less on clothings?
  
• We buy a lot of music CDs. Any specific deal for music CDs without having to surf all over the web or getting spammed with emails?
• Usual expense tracking and account monitoring - banks, credit cards - you name it.
• We would like to connect with folks who have faced or are facing very similar situations like us. Say we are about to purchase a vacation package to Hawaii. How did they plan, what did it cost, who are the better agents, any promotions or deals going on, actual hotel/resort experiences?
  
• All of the above without ever giving our bank account details and passwords! Now we are hooked!
  

We are not aware of any single tool or service that caters to all of the above needs. Here is a list of the salient features of Wesabe.

• It provides all the necessary tools for budgeting, tracking all expenses, monitoring bank accounts, credit card accounts, etc along with the usual bells and whistles.
  
• Customized tips for an individual's specific situation or needs.
• Ability to add tags/comments to any transaction. This enriches the service, makes it more useful and knowledgeable. It helps other users.
  
• Transactions are retrievable by tags!
• Finally the most important of all. Our bank account details, passwords, credit card information, even our names and addresses - all stay where they should be - at our desktop computer in an encrypted file. This information never gets uploaded to Wesabe servers. Now that is real peace of mind!
• A limited version of this service is free. For full service we need to shell out a flat fee of $4.99 per month.

Hard to believe? Well watch this informative video and see for yourself.

We encourage our readers to try out this newbie and share their experiences through their comments for the benefit of all. Hope that Wesabe will help all of us become smart investors by saving our hard earned dollars.

References: Life Hacker, Wesabe

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