THE web is empowering us in new ways all of the time, and though you should be careful who you give your information to online, there are some great tools available which can be financially empowering.
Whether you’re looking to plan a budget, manage your debts or crowd-source some answers to the financial questions puzzling you – there’s likely to be a tool, website or web platform that can do the job for you.
So, in an age where we have easy-access to infinite information, perhaps the web should be your first port-of-call when organizing your finances.
ReadyForZero is free-to-use and promises to be a “gimmick-free” source of advice and guidance based on the information you submit, such as the amount you owe, how many credit cards you have and their respective rates. The tool has already earned a lot of praise from sites like lifehacker.com and techcrunch.com
An optional feature also allows users to anonymously and securely share a snapshot of their credit card debt information with potential lenders.
Over in the UK, Moneysupermarket.com has a tool which allows visitors to see which credit cards they would be likely to be accepted for without having to make a bona fide application, which could potentially damage their credit ratings if they were to be rejected.
In exchange for some personal information and an email address, the user is sent a table of the current cards on the market with a 1 to 10 score of how likely they would be to be accepted for, let’s say, a 0 per cent balance transfer credit card – which they could then use to consolidate the debt on several cards.
Other new-comers to the web-based personal finance tools forum include MyJibe.com which hopes to take on Mint for the top-spot.
MyJibe differentiates itself from the hugely-successful Mint by offering a platform that not only tracks budgets and spending, but also provides for planning for future saving and spending. The service is not free though, and users pay a monthly subscription fee.
Addressing the security issue or sharing your sensitive financial information online is relative new-comer DoughHound.com. The site offers similar features for tracking spending and saving as many other similar sites, but doesn’t ask you to submit any personal or sensitive information. The site is also free to use.
These are just some of the new web apps which are designed to help you manage your finances online. There will no doubt be many more to come with the proliferation of smartphone apps, and with the implementation of HTML5 and CSS3, their layouts are bound to get a lot more interesting.
