About Me 0116: personal finance money management

Do you find that when you try to use a budgeting system, the more complicated it is, the more overwhelmed you become; and eventually you stop using it? If that’s the case, Sprouty brings a simplified budgeting system that makes it easy to create a monthly budget, and more importantly, stick to it.

Sometimes keeping it simple is a lot more useful and that’s exactly what Sprouty aims to do. Unlike Mint and other popular money management systems, your personal bank account information does not even come into play; making it a secure option that can be used no matter where in the world you live.

id="more-59875">/> After signing up for a free account, Sprouty will prompt you to enter your monthly income, and will attempt to create a budget for you, based on minimum recommended amounts for each budget item.

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Of course, the budget will most probably not reflect your own personal spending habits, and you can modify it to suit your lifestyle.

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You can add additional budget items by clicking on the ‘Create a Budget’ button, determine the amount allocated to that category, and add tags. Using the same method, you can add additional sources of income, which is particularly useful for a family in which there are several breadwinners.

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Existing budget items can also be edited or deleted by clicking on any given item, adding or removing tags of your choice, and adjusting the amount. This will be one of the very first steps you take when using Sprouty, in order to adjust the budget to suit your personal needs.

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Once you have your budget in place, you can begin to add the actual transactions as they occur. New transactions are accompanied by the date, tags or description, and the amount.

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As you add tags, Sprouty will also suggest tags that are commonly used.

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If you add a transaction by mistake, it can easily be edited or deleted by clicking on any part of the transaction’s information.

Sprouty’s best feature is undoubtedly the overview it provides of your spending. Once you have your budget in place and have added your transactions, you can see a monthly overview of your budget, and see exactly where your money is being spent, and what remains.

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This is especially useful because you are able to visualise the areas in which you spend the most, and this could make for an easier way to understand where you need to cutback on your spending.

Sprouty is as no-frills a budget system as they come, but sometimes that is all that you need. It is extremely user-friendly, with barely any learning curve at all.

The website can be accessed from mobile browsers, making it possible to add transactions on the go. That said, it is not optimised for a mobile browser, and that would be one of the first welcome changes to the site. Adding transactions while you’re out and about is an integral part of the success of any budget system, so that payments don’t fall between the cracks. Whether it is a mobile website, adding transactions by email, or any other method, it will definitely improve Sprouty’s user friendly service.

How do you keep track of your spending habits? Let us know in the comments.

Paypal is the top dog when it comes to online payment services. It is generally easy to use and a relatively secure way to send money while buying products & services online (whether eBay or other online merchants), but it does have its downsides. The web is filled with folks who have had their Paypal account frozen with no explanation and it can severely impact a business (or person) if it affects you for a length of time.

Addressing the some of the downsides of Paypal, other businesses have ‘stepped up’ to provide their own payment services. They range from smaller startups to well established players throwing their hat in the online payment arena. Mostly the service that would work best for you depends most upon what you actually use online money transfers for. With Paypal, many people only use a certain aspect of it while never touching others. Let’s go over a few of these online payment services and check out the differences and why you might use one over another.

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1. Venmo

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Venmo is a Philadelphia-based startup in the mobile payment arena. Starting as a cell-phone based payment system, you can also send payment or a bill to a friend whom you have already connected with or to any cell phone, email address or twitter handle.

Much like Paypal, you carry a balance and your payments or charges credit and debit that balance. You add more funds by linking a credit card or bank account and Venmo uses bank-grade security throughout the transaction process.

Venmo started as a “Friend” payment service but you can also sign up as a business as long as you have a cell phone to coordinate payments. For Friend-to-Friend transfers there is no fee. Staff writer Steve is already a great fan of Venmo and I have seen its use expanding to more and more people.

Venmo is still invite-only but they were kind enough to set up a special invite code for MakeUseOf readers. Use ‘makeuseof‘ while signing up to gain access instantly.

2. Amazon WebPay

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Amazon released their payments service back in 2008. Originally meant for merchants, they have also added a “personal” aspect to it named WebPay where you can send or receive money online or via cell phone. The Amazon Payments/Personal website has more details on the requirements for signing up.

3. Google Checkout

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Google Checkout is definitely aimed at merchants more than anyone else. It takes the payment portion out of the transaction so that you simply send a buyer of your products to a checkout page which is powered by Google Checkout. When on that page, a buyer will enter their payment information – and then be sent back to your site with a confirmation of purchase.

4. Skrill / Moneybookers

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Moneybookers is widely known as a replacement to PayPal which is also more international-friendly than some of the other providers. Moneybooks is beginning a transformation to Skrill – a rebranding and refocusing of their payment platforms. Their rates are usually cheaper than PayPal, but then again less people use it so that is the tradeoff you have. I’ve heard of a lot of folks turning to Moneybookers when PayPal has crossed them and they are mostly happy with their move.

5. 2Checkout

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2Checkout is a payment processor which acts as a “middleman” between you (as a seller of items or services) and the payer. 2Checkout can accept credit cards, checks, and even PayPal itself as a form of payment but ads a management layer as well handling the whole checkout process. I’ve seen many merchants using 2Checkout as a payment provider on eBay stores as an alternative to PayPal. There is a $49 signup fee; so this is mainly meant for those with some higher volume sales and not casual transactions.

6. Traditional Merchant Accounts

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Finally on the ‘merchant’ end again, you can do what other businesses have been doing for decades and apply for a real merchant account. Having a merchant account gives you, with the use of a payment processor such as Authorize.Net, the ability to accept credit cards directly. There are some downsides to this. There is often a monthly fee that the other providers above to not charge, and you must be PCI compliant which is a whole other issue. However if you perform a lot of transactions and need to integrate a payment solution into your own shopping cart or system, then this is the only way to go.

Ask your local bank about merchant accounts, alternatively there are a ton of options available online (check Google) but frankly there are so many options it is hard to tell from the web which will work for you. Ask your friends for recommendations and do your homework to make sure you are going with a reputably provider (I’ve used BluePay, and they have been good but fee-expensive).

Which One Is For Me?

The answer to this question depends a lot on how you use the online payment service. If you simply transfer money between friends – as a sort of IOU – then Venmo would definitely be my recommendation. If you are selling items to ‘strangers’ they might be put-off by Venmo simply because they are not well known, and in this case going with a bigger name such as Google or Amazon may work best. Finally if you are a high volume merchant or just do a lot of business, it would be wise to evaluate the other options to see what works best with you.

Do you have any other recommendations for PayPal alternatives or experiences with the ones above? Let us know in the comments below!

Image credit: Shutterstock

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

personal finance money management

1. Venmo

2. Amazon WebPay

3. Google Checkout

4. Skrill / Moneybookers

5. 2Checkout

6. Traditional Merchant Accounts

Which One Is For Me?

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