Mint is it refreshing?

Ok let's face the fact I need a software like Mint.com! We need to get our financial and family life's back together. Is it cool and refreshing like a mint always is?

I've been trying to get a hold of the early beta realease from Mint.com for awhile now with no success then I notice SavingExplained is running a contest to win one of 5 invites into the refreshing world that is Mint.com.

Now my post isn't unique or filled with images or creative images and video's to get one attention. It's strickly a post of need. Reading the information from the Mint.com page I believe this would be nothing but a handy tool in our adventure to reduce debt and improve our finances.

NCN Network

Pre-Warning as I am starting my new job and I have quite a bit to learn my postings might be a little irregular over the next month. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up while I continue to search for help on the debt-o-meter which I hope to feature on this blog. I have joined the NCNnetwork.com one of the grandfather and premier debt blog movement sites, as you'll be able to track my progess there as well as NetworthIQ.com and Wesabe.com

NetWorthIQ.com Full Review

As many of you are already aware of from past postings I’m a huge fan of NetworthIQ and several people have asked me to post a full review on the site. So I feel obliged to honor the request of my readers. First thing first I found out about the site due to the badge on A Canadian and Her Money you’ll see the same badge on the right hand side of my blog. I decided to click on it to find out what it’s all about which of course took me to her personal financial page which she decided to share and at that point knowing how I wanted to keep everything visible and accountable on my blog I decided to follow in the_money_diva footsteps.

NetworthIQ gives you several options, which will go over each one in short detail:

Explore- Allows you to do just that you can view the newest users or the most active and the high and low gainers for the month. You can also look through categories listing which is the option I like the best, where you can break down the community by age, income and occupation these are just some of the options.

For example what I personally look at when I’m on the site is I’ll look at people who work in retail then I’ll find ones that are in the same income bracket as myself and see where their net worth is to gauge myself if I’m on the right track or not, you can also email the user to ask questions or comment on their progress under each monthly statement.

Questions & Tips - This is where the benefit of the community comes into play, you can ask any financial question and rarely have I seen a question go unanswered as the community is very active in helping each other out. The other section listed as Tips is just that, users can post various financial tips that they have decided to share with the community and once again you can comment based upon these tips.

Journals- If you decide to you can keep a journal of events really no different than using a blog for those of you who decide not to blog or even if you do blog. I personally don’t use the feature as each user profile has a link to their website or blog, if I come across a user that I’m more interested in finding out more about and they have a link to their site I always make sure to take a jump over to their site.

My Portfolio- Here’s where you come in to play, where you can post all your financial information and it should be noted that you do have the choice of either keeping it public or private. No one is required to share their information if they choose not too. You have access to your questions and tips, journal entries, your mailbox and account settings from here as well as your account profile if you wish to include one. You can get your badge from here as well.

As well as another great feature which I love the comparison report which will pop up a nice graph showing your net worth vs. the average net worth of everyone on NetworthIQ, your age range, your income range, occupation, education and finally if your in the U.S. your state. In my case I run about even in terms of my net worth with others in my income bracket but I’m actually quite far behind in all other categories so I have some work to do.

As far as the Pro’s and Con’s of the site goes:

The Pro’s are:
1) An active community that is willing to help out.
2) Excellent way of keeping track and comparing your net worth.
3) Requires only a few minutes per month to fill out your information and stay active.
4) User friendly and easy navigation.
5) You can and should use a nickname and no other personal information is reveled including your email address, as the site uses their own mailbox.

The Con’s are:
1) User profiles sometime become inactive for extended periods of time anything over a year old I believe should be cleared.
2) I wish more users would post a profile to go along with their financial information as it just gives you better insight as to what’s going on in their world as well as their goals.
3) Of course user’s can lie and post a much higher net worth, which just doesn’t benefit anyone.

So that’s what NetworthIQ is all about it’s a great community and hopefully after reading this you’ll decide to go and take a look for yourself and decide to join the community.

Wesabe It Is!

As I spoke about before I planned on joining a social money network budgeting site by either Wesabe.com or Geezeo.com to compliment my NetworthIQ.com account. Now I should note at this time I do not currently pay 2 post if your not familiar with it, it basically means I'll write post to endorse a certain company for X amount of dollars. You can check my bank account if you wish I'm broke :)! After posting today's earlier post How Were Going To Achieve Our Goals post I received a comment from the Jason Knight CEO of Wesabe.com of the following:

Knight said...
Hi, I'm Jason Knight CEO of Wesabe. First, congratulations on deciding to get control over your money.

I had a quick look at your goals and interestingly they map pretty closely to the most popular goals on our site. Paying off debt and saving an emergency fund are our members top priority.

I hope you will try out our service and connect with the thousands of people who share your goals and are actively working on achieving them.

If you have any questions about Wesabe please don't hesitate to contact me between 12-4pm PST 800.511.8544

Due to this I feel no other reason not to join Wesabe.com as I believe it shows how much he stands behind his site and the customer service that comes with it. In this day and age of the internet I think we've lost this personal touch so when someone comes out like Jason Knight has it only makes me sure that I've made the right choice and can only support his site that much more. Tomorrow after work I will finish setting up my account and you'll be able to find me under workingcanuck on Wesabe.com and thank you Jason for helping me make up my mind.

Talking Money over the Net

What are you thoughts on releasing financial information over the Internet? When I first started this blog I have to admit I didn’t read blogs prior to it, so I thought I was writing something new, to my surprise there’s quite a few blogs out there that talk about families in debt. And now I have to admit I’m a blog addict, it’s like reality TV but online. Some of my favorite blogs are listed below on the left hand side under links. Not to mention several financial social network sites are available my personal favorite Networthiq.com which I use and so far loving the community and already making friends on.

I’ve heard people comment on how can people share this information online why would you want so many people to know your financial situation. Others have commented that this is the younger generation that exposes everything online. Here’s my own personal thoughts why not learn from people in similar situations as a community to help build yourself up, not one person knows everything.

The average North American household is deeper in debt than ever before why it’s easily accessible and most average households and low-income household don’t have access to a financial planner to advise them against it. With the access to the Internet you can seek out people that are in the same situation, worse or even better and hopefully gain knowledge from them. Sure there are magazines, books and videos out there but what’s better than talking with your peers and helping each other through it, it’s like comparing regular TV to HDTV it’s that much clearer knowing that others are out there like you trying to move ahead in life.

And the other nice thing about the net is the animosity of it you don’t have to provide your real name not even actual figures. I could lie and say that I’m worth a million dollars if I wanted to but what would I actually learn from it, nothing. I would love to know your thoughts on publishing your own financial information via the Internet whether good or bad. On that note I’ll leave you with a couple other financial social networks that I would suggest you check out.

1) NetworthIQ.com great site for determining your net worth.
2) Wesabe.com financially software but shared with a community.
3) Geezeo.com financially software but shared with a community.
4) Buxfer.com great for roommates or college students that share expenses
5) BillMonk.com great for roommates or college students that share expenses
6) Zecco.com share information with investors and trade online

Social Lending in Canada

There’s something new on the financial horizons for Canadians you’ve might have already heard, it goes under several different names Peer 2 Peer Lending, Micro Lending and Social Lending. In the U.K. they have Zopa the U.S. has Prosper and in Canada will have Community Lend by the fall of 07. Brought to you by Michael Garrity, a former vice-president of marketing at Canada Post's online bill-payment division who co-founded CommunityLend with Colin Henderson, former head of online banking at Bank of Montreal.

Basically how it works is that an individual will place a online request for X amount of dollars for whatever reason at that point if your inclined to you can either foot the entire loan or a portion of it. The lender or lender’s get to set the interest rate based upon the person past credit and the site of course takes a fee for basically operating as a broker. There are security measures put into place so that your not blindly lending money to a stranger although I won’t get into the security measures. Prosper claims that fewer than 2 per cent of its borrowers have defaulted, while close to 3.5 per cent are at least three months late on payments, according to the company.

Even the social networking site Facebook has people available to lend money to other, most people that do request the loans are higher risk but granted higher returns due to the interest that can be charged to them due to that reason. I believe this will be a welcome change in Canada for not only borrowers but for private investors who’s looking for another avenue without going into private mortgages. If you would like to read more about this the first site I learned about this was from microlending.ca there’s also lazymanandmoney.com who blogs about his Prosper experience or just bring up Community Lend and there's several different articles right on their front page.