Students Log on to Manage Their Money

By Susan Johnston (past articles)

02/11/2008

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It used to be that you had to go to an ATM or a bank teller to check your account balance. Then came online banking, which made it possible to check your balance or transfer money any time day or night. Now, several independent websites have taken money management a step further, adding features like text messaging, data merging, and social networking. College students across the country are logging onto free money sites like Wesabe.com, Geezeo.com, and Mint.com to monitor their money, swap tips, and more.

Bill Erickson, a junior at Texas A&M University, has used both Mint and Wesabe. He said he liked that Mint automatically downloads information from your bank account, but after clicking around on both sites, he's become partial to Wesabe. "I can't do without it," he said. "[I] like to analyze both income and expenses."

Erickson gives a quick example of how the site has helped track his spending: "Every restaurant or grocery store [expenditure] is tagged ‘food' so I can see exactly how much I spent on food that month. This makes it easy to see the breakdown of my spending for a specific time period. I also like being able to drill down within a tag like ‘food' and see how many times I went to [the grocery store] and how much I spent. I love the averages that are integrated throughout Wesabe."

I decided to log on and try out these three money management sites to see what all the buzz is about.

Wesabe.com has four main areas: accounts, tips, goals, and groups. You can view your spending patterns by category or date, read tips from other users, set up a goal like paying off your credit cards or saving up for a car, and join groups relating to your financial interests (for example, Spending Green or Student Loans).

The Wesabe Uploader allows you to access your bank accounts. Since this is a separate software program, it stores your encrypted passwords on your local drive, rather than online. The downside of this security measure is that your account information doesn't sync up automatically (you have to update using the Uploader).

Once you've added your bank accounts, Wesabe will find other users' tips that relate to your transactions. For instance, a recent payment to Neflix from my checking account triggered tips on Netflix promotions and how to freeze my membership. You can also look at your spending and earning trends over the last month in a bar graph and add categories to group similar transactions together.

Goal setting is another feature in Wesabe. Once you enter your goal, Wesabe will find tips that relate to the tags that you chose. The favorites feature lets you bookmark any tips you find useful. The groups feature is similar in that you can read suggestions from other users and swap tips based on your interests (no, they can't see any of your banking information or balances). Wesabe also recently added mobile capabilities so you can add transactions on the go.

Geezeo.com is the newest of the three sites, and its motto is "educated financial decisions." Like Wesabe, you can use Geezeo to categorize and track your spending, swap tips with other users, and set financial goals. Geezeo's account interface is a bit different, though, and it involves several detailed layers of security to protect your private data.

After you add your bank accounts, Geezeo helps you establish a budget for each of your categories and track your spending patterns. When I used Geezeo, it still had some Internet Explorer bugs, so I wasn't able to try out all of its features. For instance, Geezeo told me I spent $1,500 on housewares (!), but I couldn't figure out how to break down this number because the budget page wouldn't display correctly. They do have a live chat feature for questions.

Geezeo's goal section is a bit more developed so that if you enter a specific dollar amount, it will track the percentage of your progress. You can even contribute towards your friends' goals. Another way to connect with users is through groups. Geezeo's groups include Shopaholics, Boston on a Budget, and Starving Musicians, offering another way to share tips (again, no one can see your bank information). Two additional features include confessions (share your money mistakes anonymously or by name through Twitter) and Geezeo mobile.

Mint.com bills itself as "refreshing money management." Its account uploading process is quick and easy, and it's all encrypted so that even Mint's developers can't view your information. Once you add all your bank accounts, Mint shows several other options for saving money through different banks or account types (rather than the user tips shown on Wesabe, this one shows accounts with higher interest rates and other options). It also categorizes your spending automatically and organizes the categories into pie charts for you.

Mint claims it can accurately classify transactions 95% of the time, but several of my transactions were mislabeled (a doctor copay isn't entertainment in my book-sorry!) and needed to be reclassified manually. The site also shows detailed information on month to month trends (for instance, I spent the most on groceries in October) and highlights the merchants you frequent the most for each category.

Other features on Mint include comparisons to national averages and email or mobile notifications when your credit card bill is due, when your balance drops below a certain level, and several other scenarios. While Mint offers several of the same features as Wesabe and Geezeo, it does not give you the option to interact with other users.

To Sum Up: All three sites pride themselves on their commitment to security, and all have strong security measures in place. However, many banks are creating more sophisticated websites that include some of the same features (for instance, Bank of America's My Portfolio categorizes your expenses so you can see where you're spending the most). If you don't want to use an outside website to manage your money, that might be another good option. However, it's unlikely that banks will add social networking capabilities, and that is where many of these sites have the biggest draw on college campuses.