EconGuru Economics Guide » Economic Web Apps, Finance Web Apps, Business Web Apps

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Personal Finance, Money Management

• Foonance

  http://www.foonance.com/

  Foonance bills itself as a flexible way for individuals, couples and families to manage their personal finances. You can track your net worth over what they call "money stores", import your bank statements, "transfer" amounts between stores, "schedule" transactions and categorize them, and view pending transactions and money store balances.

• NetworthIQ

  http://www.networthiq.com/

  It's a free personal finance manager that allows you to monitor your net worth, debts, assets, etc. You can share your net worth publicly with other members, and view theirs as well.

• iOWEYOU

  http://www.ioweyou.co.uk/

  iOWEYOU is described as an expenses sharing calculator that roommates or friends can used to keep track of who owes what. The service is free for groups of up to five people. While no money changes hands, it might be great for that insane roommate of yours who calculates rent to the fourth decimal, based on an actual square footage ratio of your room compared to the entire place... Uh, you know what I mean.

• Wesabe

  http://www.wesabe.com/

  Wesabe is a web-based personal finance tool where you can manage your finances. They've also added a community component where you can share your experiences with money, your saving tips, and your personal money goals. Wesabe actually interacts with your bank accounts, so it's more than just a tracking tool. There are a few tiers of membership, including "free", as well as a free promo on Pro accounts through 2007. This appears to be amongst the most robust of the "personal finance management" tools being offered online at present, and there are many more features than what's covered here.

• DimeWise

  http://www.dimewise.com/

  DimeWise lets you define multiple accounts (savings, checking) and enter and track your transactions, including future expenses. Each expense can have a category tag as well as a note. Expenses can be exported or imported (OFX format, aka Microsoft Money 2002+, Quicken 2004+), set as recurring (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly), and even plotted as a chart to help you determine where your money is going. They have a 30-day free trial.

Lending, Borrowing

• Prosper

  http://www.prosper.com/

  An online market place for people to people lending and borrowing. Register your account to borrow from other people and set your own interest rate or earn terrific return and support borrowers you can trust.

• Zopa (UK)

  http://www.zopa.com/

  Zopa is a lot like Prosper. It serves as a potential alternative to expensive short-term loan rates, ideal for managing some of your consumer debt. Zopa does differ slightly from Prosper in some regards however. Zopa has nuances in the way loans are qualified and applied. Also note that Zopa is currently an UK-based system, however, they are "coming to the United States".

Stock, Investing, Tracking, Portfolio Management

• BullPoo

  http://www.bullpoo.com/

  The name BullPoo itself is enough to warrant a look at this investment community where you can "share and collaborate on investment information." It has a rich interface, but possibly a bit intimidating, where you can organize your portfolio, store trade history, set an avatar, write or read blogs on whatever stock, make forecasts on a stock to see how you compare to other members, and loads more. For someone with the investment bug that wants to be part of a community, this site could be a positive "timewaster".

• Motley Fool CAPS

  http://caps.fool.com/

  The Motley Fool's CAPS application is similar in nature, if not appearance, to BullPoo. At least from a superficial view. It's not so much about tracking your investments as participating in a community and predicting or viewing predictions of stock outcomes. There's a lot here to be absorbed, but it seems like quite a diversion from regular Motley Fool financial advice in that it seems almost frivolous.

• DigStock

  http://www.digstock.com/

  DigStock is a Digg-like list of stock market + investing articles. Members submit a synopsis of an article from elsewhere (with the URL) and other members vote for the stories they like. Each story, instead of being tagged with a topic category, is tagged with the appropriate stock ticker symbols. The assumption is that because the article ranking is community-based, active members will help define what type of stories are desirable. And of course, there's the obligatory stock charts.

• FeelingBullish

  http://feelingbullish.com/

  FeelingBullish is very similar to CAPS in functionality, and also follows a community model of sharing and communicating with other investors.

• GStock

  http://www.gstock.com/

  GStock is "a virtual supercomputer" for stock market analysis. It runs on a grid computing model and claims to test over one billion investment strategies per stock. Then it emails you BUY/ SELL (B/S) alerts for major US-traded stocks in your portfolio. They also claim that 70% of trades based on their BUY/SELL alerts make profits. Navigation, though, is extremely sparse. Enter a stock ticker symbol in the search field to get a chart with B/S indicators. Then apply common sense as to whether you should take the action offered, based on your price for that stock.

• MoneyTwins

  http://www.moneytwins.com/

  MoneyTwins is not Forex (foreign exchange) trading per se, but rather, if you have foreign currency and want to exchange it with someone for other currency, you can do so with community members instead of a bank - thus reducing commission costs.

• SaneBull

  http://www.stocktickr.com/

  StockTickr is another social investing application. You can watch animated stock tickers change in real-time, or subscribe to the RSS web feed. Trades are categorized by popular, profit, long, short, open, closed, and alerts. Though what you are watching is based on the portfolios of members. That is, all watchlists are shared amongst the StockTickr community.

• Wikinancial

  http://www.wikinancial.com/

  Wikinancial is a financial community where watchlists are shared, as are discussions in the forum that each stock has its own. In addition to the obligatory market and stock charts, there's also an archive of articles, presumably written by members. They have something called the "chat" box, though it's not an integrated IM (Instant Messaging) client, merely a form for starting a new discussion thread. Though provision for real-time chatting, text or voice, might add another dimension to the community, provided some controls such as group moderation were implemented.

• Zecco

  http://www.zecco.com/

  Zecco combines two popular features - a financial community and free online investment trading. That's right, free, as in no commissions and no hidden fees. This bold move garnered them thousands of new accounts on launch day, an event that was covered by CNBC TV. To actually trade, you have to provide banking information, employment information, and a government ID, all of which have to be faxed after account confirmation.