A Tangled Financial Web

Making Sense out of Online Money-management Tools

By Jenn Director Knudsen

Jim Taschetta of Burlingame, Calif., promised his 4-year-old daughter a day at the movies. They took in Finding Nemo, ate popcorn and other goodies and spent about $25 for the two-hour outing. Taschetta says parents often worry about how to finance their kids' college educations, but, he asks rhetorically, what about their first 18 years? "You have no idea how expensive it is until you actually have a child," says Taschetta, who also has a 2-year-old.

Taschetta not only is a concerned, budget-minded dad, he's also chief marketing officer of Yodlee, a Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company that helps consumers worldwide find efficient ways to manage money online. He implores parents to get their financial lives in order and to use money-management tools available online to do so. "With fairly little effort, a parent or anyone can get a lot of value out of an online tool," Taschetta says. And he says they don't need to be terribly tech-savvy to do so.

Here are some tips and tools parents can use to track their budgets, set financial goals, view their net worth, pay bills and do other transactions, all through Internet-based applications. These suggestions are by no means exhaustive, but they're a great start to better managing your finances.

According to Taschetta, the average Internet user has between eight and 10 financial products items such as credit cards, bank accounts and investment accounts. And the average user accesses those products through four or five different financial institutions. "So in general, your life is fairly complex," he says. Without organizing all that information, "it actually becomes more onerous and burdensome."

Some people use software like Quicken that requires the user to input all the financial information he would like to keep close tabs on. But most folks, Taschetta included, aren't motivated enough to enter earnings, expenditures, investments and other information on a daily basis.

Fortunately, there's been a recent trend toward consolidation, and many online money-management tools will consolidate a user's financial information. "A few years ago studies indicated that about 66 percent of current online users of financial services wanted a consolidated view of their accounts online," says Kathleen Sindell, author of Investing Online for Dummies

Want to see more?

• Check out our Article Library.
• Family Finances: How Much Should Your Kids Know?
• Worried About Bills, Investments and Work? 10 Ways to Make the Most of Your Money and Your Life
• Mind Over Money: 10 Ways to Make the Most of Your Money and Your Life
• Talk about it!