personal finance planning

Your daily dose of news and tidbits from the world of money in politics:

DEMOCRATS MORE LIKELY TO PERSONALLY ATTACK OPPONENTS IN ADVERTISEMENTS: According to a recent report by the Wesleyan Media Project, in 2010, �pro-Democratic ads focused on the personal characteristics of Republican candidates in 21 percent of their attack ads� compared to 11 percent of pro-Republican ads. This is up from the 12 percent of Democratic attack ads in 2008 that were focused on personal characteristics. 

The report cautions against claims that this election is unusually negative stating the proportion of negative to positive ads is comparable to 2008. However, the big difference is that among negative ads there is an increase among personal attack ads. Overall, that rate has gone up from 14 percent in 2008 to 20 percent in 2010. The report also mentions that attack ads �are far more likely than other ads to be sponsored by parties and/or interest groups� rather than by candidates themselves.

When making independent expenditures with overt messages in favor or opposition to federal candidates, political groups must tell the Federal Election Commission whether their expenditure is to �support� a candidate or �oppose� a candidate. A Center for Responsive Politics analysis of outside groups� expenditures �opposing� candidates compared to ads �supporting� candidates since October 1st shows �opposing ads� totaling $218 million and supporting ads totaling $42 million. These expenditures include TV ads, radio ads, web ads, fliers, mailings, canvassers, phone banks and other communications:

REPUBLICAN RANKING MEMBERS ARE THE COOL KIDS ON THE BLOCK AGAIN:
Ranking members of House committees are becoming the popular kids. If
the Republicans take over majority in the House, committee ranking
members like Rep. David Camp (R-Mich.) will be the new chairmen. As the
New York Times reported Tuesday, Republicans in positions to become
chairmen of House committees are seeing an influx of cash and popularity
at fundraisers. Camp, the current ranking member of the tax-writing
House Ways and Means Committee is receiving more contributions as
lobbyists plan for the future.



Jennifer Bell, a former Senate Finance Committee aide and a current
health care lobbyist told the New York Times, �You don�t wait until Nov.
3 and say, �What is the plan?� Obviously, it is the majority that sets
the agenda.�



As OpenSecrets Blog reported yesterday, many industries have been
planning ahead and have started to shift contributions to Republicans.
This phenomenon is not unique to this election as contributions have
historically favored the majority party and have fluctuated accordingly.



Below is a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of contributions to
Camp that shows a sharp increase in contributions during the last three
months - through September 30th. The second chart shows the total contributions to all candidates
during the same period for a linear comparison:




U.S. FALLS OUT OF THE TOP 20 LEAST CORRUPT NATIONS LIST: Transparency International released their annual Corruption Perceptions Index on Tuesday revealing that the United States has dropped from the 19th least corrupt nation in 2009 to 22nd place this year. According to Reuters, Nancy Boswell, the President of TI in the United States stated that the United States has lost integrity and public faith about ethics in America due in part to the lending practices in the subprime crisis, �Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme and rows over political funding.�

On the bright side, the United States is perceived to be just less corrupt than Uruguay, France, Estonia and Slovenia.

Have a news tip or link to pass along? We want to hear from you! E-mail us at press@crp.org.

It pays to be original when dreaming up your vacation plans, because if everyone else has the same idea as you, you're sure to be paying the highest rates possible for travel, accommodations and attractions.

A post on Currency, AmEx's personal finance blog recommends planning your trips on off-peak seasons to avoid the crowds and pay as little as possible.

The post says you're best off traveling between April 15 and June 1, as well as Oct. 1 and Dec. 15 - obviously excluding the travel hell that is Thanksgiving - for the best rates.

Granted, there are some disadvantages to traveling during the off-seasons. The San Diego beaches, after all, aren't quite as appealing in December, but Disneyland is still Disneyland during what passes for winter in Los Angeles.

What's your favorite off-season travel destination?

Travel Off-Season for a Cheaper, Better Getaway

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The Buffalo News updated every day with news from Buffalo, New York. Links to national and business news, entertainment listings, recipes, sports teams, classified ads, death notices.

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: F1 closing on HD coverage for 2011

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alpine payment systems scam

Pharmaceutical <b>News</b> Roundup: Human Genome&#39;s Lupus Drug, Merck&#39;s <b>...</b>

Here's a roundup of some of Wednesday's major pharmaceutical news: An FDA panel gave Human Genome Sciences a boost with a thumbs-up for its lupus drug, Benlysta; Merck's experimental heart drug appears to work well without side effects; ...

BillBoard - Blogs - The Buffalo <b>News</b>

The Buffalo News updated every day with news from Buffalo, New York. Links to national and business news, entertainment listings, recipes, sports teams, classified ads, death notices.

autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: F1 closing on HD coverage for 2011

Formula 1 is close to giving the final green light for High Definition television coverage of the sport to begin from the first race of the 2011 season, AUTOSPORT has learned.

how to manage personal finances

This post is from staff writer Sierra Black. Sierra writes about frugality, sustainable living, and getting her kids to eat kale at Childwild.com. This post is part of Book Week at Get Rich Slowly.

Since my twin victories of paying off our last credit card and funding a summer of travel, my husband has begun to show interest in personal finance.

It’s not that he wasn’t supportive of my efforts before — he just preferred to support them from a safe, ignorant distance. A distance from which I handed him an envelope of cash each week to do the grocery shopping, he didn’t ask too many questions, and somehow we were climbing out of debt. He was more than happy to adopt any frugal-living strategy I suggested, as long as he didn’t have to think about the Big Picture.

That system worked, but I longed for more active participation from him. Not only because I wanted us to share equally in the journey toward financial freedom — I do want that — but also for a selfish reason. I wanted him to participate because he’s better at this stuff than I am. He’s a whiz at spreadsheets. The man has a Ph.d in Physical Chemistry. You don’t get one of those without doing a few math problems.

Lately, I’ve been getting my wish. My husband has been talking with a financial advisor at the university he works for, and having clear, honest conversations with me about our money.

This seemed like the perfect time for me to read Mary Hunt’s How to Debt-Proof Your Marriage.

Relationship first

Hunt’s book covers the basics of personal finance and debt destruction, with a special focus on doing it as a couple. Before she even begins talking about financial management, Hunt talks about strengthening the foundations of your marriage. You can’t have financial harmony without emotional intimacy, she says.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s clear in my own marriage that spending time relaxing together on vacation helped my husband and me both chill out and have better conversations during our family finance meetings too.

Hunt and I part ways in the chapters about how to achieve that emotional intimacy, though. She bases her prescription for marital bliss on traditional gender roles. She includes chapters for each sex on how to make deposits in the other’s Love Bank — a metaphorical bank of goodwill made of small, loving gestures.

The Love Bank is an adorable idea, one I’m tempted to put into practice here in my own home. I’m pretty sure I won’t be making my deposits to my husband’s Love Bank by biting my tongue when I disagree with him, though. Likewise, I don’t expect him to express his love for me by bringing me flowers and handling all the tough decisions for me like the natural leader of our family should.

Hunt is a generation (or two) older than I am, and what works for her marriage is so foreign to my young, feminist mind that it was actually a little hard to read. But leaving aside the details of how you get to an intimate marriage, though, she and I agree wholeheartedly that it’s important to get your emotional needs met before you can effectively work together with your spouse to manage your finances.

Money second

The personal-finance half of the book will be familiar to most GRS readers. Hunt advocates an approach similar to Your Money or Your Life and Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, one that begins with calculating your net worth and tracking your expenses. From there, she covers the basics of setting up an emergency fund, creating a spending plan, and starting a debt snowball (though she uses different terms for these steps).

Like her ideal of a healthy relationship, Hunt’s financial advice seems a little dated in places. A lot of it has to do with how to organize your three-ring binders, or how to painstakingly accomplish by-hand calculations that Mint can do for you in a few minutes. If you’re a devotee of the pen-and-paper approach, though, her chapters on how to track and plan your spending are rock solid and detailed enough to easily follow.

The one thing in this book that made me want to put it down, run to my office, and implement it on the spot was, in fact, her filing system. Hunt takes a few pages to go over exactly what personal records you should be keeping, and outlines an elegant effective way to organize them. I spent an hour tearing apart my filing cabinet yesterday as soon as I read those pages. I may not want my marriage to look much like hers, but I’m delighted to have made over my filing cabinet in Mary Hunt’s image.

Different views

There are a few areas where Mary’s financial advice deviates from the usual Get Rich Slowly formula. One is the matter of the debt snowball. She encourages readers to start saving 10% of their income towards an emergency fund immediately, while still paying the minimums on their credit cards. Only after saving up a fully funded six-month emergency fund would Hunt advise you to roll those savings into your credit card payments.

Given the relative interest rates on credit cards and savings accounts, this approach will almost certainly cost you money. If it works for you psychologically, though, by all means pursue it. No matter what order you do them in, the key steps of tracking your spending, creating an emergency fund, and snowballing your debt payments will lead you to financial security.

Another place where she breaks with conventional wisdom is in her savings and spending ratios. GRS readers are familiar with the Balanced Money Formula that encourages us to use 50% of our money for living expenses, 30% for fun and 20% for savings. Hunt advises 10% for giving, 10% for saving and 80% for spending.

The order of those percentages is vital to her. A devout Christian, Hunt feels that all the money that comes into your life is a blessing from God, and promptly giving 10% of it back to God shows you can be trusted with this blessing, and more of it will come your way.

I’m not a Christian, but I admire Mary’s faith and devotion to charitable giving. It’s a goal of mine to give 10% of my income. I’ve written about that here before, and readers made a persuasive case for waiting until my debts were paid before giving so much away. For now, I give a modest amount and look forward to giving more in the future.

I think that for Hunt, the psychological benefits of giving 10% and saving 10% before you make any spending decisions at all outweigh the financial benefits of paying off your debts as fast as possible and then beginning to accumulate and donate wealth.

It’s an interesting approach, and one that might work for a lot of people. Particularly if you’re a devoted Christian and looking for a personal-finance book that reflects your values, you’ll find a lot of good in How to Debt-Proof Your Marriage. If you’re looking for a book that’s totally focused on financial savvy and relationship skills, though, this might not be your best bet.

From Hotline (HT: Mataconis):

O'Donnell, a perennial conservative candidate in Delaware, is challenging moderate Rep. Mike Castle (R), the clear favorite of the GOP establishment. But she has come under fire recently for her personal financial problems. Reports have surfaced that she owed $10K in back taxes, defaulted on her mortgage and holds outstanding campaign debt.

Levi Russell, a spokesman for the group, told Hotline On Call that the group was not aware of O'Donnell's personal financial problems before it endorsed her.

"We don't know the exact situation," he said.

When asked if the group discussed the issues with O'Donnell, Russell responded: "No we haven't. We don't really have any contact with the campaign or the candidate."

We have blogged before reasons why we support Mike Castle over O'Donnell. But this report raises even more questions, such as:

1. If the Tea Party really stands for fiscal conservatism, why would they endorse somebody who can't even manage her personal finances?


2. Does it give you confidence in the Tea Party that they go around endorsing people without having any contact with the candidate? How do they know that this female version of Harold Stassen is really worthy of such an endorsement?


3. Christine O'Donnell has run for office 4 times. Her sole victory was an uncontested Republican primary.


4. In 2008, O'Donnell lost the Delaware senate race to Joe Biden by 65-35. She later falsely claimed to have won two counties in that race. Biden's percentage of the vote in 2008 was the largest of any of his senatorial campaigns.


5. In 2008, one of the great Democratic landslides, Mike Castle beat his Democratic challenger for Delaware's sole Congressional seat by 23 points. Castle has won 13 consecutive state-wide races as a candidate either for Governor or Congressman. He's way ahead of the Democrat in the polls while O'Donnell trails the Democrat by 10 points.

As a student of Delaware corporate governance, I am firmly convinced that Delaware needs quality representation in Congress if it is to fend off the creeping federalization of corporate law. As a big tent Republican, I'm inclined to support smart, electable, centrists like Mike Castle over someone like O'Donnell. The perfect must not be allowed to become the enemy of the good. Especially when the supposed perfect candidate is pretty seriously flawed and probably unelectable.

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Early Critics Weigh in on Benu : Good <b>News</b>/Bad <b>News</b> : Eater SF

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personal finance and budgeting

Are you a fan of the GTD personal productivity system? Well if you like "Getting Things Done," here's GFD, Getting Finances Done, which shows you how to map David Allen's same principals to managing your personal finance and achieving your financial goals.

Applying GTD principles to your personal finances - Part 1 [Getting Finances Done]

It's hard to beat an excel spreadsheet for quickly shifting between a granular and top-level view of your personal finance situation. Here's reader Lauren's account balance spreadsheet she made to keep track of her expenditures, past, present, and future, and itemize her budget.

Download Lauren's Budgeter (XLS)

1. Scroll to the current month.

2. Enter your current balance in the "Starting Balance" box at the top left.

3. Enter your credits and debits on the appropriate dates they will hit your account. Use positive numbers for money getting added credits, and negative numbers for when it's getting taken away.

4. The green "Total" will change to reflect your total overall balance.

Use it as is, compare it to your own, or mod to fit your own needs.

Lauren says it's "quite nifty," and also uses it as a calendar.

Here's the excel code for the totaler for those who like to look under the hood:

TODAY();_8_10)

+SUMIF(_9_10d;"

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Super magnet production has also been shipped over to China http://www.chinamagnet.in/i-News-229212/The-development-and-applications-of-Rare-Earth-Permanent-Magnetic-Materials-244616.html. Over the last 10 to 20 years companies have ...

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personal finance budgeting

Use Prepaid Travel Cards to Budget Travel Expenses

Vacation is a time to let loose and have a little fun. It's all too easy, however, to let having a little fun turn into spending way too much. Use prepaid travel cards to keep spending contained, secure, and in budget.

Photo by eliazar.

Finance and frugality blog WiseBread shares a set of tips on using prepaid travel cards for safe, secure, and budget-friendly travel spending.

A prepaid travel card is generally usable in the place of a debit or credit card. You can withdraw cash at an ATM, pay for purchases, and make travel reservations. And as the name suggests, you prepay these expenses by loading money onto the card.

It is just as secure as a debit or credit card, since the prepaid travel card is protected by a PIN and/or signature. In fact, some would say that prepaid travel cards are even more secure, since the money is not linked to your bank account and has a limited balance (which limits your exposure).

It can also be a handy tool for budgeting, since you would load only the money you plan on spending for the trip onto the card, which helps you stick to your travel budget.

Check out the full article at the link below for additional tips and tricks including what to look for when shopping for a card like avoiding cards with a cash-out fee. Have your own tips for keeping your money secure and sticking to a budget while traveling? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Are you a fan of the GTD personal productivity system? Well if you like "Getting Things Done," here's GFD, Getting Finances Done, which shows you how to map David Allen's same principals to managing your personal finance and achieving your financial goals.

Applying GTD principles to your personal finances - Part 1 [Getting Finances Done]

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how to budget personal finances

I am a 25 year old college student (school, job + savings, back to school… long story) and boy do I wish I knew about all the resources available to me back then. Good for you for starting early!

Lucky for me I have 1 parent (divorced) who is so bad with money that I have been scared into financial responsibility from a young age. Was I perfect? Hahaha.. but I am doing better than 95% of my friends are right now so I guess I am doing something right?

Here is my advice:

1. GET A JOB! - 2 shifts a week is all it takes. I have friends who just graduated from college without ever having a job. Result? No work experience so nowhere will hire them. Some had problems even getting an internship! Try for customer service jobs. Employers value people skills more than flipping burgers.

2. BUDGET! - Cant teach an old dog new tricks so it is best to start young. Add up your monthly expenses such as rent/insurance/cell/gas/etc and divide by 2 or 4 (depending on weekly/bi-weekly payday). Put this money in savings and no touchy! Once you can live on that budget a certain % for an emergency fund and then % for savings. The rest is your “fun” money. As others have said: pizza, ipods, and clothes are “fun money” and NOT emergencies!

3. DEBIT, CREDIT, or CASH?

DEBIT- I am a die hard debit card user. My credit union has detailed (free) online banking. I check my online bank statement in the morning and at night and go over my spending. Think of it as an instant virtual slap in the face about your spending habits. It hurts for the best.

CASH - Some people just cant be responsible enough to respect the plastic and do better with cash. Try and keep bigger bills on you. Breaking a $5 is less mentally painful than breaking a $20. $1s are dangerous. That can of coke is “only $1″. $7 a week, $30 a month. It adds up.

CREDIT - Many say don’t get a credit card, but I disagree. If you are responsible college is a great time to build credit (unless you have some serious control issues… if that is the case, these are not the droids you are looking for…). Not building credit early is the BIGGEST regret I have. Good credit means better rates when buying a house or a car. Do your research first. Consider a student, or if you have to a secured card.

More about credit-

*Do NOT apply for a credit card on campus. It is like selling your soul for a candy bar. Every time you apply for a credit card they run a credit check, which “pings” you. Too many pings hurts your credit score. Not good. Friend did that at every kiosk that offered something free to sign up when she was 20. This was 7 years ago and her credit is still recovering! The same is true for store credit cards. Do.Not.WANT!

*Pick a required expense, such as gas or cell phone bill and put it on the credit card. Pay off the card at the end of each month. Repeat.

*Do NOT use your credit card to buy “fun money” purchases. No clothes, no ipods, no pizza. This is why you have your debit card of cash. Don’t even think about it mr.!

4. EATING/DRINKING - This is going to be the weird random one from one young person to another.(Part of this only applies to you on/after your 21st birthday!) The young person’s life revolves around being social. For a 20 something this normally involves dinner and/or drinks with friends. It is expensive! So much money can be saved if you plan ahead!

*Eating - Going out to eat is a much needed social experience but NEVER go out to eat starving! Just like you don’t go shopping when you are hungry you never want to experience the whole “eyes bigger than stomach” thing while dining out. Have a snack an hour or so before you meet friends for dinner. This will help you avoid ordering that $8 appetizer! Also, try and order things that reheat or are good cold. LEFTOVERS! Also, water is free. It is good for you! Coke is $3. Go buy yourself a 12 pack and have one when you get home.

*Drinking - Most 20 somethings drink. It is a very expensive part of our lives. It is a social event to help us forget about school and work. We like bars. Unfortunately $5 for a beer is highway robbery! NEVER go to a bar completely sober (when you are 21+ & no drinky + drivey!). Have a drink or 2 at home and then have a beer at the bar. You will save TONS. Also, bring cash to a bar. Only bring as much cash as your sober self would like to spend. Alcohol impairs judgment. Sober you will thank drunk you for not spending. Drunk you will thank sober you for being smart enough to make sure you can afford the advil to take care of that hangover the next day. It is a win win.

Put all that saved food and drink money towards something that will last.

5. BOOKS - Buy used whenever possible. Check online first because campus stores are normally a ripoff. Try and sell the books back online, even if they have released a new edition. Most student book stores on campus will only give you 1/2 of what someone online will be willing to give you!

6. CARS - Buy used and reliable, but not “cheap”. New cars lose tons of value when you drive them off the lot. Don’t buy a “cheap” used car on it’s last leg. Think Goldilocks - not too new, not too old, juuusssttt right! Save up as much money as possible. Pay for it in cash if you can. If not, save up at least 2/3 before purchasing and do your homework!

And whatever you do: AVOID parking tickets, speeding tickets, registration fines.. may as well light the money on fire! Or if you do not want it I will give it a nice home and save you the trouble.

Events of the last week have made the Deficit Commission an embarrassment. Co-Chair Alan Simpson is a one-man disaster movie, compulsively offending one key voting bloc after another. Commission member Paul Ryan faced an angry crowd over his anti-Social Security stance, while another Commissioner locked experienced workers out of a nuclear facility rather than provide retirement benefits.

That's right: He's cutting retirement benefits.

But if the political blowback is obvious, here's what isn't: The Commissioners who are determined to cut your Social Security benefits are going to enjoy their own retirements in comfort. Their own pension plans insulate them from the fears that many other Americans face, and they don't have the professional expertise that would help them understand those concerns. In fact, the Commission's only expert on retirement is Rep. Jan Schakowsky, and she apparently opposes benefit cuts. The rest of the Commission is dominated by people who've expressed their desire to cut Social Security, despite their own secure futures. Millions of working Americans who have contributed to Social Security all their lives will lose out if these Commissioners have their way.

Happy Labor Day.

Normally I consider it off-limits to discuss people's personal finances when discussing their political opinions. But these Commissioners' lack of subject matter expertise, along with their lack of empathy, is important. If you don't know much about the topic and are protected from the problem, what makes you credible? Their pre-established prejudices makes the situation even worse, and their own situations underscore the irony of their self-professed willingness to make "brave choices" - choices whose consequences will mean little or nothing to them.

The Commission's Social Security obsession is odd anyway, since the projected Social Security shortfall comes out to only 0.7% of GDP. Nevertheless, these Commissioners have made their benefit-cutting intentions plain, presumably because they want to offer up America's seniors as a sacrifice to the bond markets. So how will these would-be income-slashers for the elderly make out in their own golden years? They'll be golden.

Consider Commissioner Alice Rivlin. Rivlin co-authored a paper that called for raising the retirement age and other benefit cuts, and recently released a specious paper about "Saving Social Security." As a former HEW Undersecretary, CBO Director, White House Budget Director, and Federal Reserve Vice Chair, she will presumably enjoy a comfortable retirement supported by multiple public pensions. Says Rivlin: ""We can't get out of this problem without doing both spending cuts, especially slowing the growth of entitlement, and tax increases."

Experts on Social Security finance (including the long-time Chief Actuary for the program) flatly disagree with Rivlin, pointing out that an adjustment to the payroll tax cap would unquestionably be enough to get the job done. They have the numbers to prove it. So why does Rivlin, who does not have their expertise in this area, disagree? Go ask Alice.

Co-Chair Erskine Bowles brokered a deal with Newt Gingrich to cut Social Security in the 1990s, when he served as Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff. Before that he headed the Small Business Administration, so his government tenure presumably qualifies him for a Federal pension. If not, don't worry: He receives $425,000 per year in his current job running the public universities of North Carolina, and the people of North Carolina are presumably also funding a pension on his behalf. To his credit, Bowles pledged to donate $125,000 of his salary for need-based student funds - but then, he can afford it. As the son of a US Congressman, Bowles had the education and connections needed to make millions as an investment banker. The added income he earns today as a Board member for General Motors and Morgan Stanley will help, too - and his government experience undoubtedly helped him win those positions, too.

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, an aggressive advocate of Social Security cuts and privatization, will also enjoy his sunset years in comfort, thanks to a publicly-funded pension from his tenure as a Congressman. (He'll presumably earn even more as a result of his employment as an aide to two United States Senators.) Rep. Jeb Hensaerling has served as both a Representative and as an aide to Sen. Phil Gramm, so he should be safe from financial insecurity in his old age too .

The average annual pension payments for former members of Congress ranged from $41,000 to $55,000 in 2002, considerably more than the average $13,836 that Social Security recipients received in 2009. Yet neither Ryan nor Hensaerling have proposed cutting Congressional retirement benefits - nor should they. Sound pension plans like theirs were once available to most working Americans, and more effort should be made to restore them.

Former SEIU President Andrew Stern, who once might have been counted on to defend Social Security, recently sneered at Commission critics as "assassins of change" while saying that "all entitlements should be on the table." Mr. Stern's annual pension is $152,000 - and he retired at the age of 59, not 70. Nevertheless, Stern now publicly muses about "whether defined benefit pensions can really exist in the long run in a globalized economy."

Judd Gregg, who wants to raise the retirement age to 70, will receive a Federal pension for his Senate position. Gregg, like Alan Simpson, is the son of a Governor (self-made men, you might say), which means that public pensions also ensured that neither of them had to worry about supporting their aged parents. Tom Coburn, another would-be Social Security cutter, will receive a Congressional and Senatorial pension too.

David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, provides some "private enterprise" perspective to the Commission's work. But Cote's wealth comes in part from Honeywell's government contracts, which exceed $4 billion annually. What's more, Cote's "free enterprise" ethic didn't stop him from making sure that Honeywell grabbed a few million in stimulus money from the taxpayers, too. A few billion from the Pentagon here, a few million more from Uncle Sam there - that'll plump up the nest egg a little for Mr. Cote's sunset years.

Cote made the headlines this week when Honeywell locked out the union workers at a nuclear power plant over a labor dispute - even though the workers agreed to stay on the job to protect public safety. Instead, Cote hired replacements and put them through a pared-down training process. The image of Homer Simpson comes to mind, pushing the wrong buttons and spilling beer on the reactor console - which would presumably make Cote Mr. Burns.

But it's no joking matter. Apparently there's real danger, which is why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reportedly stepped in to block Honeywell from distilling uranium with its crew of replacement workers And what are the union and Honeywell arguing about? Honeywell's raising health care costs - and eliminating retiree pension plans for new workers.

That's right. A member of the Commission that's pretending to judge our retirement security with impartiality would rather have hastily-trained amateurs handle nuclear materials than bargain openly with his workers - about their retirement. D'oh!

As for Simpson (Alan, not Bart), to say that he suffers from "political Tourette's syndrome" would be a disservice to Tourette's sufferers. Most of them don't really say socially objectionable things, and those who do (it's called "coprolalia") don't mean what they say. But Simpson does. By attacking senior citizens as "greedy geezers," then offending women with his "milk cow with 100 million tits" comment, and now offending veterans' groups, Simpson has now hit the voting bloc trifecta.

And Cote's outraged labor, a fourth group. But the problem isn't Simpson anymore, or Cote for that matter. It's the Commission itself. The coprolalic curmudgeon Simpson has done a service to the nation. He's drawn attention to the Commission, and to the anti-Social Security biases held by so many of its members - all of whom will retire in comfort, thanks to those whose benefits they would cut. It's the comfortable afflicting the afflicted.

If these Deficit Commission members want their recommendations to have any credibility, they should pledge to live on the same Social Security benefits that they would impose for other Americans. Better yet, they should dedicate themselves to helping provide every American with the kind of retirement security they enjoy. That was part of the social contract this nation embraced during its years of greatest economic growth, the fulfillment of a promise that a lifetime of work should never end with years of deprivation. They should be working to restore that contract, not erode it even further.

One thing is clear: This Commission has no business making recommendations about Social Security.

(Sign a petition asking Congress and the President to protect Social Security from the Deficit Commission. Roger Hickey has more here.)

Additional links:

* Sam Seder and I discussed Social Security this week while co-hosting The Young Turks.

* For further reference on the Commission's members and their biases, see Firedoglake and Talking Points Memo.

* House Democrats are vowing to protect Social Security from any cuts. The polls show why that's a very wise idea.

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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Raikkonen bids for 2011 Renault seat

Kimi Raikkonen is making a fresh bid to return to Formula 1 next year after approaching the Renault team for a drive in 2011, AUTOSPORT can reveal.

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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Raikkonen bids for 2011 Renault seat

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With so many options, risks and complicated strategies, smart investments are not an easy thing to do. FutureAdvisor is a personal investment advisor that helps you with managing and optimizing your investment portfolio by providing in-depth analysis, forecasts and saving tips.

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Visit FutureAdvisor at www.futureadvisor.com [Via class="vt-p">LifeHacker]

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Stimulation delays cognitive decline, but disease advances quickly once it starts.

How Insiders Game User-Generated <b>News</b> for Money

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Now that Wesabe is officially closed, many users are looking for an alternative that offers the same flexibility and features -- for many this alternative is, or should be MoneyStrands.



MoneyStrands is a free tool that has helped people manage their money online since it launched in March 2009 -- and in short order has won a Webby award for the best of the web in the banking and bill-pay category. This honor is no surprise when you consider that MoneyStrands offers features you won't find in many competing tools such as Mint.



Like all modern personal finance tools, MoneyStrands can connect to a large number of banking and financial institutions, but unlike most competitors gives users the ability to manually upload their account data. This option is a must-have for those who don't want to give their login info to a third party, or who bank at a smaller bank or credit union that personal finance tools cannot connect to for automatic updates.



MoneyStrands also sets itself apart from the competition because it is designed to make it easy for international and non-English speaking users to use the tool. The MoneyStrands website can be viewed in both English and Spanish with a toggle in the settings and users can choose their preferred currency from a long list. According to MoneyStrands, consumers use the service in 44 countries.



These features supplement the standard account linking and money management that the MoneyStrands tool handles well. Users can view spending and account history in one location as well as compare spending in categories such as shopping, food & dining and more to see how they stack up to the rest of the community. Filters allow you to compare yourself to other members based on age, gender, marital status, education and other variables.



MoneyStrands also has a budgeting tool that tracks spending and sets email alerts when a budget category reaches a certain level so spending can be put in check. The tool is fairly simple and requires users to figure out their own goals, but Atakan Cetinsoy, General Manager of MoneyStrands told WalletPop in a phone interview that an improved budgeting tool that walks users through the process is coming in the next few months.



MoneyStrands is easy to use and offers significant value to users; especially those who can't or don't want to link their accounts directly to a third-party service.

Some Republicans and Democrats can get their heads together now and then.

When I had the privilege of working for Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) in the US Senate, I had just moved over from serving as founding Executive Director of the Nixon Center for Peace & Freedom, later renamed (thankfully) "The Nixon Center".

Senator Bingaman at the time, along with his chief of staff Patrick Von Bargen, were asking key questions about the structure of international trade and finance and why such large bilateral deficits were building between the US and respectively Japan and China. University of Chicago-trained neoclassical economists regularly parroted the line that bilateral deficits were "meaningless" and would be balanced out over time with other global trade partners -- and would on a bilateral basis rise and fall, appearing and disappearing in a highly fluid global economic environment.

Bingaman's and Von Bargen's questions then are even more relevant today -- and given the time on the clock since, it's clear that the economists who argued that deficits were meaningless or that a job is a job is a job -- whether working as a wallet maker or a nano-technology app developer -- were wrong.

But Jeff Bingaman, even though skeptical about how the global economy was working in real rather than ideological terms, never turned his back on international engagement. In 1996, Bingaman, Von Bargen and I traveled to Japan, South Korea, China, and other parts of Asia. This, then, was an annual trip supplemented by his personal trips to Guatemala and trips to Europe, Russia and more. Bingaman, now Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy, remains deeply engaged and interested in international affairs.

And while most Senators and Congressman make a point of pushing 95% of their available press time towards the Bartlesville news outlet (in the case of Oklahoma) over the demands of the Yomiuri, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, or the People's Daily, Bingaman is one that does make time for international media.

The Nixon Center as well was stacked with big personalities who were then and remain deeply committed to America's engagement in global affairs. While the Nixon Center is actually fastidiously non-partisan and has key Dems and Republicans engaged with it, it's hard to hide all of its Republican stripes when in fact the institution's inspiration and founder was a powerful two-term winning Republican President of the United States.

My point is that there are Democrats and Republicans -- lots of them -- committed to robust international engagement, to smart foreign aid, and to coherent and sensible U.S. international public diplomacy.

But just as when I worked for Bingaman in the Senate and there were some Democrats and more Republicans who looked at having a passport as a political liability, many in the Tea Party movement are a manifestation of a similar pugnacious nationalism that disdains international institutions and US engagement abroad.

One of the major bipartisan NGOs committed to internationalism in Washington is the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. I attended the USGLC's gala dinner last year featuring NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But the guy who really impressed me was the charismatic Republican Congressman from Illinois, Aaron Schock -- who went on stage and made a case as strong as any liberal internationalist I have heard for the hard core national interest reasons that the U.S. should support global affairs and engagement -- and yes, foreign aid budgets.

Aaron Schock is a serious player on the way up -- and too many are distracted by his better than average looks and youth. I didn't support his approach to Honduras (for the most part) that he seemed to have jointly worked out with Senator Jim DeMint -- but that is beside the point. Schock is thinking hard about smart policy, not just coasting with his new found power and privileges in Washington.

If the USGLC can bring Hillary Clinton and the Republican House Deputy Whip together to sing from similar playbooks, then I have time for this private sector initiative to promote public support for international engagement.

If you are in DC (and if not, I am sure that there will be "live streaming" that I will arrange to have run here at TWN), you might want to attend the annual USGLC 2010 Washington Conference (registration information here) that takes place September 28-29, 2010 at Washington's Grand Hyatt.

I would support this meeting whether I was speaking or not -- but I happen to be on the program along with NBC Meet the Press' David Gregory, Under Secretary of the Treasury Lael Brainard, US AID Administrator Rajiv Shah, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and the indefatigable Joshua Rogin -- who writes Foreign Policy's "The Cable".

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons

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Media Matters Ad On Fox <b>News</b> | I Million Donation To GOP | <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

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manage personal finances

LearnVest founder and CEO Alexa von Tobel turned down Harvard and a life on Wall Street to make personal finance education accessible to women, and she has no intention of failing.

She thinks learning how to manage your money should be simpler, a passionate belief which comes from her personal need for her New York-based company’s product, a series of online tutorials on personal finance which have led some to dub her “Suze Orman 2.0.” On Tuesday, LearnVest announced the launch of three new on-demand, online Bootcamps covering basic personal finance, cutting costs, and investing. These products are just the latest iteration in von Tobel’s quest.

The 26-year-old von Tobel got the idea for LearnVest while working at Morgan Stanley, realizing that she had no idea how to manage her own finances.

“Here I was responsible for millions and millions of dollars and I didn’t know the first thing about getting a credit card or insurance,” von Tobel said. “I needed tools like these.”

Instead of attending Harvard Business School, von Tobel put all the money she’d earned after college into building LearnVest. Since then, the company has raised over $5.5 million in financing, most recently closing a $4.5 million round led by Accel Partners in April.

The LearnVest  CEO has been spending a great deal of time in the media spotlight recently. She was recently named to Inc.’s 30 Under 30 list of young entrepreneurs and has received media coverage from a number of local and national outlets including BusinessWeek and the New York Times. The ‘Suze Orman 2.0’ moniker first came from a Fox reporter.

But behind the media attention that even has the attractive blonde’s coworkers teasingly calling her ‘Finance Barbie’ is an entrepreneur possessed. Her self-deprecating humor and amiable demeanor are genuine, but von Tobel is shrewedly packaging herself and LearnVest as an accessible and fun medium for learning about personal finance. And she’s doing it from a cubicle alongside her employees in Learnvest’s cozy New York office.

Usage statistics suggest it’s beginning to work, with Learnvest receiving about 360,000 unique visitors in the U.S. per month according to Quantcast, a Web-traffic-measurement service..

While von Tobel is certainly passionate about giving women unbiased advice on their personal finances, she is also keeping her eye on earning money to repay her investors.

And that’s where LearnVest’s latest product, the online bootcamps, come in. The three-week programs consist of daily emails with information and easy to do items that take minutes, according to von Tobel.  The investing bootcamp is LearnVest’s first paid offering, costing users $7.99.

“It’s cheaper than ‘Personal Finance for Dummies’ and easier to understand and accomplish,” von Tobel said. “We don’t want users to be overwhelmed.”

LearnVest’s content also provides affiliate marketing opportunities for the New York startup, where LearnVest earns money by suggesting personal finance products like credit cards.

Besides affiliate fees, LearnVest also sells advertising, in the hope that financial services firms and other brand advertisers will pay a premium for female users taking advantage of LearnVest’s educational content over what they’d pay for such users on general-interest websites.

Next Story: Your mobile app is spying on you Previous Story: Dark Roast Media integrates Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes into its social game

Large animal medicine takes a different tack. These animals are used for industry -- food production, breeding farms, racing, and so on. (The lines are blurred in some cases, such as horses that are really pets, and greyhounds used for racing.) "The client" here is the manager, producer, or trainer, while the "patient" is the dairy herd, the swine operation, or the overall breeding potential of a winning stallion. While humane treatment is an important factor, the goals are maximizing performance, productivity, and profit. Large animal medicine focuses on designing a Herd Health Program, where the outcome of an individual case takes a backseat to the cost and benefit for the overall group.

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Wednesday&#39;s <b>news</b>: A night on the town with the Preds - do it for <b>...</b>

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Business <b>News</b> You Need Today: Aug. 25, 2010 - DailyFinance

David Schepp has covered business news for more than a decade at news organizations such as Dow Jones, BBC News and Gannett. His beats have included technology, biotechnology, health care and workplace. He lives in New York's Hudson ...

<b>News</b> signing | TV Barn

Wake up! The ultra-early-bird newscast is back. This week, KMBC and KSHB moved their first morning newscast from 5 am to 4:30 am In a few weeks, KCTV will follow suit, which is only fitting since the CBS affiliate kicked.

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Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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Business <b>News</b> You Need Today: Aug. 6, 2010 - DailyFinance

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Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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