financing

Mint is an online financial management service, clearly designed to compete with Intuit's Quicken and Quicken Online. Unlike many of the existing online banking and budgeting products, you won't run out of gas with this product too fast, although it does not have the depth of software like Quicken.

The product has an interesting business model: It's free. Mint makes money for itself, and for you, by looking at your spending habits and your accounts and recommending offers that will save you money. Got a high-interest credit card? Spending too much on DSL? Mint's advertising network will match offers from its partners to your particular situation. Mint's consumer pitch is that it will save you thousands of dollars a year if you listen to its paid advice. (Not all of its advice is paid, a spokesperson told me, but selling those alerts is the Mint business plan.)

I'm not a fan of software that tries to either nanny or nag me, but I can't fault this business model. We are all leaving money on the table in our personal accounting, and having a tool to point us to easy ways to save some money is a great idea. And even if you don't respond to come-ons, you'll probably find its personal spending trend tracking and budget features illuminating. In contast, Quicken, while it offers deep management options (stock tracking, 401ks, transfers between accounts, custom reports, integration with tax software, etc.), is becoming a buggy, overfeatured product, and is overkill for people either just starting out their financial lives or who have simple accounts.

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Intuit is planning to release a Web-based edition of its leading personal finance application this winter, possibly early in 2008. Quicken Online marks a key transition for a company that has made its bones selling new versions of its boxed software each year.

I've wondered for a while when a big software brand would offer online financial software with some measure of security and a respectable amount of features beyond basic bank account check-ins. The few that I tested late last year were woefully inadequate. Few people seem willing to trust their personal finances with an unknown brand, for … Read more

Years ago, my wife and I used to religiously enter everything from our checkbook into Quicken. Unfortunately, we did very little analysis of how we were spending beyond "too much" or "just right." We knew exactly how much we were spending, but not why or where.

Years have passed, and we have become even worse about managing our money. When big or out-of-the-ordinary chunks of cash (bonus, consulting, whatever) come in, we're good at applying that to car loans/etc. such that we have no debt beyond our mortgage. But we still stink at managing our money, in part because we don't have anyone advising us on how smart people manage their money.

So, today, I gave Wesabe a spin. I've known about Wesabe well before it became a company, having discussed it with Marc Hedlund while he was still an EIR with O'Reilly Media. The basic idea: harness the power of a community to analyze one's spending and to get collective help (tips, etc.).

Open source finance, if you will.… Read more

Small donors are having a significant impact on the amount of money that the Republican and Democratic candidates for president are raising. The Internet, providing the tools for grassroots activists to self-organize and conduct "p-commerce" by giving political money online, has clearly contributed to this.

The interesting story after six months of presidential fund-raising is that some candidates, notably Barack Obama, are doing much better at reaching small donors than others.

In a July 3 CNET post on what the Internet has done for presidential campaign fund-raising, I wrote, "the story technophiles should celebrate and fear how … Read more

Forty years ago this week, life changed. There's been plenty of hoopla over the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love" and the Beatles appearing on American TV, but this event even affects life on Antarctica: the birth of the ATM. Yes, there's an ATM for researchers down at McMurdo Sound.

Before the first ATM was installed by Barclay's Bank near London in 1967, there was a lot of standing in line and writing of checks, though there were probably a lot fewer $20 bills in the United States back then.

More than $25 billion … Read more

Expensr is another lightweight, Web-based finance tracking site. Like several other sites we've covered recently, this one lets you enter in your income and expenses, and then gives you data about your money.

Expensr's special sauce is that it lets you compare your financial picture to other people who are like you, based on tags. For example, say you tag yourself "married," "San Francisco," and "lawyer." Then you can see how much other married SF lawyers are spending on rent, and if you're living at a level above or below your … Read more

Dell's failure to file a timely earnings report has again earned it notification of possible delisting from the Nasdaq.

It's the fourth such deadline Dell has missed while in the midst of SEC and internal investigations into its accounting practices, including three quarterly reports and its 2006 annual report. The latest deadline passed on May 4, at which time Dell says it notified the Nasdaq Listing and Hearing Review Council of the finding of its own audit committee. In March, Dell announced that its internal investigation yielded what it termed "evidence of misconduct," which could result … Read more

After reviewing lots of personal finance applications, I still haven't found one that serves young adults well. Today's teenagers have already been raised on a diet of advertising, from soda vending machines in grammar school cafeterias to deceptive credit card offers at college ballgames. The newest grown-ups need better information, for instance, about the indentured servitude that could result from trusting the word of high-interest loan sharks.

You'd think that some software company would benefit by serving the hot 18-to-thirtysomething market, often referred to as Generation Debt. Yet Intuit, for one, has decided to start educating tots … Read more

Tioga Energy on Wednesday said that it has received $10 million in initial funding to launch its solar power services business.

The company is one of a handful that is trying to bring project financing to organizations that want to avoid the large capital outlay associated with solar electricity.

Tioga Energy will work with partners to install panels on commercial and government buildings. Once installed, it will own the panels and handle the ongoing maintenance.

The idea behind these contracts, called purchased power agreements (PPAs), is that the customer pays for the energy generated by solar panels at a prearranged … Read more