Webware

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.

Data entry is a snap.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

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 peers. Or you can look up data for other tags, to see, for instance, what engineers in Houston are making. You do have to trust that other users are as rigorous with their Expensr data entry as you are: If you reliably enter in all your dining out expenses, but other users tagged the same as you are do not, then you might think that you're overspending when you're just being more compulsive about your bookkeeping than everyone else. (I couldn't use this feature because none of the tags I tried had enough users to generate statistical data.)

The service has several features that are standard for online financial applications. It's easy and simple to create accounts, enter transactions, and see graphs and charts of where your money is going.

This is what spending too much on rent looks like.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Expensr is easy to use -- much easier than the default financial app for most people, Quicken (the 2007 version of which I found intolerably buggy). While Quicken also offers tracking, as well as nice charts and graphs, getting basic data and analysis out of Expensr is much faster than getting it from Quicken. And if you only have a few accounts, getting data in can be almost as fast, since Expensr reads OFX files from banks (Quicken can automate downloads, though, which is a plus).

However, Expensr runs out of gas before Quicken. It won't pay bills electronically. It is not a solution for tracking investments or the stock options you have in that Web 2.0 startup you're working at for next to nothing. It won't calculate mortgage payments. And so on. Also, people may not want to store financial data on a startup run by a couple of guys fresh out of school (although there's nothing about the site that says you have to attach your real name to your transactions).

What Expensr has going for it is simplicity, speed, ease of use, and cost. It's free. It looks like a solid solution for a young adult's simple finances.

See also Yodlee, which is available from many banks, Buxfer (review), Wesabe (review), and a roundup of other apps. We're also keeping an eye out for Mint.

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 before teens with Quicken Kids & Money.

Web-based money-management tools are still only starting to spring up. Finally, I've found one built by and for college students. Finfo compares estimated costs of various colleges as well as earnings at various jobs, and it draws up a basic budget.

I wondered what, say, Northwestern University might cost today if I were to rewind my life and start over. Considering projected tuition increases, Finfo rang up $200,000 for four years. Ouch! Would a community college be better, at least for the first couple of years? Finfo showed that Community College of Philadelphia would cost just five percent of Northwestern's overhead. Unfortunately, while I could add many more schools to the list, Finfo was missing some city colleges and trade schools I looked up, and I couldn't tell if the Columbia College it displayed was the same one I sought.

If college is in the rearview mirror, Finfo can contrast salaries for three jobs, taking into account the costs of living and housing in different cities. Here in San Francisco, again: ouch! But Iowa City looks pretty kind if you want to sock away savings. However, Salary.com offers far more granular earnings-comparisons.

Finfo's budgeting tool asks basic questions about earnings and expenses, and then it draws a pie chart. You can double-click the wedges to make them pop out, but there's not much else interactive here. I'd like to see this aspect of Finfo expanded. However, because Finfo doesn't collect deep personal financial details, potential security risks are minimal for now. And unlike other online startups I've checked out, Finfo wisely doesn't e-mail your password in clear type. But if you use Finfo to look up student loan consolidations or home refinancing, prepare to divulge more details.

Finfo's college and earnings projections are helpful, speedy, and easy to digest for a multi-tasker with a short attention span. But it bugged me that Finfo didn't automatically save some reports I'd already created. Finfo remains in beta testing, so its personal finance and investment forums are nearly empty. Maybe more users will come to Finfo through its Facebook group.

The need still exists for solid, trustworthy software, whether Web-based or for the desktop or a hybrid of both, to help young people manage day-to-day expenses, pay for college, get a job, and plan to buy a home. I wonder how much of this support Finfo's folks plan to provide. I'll be on the lookout for evidence of Finfo's plans to add assistance with real estate, insurance, taxes and more.

Finfo compares college costs and more.

(Credit: CNET)

ActiveAllowance is a complex site that helps families with children manage the kids' allowances and chores. After experimenting with it for a few minutes, it made me hope that my 8-month-old son never, ever grows up. Am I really going to have to manage a list of chores, pay for them piecemeal, and then teach my kid to motivate himself, budget his income, and learn about saving, investing, and so on?

I suppose that's part of being a dad. And a site like this could help me and my wife keep our messages consistent. ActiveAllowance tracks lists of chores and goals, and helps a child budget his efforts to finish the tasks that earn him money. It also helps kids allocate their income based on family guidelines (so much for savings, for charity, and so on). Parents can set it up so allowance money is awarded when certain chores are done, or you can decouple allowance from chores if that's the way you parent.

ActiveAllowance lets you create detailed chore lists, with different points awarded for getting each chore done.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Kids get their own simplified interface when they log in. From there, they can check how they are doing against their goals, and print "checks" to draw from their allowance funds, which they present to the Bank of Their Parents, presumably in exchange for cash or goods.

The site allows for very detailed management of chore lists, payments for them, and budgeting, and I found it frighteningly complex. User feedback on the site's forums tells the story: it takes time for users to get past the learning curve. There are many who seem to be stuck in the support forums. But once the program is grasped, the transparency and communication fostered--and the degree of consideration required before you can fill out the details--helps families communicate more effectively about money, and ActiveAllowance can motivate and teach children in all the right ways.

My take, though, is this: if your sons or daughters can follow all the ins and outs of their detailed chore list and exactly what income they're going to earn from each task--and if they begin to effectively organize their lives around getting what they want--then you might do well to give them your Quicken password and let them run all the household's finances. And maybe if you get to work each day on time, they'll grant you your own allowance.

Vaguely related: Wired's new Geek Dad blog.

Two more pictures after the jump.

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