Anyone use mint budget tool?

[l2ridehd]

Does anyone have experience using mint.com? It is a tool that links your bank accounts, investment accounts, credit cards and other financial accounts and uses that information to build spending history, going forward budgets, money management and debt management. It appears to be a good tool that is easy to use, works on PC or iPad technology and seems to be secure. My concern is linking all those type accounts to a single application. What I like is being able to enter information real time through your iPad or iPhone.

Anyone use it, tested it, had good or bad results?

[angiefox10]

When I was looking for a finance tool, Yodlee was highly rated. I started using it.... Oh maybe a couple of years ago. I like it.

Online banking solutions | Personal Financial Management | Yodlee (http://yodlee.com/)

No... I've never used Mint Budget Tool. It was out there when I was looking but for some reason I picked Yodlee.

[l2ridehd]

I also checked out Yodlee and I like the features better on mint. Although Yodlee has a couple benefits that look nice as well. Just as an fyi, Yodlee has been hacked a couple times. Not sure if there was any impact to users or not. And maybe mint and others have been hacked as well, guess that's the type of information I am looking for.

Does Yodlee work on the iPad and iPhone? My biggest downfall in the past has been the failure to enter what I spent in the system accurately. I just never remember I ordered that second glass of wine at Garvinos. Being able to do it real time on the iPhone is a huge plus for me.

[angiefox10]

I also checked out Yodlee and I like the features better on mint. Although Yodlee has a couple benefits that look nice as well. Just as an fyi, Yodlee has been hacked a couple times. Not sure if there was any impact to users or not. And maybe mint and others have been hacked as well, guess that's the type of information I am looking for.

Does Yodlee work on the iPad and iPhone? My biggest downfall in the past has been the failure to enter what I spent in the system accurately. I just never remember I ordered that second glass of wine at Garvinos. Being able to do it real time on the iPhone is a huge plus for me.

One of the reasons I chose Yodlee was because it was said to be one of the safest out there so of course I am concerned when someone says it was hacked. As soon as I read this I went out to see what I could find and this is the only thing I found on Yodlee and hacking.

Personal finance - Purse tightening-Curb your spending (http://www.fm.co.za/Article.aspx?id=163938)

This article was written 2/2/12. These were the reports I was reading when I chose Yodlee.

Good luck with whatever you choose!

[angiefox10]

I also checked out Yodlee and I like the features better on mint. Although Yodlee has a couple benefits that look nice as well. Just as an fyi, Yodlee has been hacked a couple times. Not sure if there was any impact to users or not. And maybe mint and others have been hacked as well, guess that's the type of information I am looking for.

Does Yodlee work on the iPad and iPhone? My biggest downfall in the past has been the failure to enter what I spent in the system accurately. I just never remember I ordered that second glass of wine at Garvinos. Being able to do it real time on the iPhone is a huge plus for me.


I became so concerned about the "hacking" aspect I forgot to answer your questions.

Yes.. Yodlee workds on the iPad and iPhone. I have used it on the road several times. However, I do think you are talking about entering cash into the budget. I use my credit card for EVERYTHING so I can keep records and earn miles! So I can't tell you if you can enter spending "real time" on Yodlee as well as Mint.

I did find these articles....

Online Financial Management Tools: Mint Vs Yodlee (http://xnotion.hubpages.com/hub/Online-Financial-Management-Tools-Mint-Vs-Yodlee)

Review of Yodlee vs. Mint | Sunk Costs Are Irrelevant (http://sunkcostsareirrelevant.com/2011/01/review-of-yodlee-vs-mint/)

[l2ridehd]

Thanks Angie. Good information. And it was several years ago I discovered the hacking issue at Yodlee. Probably was 10 years ago.

"Davel says the service uses US-based Yodlee, which has never been hacked in 10 years and has 30m users, to compile the account data. Yodlee is also the service provider to mint.com, a similar personal financial management site in the US."

Interesting that Yodlee provides service to mint, I will have to study Yodlee more. Good to know that it works with an iPhone. I also use credit cards for most things, b ut if under $20 I usually just pay cash. The biggest issue I have with credit cards in they all have way to many charges that the card record gives me no clue what the spending was for. Every time I investigate one, it was correct, but sometimes they are so esoteric that it drives me crazy.

[EdV]

Don’t do it. You’d be putting all your financial institution passwords on some computer somewhere out on the Internet. Although the service you use may have the best intentions, it only takes one unscrupulous employee to peel off millions of bank account passwords and store them on a thumb drive that slips into a shirt pocket. It’s been done before and it will happen again. Don’t be a victim.

The only system I would trust is one that installs directly onto my own computer and stores the passwords in a highly encrypted database that is stored on my computer.

[angiefox10]

...

[EdV]

So because any single financial institution is potentially vulnerable to being hacked, you’re saying you might as well put all of the passwords for all of your financial institutions in one place that you heard was a reliable company. And furthermore, because you don’t trust yourself to secure your own computer properly, you’re willing to hand over all those passwords to a third party outfit that will put it in the big Internet cloud where it’s accessible to millions of hackers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Folks, if you don’t feel confident about securing your own computer (and I can understand that), ask around and hire a local pro to come in and secure it for you. They should have the tools to test your system for vulnerabilities and correct them. Change the administrator’s password for them to use while they work on your system and then reset it after they’re done. You should not have any passwords or sensitive information sitting in the clear on your computer.

Never use the built in Windows “Remember Me” feature to save login information for your banks. Instead get a password saver that will keep them in an AES encrypted database on your computer. RoboForm (http://www.roboform.com/how-it-works/overview) is probably the most popular program for doing this. If you use a system like this, be sure to use a strong and unique password for the database itself. Wheter your system is hacked or stolen, your passwords are locked in an encrypted database that can’t be compromised.

If you make on-line purchases, get a Bank of America credit card and use their ShopSafe system. You just enter the amount of the purchase and it generates a unique card number that is good for one time only. It is useless to anyone else that gets a hold of it later. The charges will appear on your statement as though you had used the fixed number. There may be other banks that offer a similar system, but I’m not aware of any.

Don’t lean into the punch and don’t trust all your passwords to a third party. However, if you’ve encrypted all of it on your computer, you can use a third party system to back up your files on-line because the files are useless to anyone that hacks into them.

[angiefox10]

...

[Midge538]

For solid password protection, most computer geeks use 'One Password.' You can read up on it from the link below and then google for some reviews.

https://agilebits.com/onepassword

[jblum315]

No, I use an app called My Budget Planner, which is just a tool for setting up a budget and trying to stick to it. It doesn't have any of my passwords.
For online shopping I use Paypal.

[rjm1cc]

Does anyone have experience using mint.com? It is a tool that links your bank accounts, investment accounts, credit cards and other financial accounts and uses that information to build spending history, going forward budgets, money management and debt management. It appears to be a good tool that is easy to use, works on PC or iPad technology and seems to be secure. My concern is linking all those type accounts to a single application. What I like is being able to enter information real time through your iPad or iPhone.

Anyone use it, tested it, had good or bad results?Mint was purchased by Quicken a few years ago so they should have the resources to have a fairly secure system. I use Quicken which is not free but my passwords stay on my computer. If you use Quicken figure on upgrading to the latest version every three years. You should also be able to buy last years version at a very steep discount. Just do a Google search.

[EdV]

Angie, I’m not sure what it was I said that seems to have offended you but the fact is that sometimes the truth hurts no matter how you word it.

When you make statements like “If someone can hack a computer, they can figure out an encryption” it’s obvious to me that you are not very informed on this subject. I’m sorry if it offends you but the fact speaks for itself.

If you knew what I did for a living the past forty years, you’d understand why I can’t let financially dangerous advice to others go unchallenged.

[angiefox10]

has an encryption ever been cracked

Interesting reading..... :popcorn:

[EdV]

War buffs certainly remember the cracking of the German Enigma Machine.

[l2ridehd]

The answer to that question Angie is yes. Actually a lot have been cracked. The only safe code is a single use code. Use it once and toss it. There are now computer encryption codes that use that same methodology. However not in any commercial application yet. Many are quite strong and getting better all the time as computer capability grows. Of course as computers get better, they also get better at breaking them.

If you had two disks, and only two, each with a million different identical encryption deep codes on them and you had one and I had one. Then we each have a set of access codes to those million codes. Then you use a separate and unique communication method to say "I sent you document XX which was created and decoded using code ABCDE, then once used you delete that code and never use it again, it is impossible to break. Everything else can be broken.

[The Village Girl]

A

If you knew what I did for a living the past forty years, you’d understand why I can’t let financially dangerous advice to others go unchallenged.

Yes, young man, please share with us what you did for forty years that we should understand. :)

[EdV]

Actually, the Germans were using the scheme you describe for their infamous Enigma machines which they believed were unbreakable. But the Germans let their guard down in several areas. One of these was the fact that every day, German U-boats would send Enigma encrypted weather reports from u-boats back to headquarters which were intercepted by the Brits. This created enough of an opening to allow the Brits to get their foot into because those weather reports contained predictable information that could be (i.e. cloudy, rain, highs, lows) and was used to aid in cracking the cipher.

As for an encryption algorithm being impenetrable, most extreme mathematicians would say there is no such animal. But to understand that concept, you have to understand the difference between “theoretical” cracking and “practical” cracking. Theoretically breaking a cipher is describing in mathematical terms how a cipher could be broken through repetitive iterations of a formula. Once the genius mathematicians agree that the formula for the crack is sound they then have to apply the practical side of things. Using the most powerful computers in the world how long would it take to repeat those iterations until the code is cracked.

AES encryption (used by our government and available to you) has been cracked theoretically by a group of Eastern European Mathematicians. But here’s the practical side of it:

According to the crackers themselves, “On a trillion machines, that each could test a billion keys per second, it would take more than two billion years to recover an AES-128 key. Because of these huge complexities, the attack has no practical implications on the security of user data."

So encrypt your sensitive files and passwords with AES for now and don’t worry too much about it. Of course if you past a sticky note with the key to the AES file, it’s like putting a steel door on a pup tent.

[The Village Girl]

If you knew what I did for a living the past forty years, you’d understand why I can’t let financially dangerous advice to others go unchallenged.

So.... What you are saying is for the past 40 years you were a German Spy? :coolsmiley:

[EdV]

Uh, no if anything I would have been an American spy or a British spy, not a German spy. There is a difference.

[The Village Girl]

Uh, no if anything I would have been an American spy or a British spy, not a German spy. There is a difference.

So.... Mr. Ed, What did you do for 40 years? Do you suppose that you could,maybe, by chance, be a little more to the point. Remember, you were the one who brought it up. It seemed to be important to you in the previous thread when you were going on about something or other.

You weren't a German Spy.... Soooooo..... CIA?

Remember, first liar doesn't stand a chance!

[pauld315]

So.... Mr. Ed, What did you do for 40 years? Do you suppose that you could,maybe, by chance, be a little more to the point. Remember, you were the one who brought it up. It seemed to be important to you in the previous thread when you were going on about something or other.

You weren't a German Spy.... Soooooo..... CIA?

Remember, first liar doesn't stand a chance!

Shouldn't push anybody for an answer to that. Some folks just cannot divulge what they did due to legal reasons especially if it had to do with national security.