frugal underground

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There are a limited number of good, free personal finance programs available, and less that are web-based and platform independent (meaning I can recommend them to anyone). So it was with great interest that I read a press release today announcing a new online personal finance budgeting application: MySpendingPlan.com.

A first glance at the site was promising: it’s attractive, simple, and provided some enticing information. Top on my list?

MySpendingPlan.com is budgeting software that uses a modernized version of the “envelope system” that fits today’s lifestyle and home budgets.

I am a big fan of the envelopes concept, just because it’s forward-thinking decision-making rather than after-the-fact “guess that’s where we spent it” reporting. We use envelopes-style budgeting in my household (though my husband insists on referring to it as “funds” and “accounts”). The only software out there that I’m aware of currently promoting this kind of system is Mvelopes, who annoyed me both with their crappy Java interface and their spendy, monthly payment plan. No thanks, I want to save money. So free seemed exciting.

I signed up and waited impatiently for my activation email (which came soon enough), and then logged in and started playing. A few things that got my attention:

• The attractive front page design carries through the whole site, and really, the whole site is very aesthetically appealing. Lots of rounded edges and clear information.
• The site seemed slow. I eventually realized that it was because I had a fair amount of other stuff open on my computer, and MySpendingPlan.com is something of a resource hog, at least for brief spurts. I closed down all of the other sites I was looking at to free up some resources, and then the site ran better, but even still, it pegs my processor for a second or so with each page load.
• Because of the speed at which my computer was processing the information (before I closed my other applications), I had some confusion with the boxes and input forms that pop up when you leave your mouse over a button. I kept clicking on the button (not over and over, but when the page would load, I’d click it once, the page would reload, I’d think I’d done something wrong and attempt the click again…) without any results. Eventually I figured out that I had to let my mouse hover there for a good 10 seconds, and then a form would pop up. This improved after I got rid of the other programs that were open.
• There are various tweaky user interface issues. Like when the form-box finally does pop up, you have to keep your mouse over it (even when you’re typing) or else it disappears. You can still type (which seems very odd) but you can’t see what you’re typing or anything else to do with the form until you mouse over the correct button again… then it’s back, complete with whatever you typed in the interim.
• There is some attractive use of dynamic design, like the pop up boxes. I’d actually like to see it in more places, especially given the hang time when loading a new page. It seems like it would make sense to use it throughout the application, but I’d rather see it not used at all if the tweakiness can’t be resolved.
• My biggest complaint of all (and yet the least relevant) is the lack of support for percentage-based budgeting, which I’ve ranted about before. I can’t fault them too much, because no one else offers it either, but it is the single thing that will keep me from recommending this to people we do budget counselling with (or from using it myself).

Bottom line? This is decent software. It’s attractive, reasonably intuitive (though I did have to pull up the manual to figure out how to enter transactions—it was on the screen but I missed it, even after looking for it), and probably an excellent place to start for those who are just figuring out that budgeting is a good thing. I can’t use it without the percentage option (we have written our own software as a result of this lack in all others) but if you’re in the market, and can tolerate a few growing pains, this is definitely worth having a look at.

Update (January 12, 2006):
I wrote to the authors with a suggestion for percentage based budgeting… and they wrote me back! Their answer is very encouraging:

Thank you very much for taking the time to write. I think that you have a great idea and I will be incorporating it into our next release. I have an idea on how to implement it and would like your opinion when I’m done.

Also with our software, we have the capability to allow users to share spending plan templates with others if they wish. If you like, you can create a spending plan template and share it with the people reading your blog or church group. Let me know if you’re interested.

I’m very excited about the first part, of course, and the second part has me intrigued. Since we do the financial mentor thing in a church setting, we incorporate tithe and offering into the budgets. This template idea would really make that easy to implement in a convenient way. Using the templates, I could see various financial professionals and even blog writers like us providing an optimized budget template for their adherants.

Probably the most encouraging thing about the email, though, is that the developers actually care about how useful the product is. I like that a lot!

Update (January 14, 2006):
Okay, I am officially impressed. Two days ago, as mentioned above, Mark, the developer, replied to my “percentage-based budget” suggestion and said he’d put it in the next release. This evening, he emailed me again (yes, on a Saturday night):

I’ve incorporated your suggestion into our software and I invite you to try it out when you have a chance.

Wowwee! I am astonished at how quickly this solution was created and implemented. I’m now recommending this product without reservations, in spite of the tweaky UI issues, because you can learn to use the UI, but it’s impossible to find another product of this quality offering this feature (expect a future post detailing the process of getting your account set up, with step by step instructions). Besides, with developers this responsive, the UI issues may very well be a non-issue very shortly.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 6:41 pm and is tagged budgeting, internet, planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.