Financial Software: 5 Best

If you are looking for financial software, these 5 best are worth taking a look at. There are many financial software applications and products offered online.  Whether for budgeting for taxes, many applications have tried to make the process easier and more intuitive. Each program does have a learning curve, and users may find themselves spending time linking and syncing accounts, categorizing transactions, and learning the various quarks of the programs. However many of the services offered online are free. Here are the top five financial programs and services.

1. Yodlee is a great and free application for managing a budget. They are known as a financial aggregator.  You link your accounts to their system and they automatically sync your transactions. Their program tries to assign the correct categories to each transaction, but you may need to login and manually alter a few if they are incorrectly categorized. Then you can see your budget laid out from month to month. The longer you use Yodlee, the more you will see your budget trends from month to month and year to year.
2. Mint is a variation on Yodlee, and is perhaps a scaled down version. It makes tasks such as budgeting easier, and syncs with financial institutions in a similar way as Yodlee.
3. Wesabe is similar to mint and Yodlee in that it aggregates financial information and gives you access to budget tools. The difference in Wesabe is that they have setup a “community” approach to finances. Users can give other users tips, and information on better budgeting. You can browse forums, discussions, and chat about financial advice.
4. Turbo Tax is very popular for maintaining and submitting tax information. You must pay to use Turbo Tax, but can try it out for free. It has different pay levels based on needs. For those that feel overwhelmed by doing their own taxes, Turbo tax online makes it a step-by-step process.
5. Quicken is another popular tool for maintaining financial information. Unlike Yodlee, it is installed on the PC. It can link with financial institutions in a similar way as Yodlee and can link to Turbo Tax. If your computer is at risk for viruses or failure, you should backup your Quicken often however as the information can be lost.