Posted on: June 15, 2009 by Matt
For the past couple of months I have been looking to find a piece of software that would allow me to manage my money in one central location. I looked at Mint.com but was disappointed to discover that they do not offer services for my bank. I also had used Microsoft Money in the past but it looks like Microsoft will be discontinuing Money later this month. The copy of Money I have is from 2005 and is on my desktop computer that now lives in my girlfriend’s office. I do not spend a lot of time working in her space and therefore (due to the OEM license) do not have a copy on my laptop. I began to search for alternatives by looking down the Quicken product line and discovered the free option of Quicken Online.
I created an account and figured I would give it the quickest test I could think of: trying to add my checking account. My checking account is at a small local bank and the folks over at Mint.com do not have my bank as an option for adding the account. Despite submitting a request to add the bank nothing has happend over the past couple of months that I have tried. Considering my previous luck I did not expect that Quicken Online would have access to my bank but when I started to set the account up I was pleasantly surprised to see my bank listed!
I went through the process and set up all of my accounts without issue and began to dig into the product a little bit. Overall the product is very similar to the offering from Mint.com but appears to have less in the way of sponsored services / ads. The interface is clean and intuitive and offers most features that you need to manage your finances on a basic level (exactly what I was looking for). The service offers the ability to view all transactions for all accounts lumped together or for individual accounts only, trends for spending, income and savings and a “goals” section to plan a budget. Additionally – the Quicken service offers the ability to manually add items like bills to your accounts which appeared to be missing from Mint.com’s offering.
Overall – I am fairly impressed by the quality of the “free” service offered by Quicken. They have access to all the information that I need to have rolled up in one place and the ability to view that data in several different ways. For me it seems like the most cost effective and robust choice available and I will probably use this as my new personal finance software (for now anyway). The ability to have access in multiple locations and the broad range of features (including SMS alerts) will be enough to hold me as a customer for a while.
Posted on: June 10, 2009 by Matt
Every month my cell phone bill drops into my email. I log into my provider’s web site and pay the bill via the online payment options - rarely do I look at the details of the bill because the price falls in line with what I expect to pay. However last week my girlfriend reminded me that she needs a new cell phone (as I accidentally washed her old phone) and asked if we could look online to see what was available. When we looked we discovered that we were both eligible for free upgrades and opted to take advantage of the new phone offers. The deal resulted in each of us getting a new cell phone with free activation and free overnight shipping – the total was about $550 in free stuff with a two year commitment to the provider.
On Monday the new phones arrived and activated without issue. While I was in the process of getting the phones activated I decided to run through our plan and see what was offered and if there were other plans that might help us save a little money. The new phones are designed to make text messaging easier and we were hoping to use the feature to stay in touch better. The problem was that I thought we had to add text messaging to our plan in order to do so at an additional cost of $20 per month. However – while looking at the phone add-ons I noticed that my girlfriend’s phone appeared to have a text add-on as part of the family plan but neither of the other two phones included this add-on. I reviewed a bit further and noticed that she appears to have unlimited text messaging based on the usage details whereas my phone was showing $0.20 per message.
After calling customer service and telling them what I had discovered they were happy to add the family text add-on to the other phones in the plan as well as adjust the bill for any text charges for the past 2 months. So by simply running a basic audit of our plan and phones we were able to:
- Get an additional feature tied to all of our phones saving us $20 per month.
- Get $5 or so back in credit to the account for previous charges.
- Confirmed that we are getting the best rate for our usage requirements.
In order to keep up on making sure that we are still getting the most bang for our buck I will probably plan on running an annual audit of our cell phone plan.
Posted on: May 27, 2009 by Matt
Last week I posted asking if anyone else out there used a Roku device with their Netflix Account as my girlfriend and I were considering ordering one for the house. I know it seems counter productive to complain about being in debt and then look to order a device that costs $100 to watch movies. The justification for us was in a decrease in trips to the video store when we no longer had Netflix movies at home to watch. Most of our entertainment at home is based on watching movies and I am all for finding ways to get more out of my Netflix account. So based on a comment by a reader we went ahead and ordered the device.
Anyway – justifications aside – we got our Roku player via FedEx yesterday afternoon. I made a quick attempt at lunch to set the device up without luck and figured I would have to troubleshoot my firewall before getting the device to connect properly. After work I made another attempt and was able to get the device working by allowing ICMP PING traffic on the interface that I was attaching the Roku to. I guess being an IT consultant comes in handy sometimes around the house as well…
After getting the device connected to the internet (which should normally be pretty easy) the setup was straight forward and intuitive. We got the device up and running and have watched a couple of videos on it already and think it is one of the coolest things we have ever purchased. The video quality was surprisingly good from our wireless network and the playback of the Netflix instant view items was great. My girlfriend and I are really excited by the number of documentaries available and also the amount of programming available for the kids to watch as well.
Overall – I am pretty impressed with the little device and look forward to using it for quite some time. So if you were at all curious – I would give the little device a great recommendation so long as you have an adequate broadband internet connection.
Posted on: May 18, 2009 by Matt
Last night my girlfriend and I were hanging out and I happened to be on the computer (imagine that) while she was organizing some of her beading materials. I was reviewing our Netflix queue as we had just returned a couple of movies and I wanted to see what we had coming in next and noticed the “Watch Instantly On Your TV” button. The concept is basically that you can hook a device up to your home broadband internet connection as well as to your television and stream the video from your Netflix “Watch Instantly” queue to your TV. In order to do so you need a compatible device such as the Roku Digital Video Player or an XBox 360 that you hook up to your internet connection.
I did a bit of research and discovered that there are about 12,000 titles available from Netflix with the ability to stream to a device and the Roku device supports Amazon’s Video on Demand service as well. They do note that the quality of the video will depend on the quality of your internet connection so I checked out the quality on a home computer connected wireless to our network. The result was a pretty good picture that I would not complain about for having the convenience of grabbing movies instantly. The Roku device has a built-in wifi adapter and the computer that I tested from was pretty close to the upstairs bedroom which means the signal should be about the same.
Overall, considering the $99 price tag – I think that this may be a decent way for us to get more use out of our Netflix account and curb our additional movie rental habit. We tend to go out and rent movies if we do not have one we want to watch from our Netflix list and while Red Box is good we do tend to keep the movies for more than a single day. My girlfriend and I discussed and both thought it was a pretty good idea (she also threw in we could get a TV that we can see better as well – ours is a little old and dim). So in addition to reading reviews I thought I would ask everyone else out there. Do you use a Roku or similar system to stream video from Netflix to your television? If you do I would love to hear how it works for you!
Posted on: April 14, 2009 by Matt
While surfing around the web the other day I came across a kind of neat site (www.webhostingchoice.com) that allows you to compare web hosting companies against each other in order to determine what company will best suit your needs. I found the site particularly interesting as my day job is in the IT consulting field and a lot of clients have various questions about web hosting.
In the past I have had to take a list of requirements from the client and review different hosting providers for the services the client requires. I have also had instances in the past where I have wanted to set up web hosting for personal reasons (like this blog) and looked at different companies to find one that suits my needs.
However – webhostingchoice.com now offers a place that you can quickly and easily compare multiple web hosting providers all in one location. There are breakdowns for different service offerings based on categories such as ASP hosting, Blog hosting, ECommerce hosting, dedicated hosting and even green hosting. Each hosting provider that is ranked on webhostingchoice.com has a full review with comments and ratings for the service offering which allows you to easily check out all the major contenders at once.
The format reminds me of comparing credit cards, car insurance or different travel options online and is pretty easy to use. I think I will be browsing around the site a bit more and doing a little bit of research to see if I can find a way to maybe save a few dollars on my web hosting. I am happy with my current provider but am always game to save a few dollars where I can.
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