For the past few months I have been searching for a free financial tool to help us keep track of our debt payments and income. I considered Mint and Ready For Zero, but didn’t want to release the account details necessary for these tools to work. However, I stumbled upon Planwise one day and it seems to be exactly what I was looking for.
Planwise is an online tool that helps you to plan out your financial future. As I explained in a guest post on Reach Financial Independence, my wife and I haven’t been very good at planning out our finances. It’s definitely a work in progress, but I’m really liking the results so far.
What is Planwise?
Planwise is a free, simple to use personal finance tool that makes money planning easy. It doesn’t require any bank account or personal information, which is one of my favorite aspects of the tool.
There are several aspects of your finances that Planwise allows you to track:
- Bank account balances.
- Income.
- Spending.
- Debt.
Once you have completed the various categories, you can start making various plans.
A plan is something that you intend to accomplish. Whether it’s saving for a major purchase, or paying off a debt. The best part with plans is that you’re not limited to just one. You can create various plans to see how your different goals will affect your financial situation.
The Cons
Because Planwise is free and doesn’t require any account information, it is a little more limited in what it can do.
First: I have not been able to find an option for retirement savings. Therefore, you need to use a different tool for these calculations.
Second: Because it doesn’t track your retirement savings, you’re also unable to calculate net worth. This isn’t an issue for me though, because I’ll still use Excel to track this information.
Third: Because it is not directly tied to your bank/credit card accounts you must manually enter in your savings, income, debt payoff. This is a trade-off that I’m willing to make to keep me from giving my personal account information away.
I’m still experimenting with Planwise, but so far it’s exactly what I was looking for. No personal information and the interface isn’t complicated. I can’t wait to utilize this tool in helping us to track and plan our financial path out of debt and beyond.
Have you tried Planwise? What’s your opinion on it? How do you track your expenses? Mint? Ready for Zero? Excel?
PlanWise sounds like a Mint-light. It would probably give you a good plan, but it wouldn’t be great about updating that plan as you go. The most powerful thing that Mint does for me is keep track of my net income and net worth and then store it for years. That’s what I enjoy looking at when I log in. Of course, just having a good plan is a great start for most folks.
CashRebel recently posted..The Economics of Sick-Days and Snow-Days
That is the tradeoff with not being required to enter banking information. I didn’t like how Mint made me enter an account before I could do anything.
Good news: Vincent and the gang are constantly adding to the tool so that you’ll be able to more easily add data. They’re also quick to answer questions, too. I’ve stumbled many times using Planwise, but it gets better every day.
AverageJoe recently posted..How I Learned to Avoid Bone-Headed Financial Moves
Thanks for the 2 cents Joe! We are still working on more and more features. Just wait and see. =D
Ryan @ Planwise recently posted..Actual Cash Value
That’s great to hear Joe. I’m pretty excited to be able to plan my finances without having to fiddle with excel too much.
Thanks for the tip, i’ll have to give it a look as I am always interested in finding new tools to help me manage my finances.
Glen @ Monster Piggy Bank recently posted..Forex Currency Trading Basics For Beginners – Part 1
I’m with you Glen. I’m for anything that can help to make tracking my finances easier, as long as it doesn’t require a lot of bank information.
Good review Justin! I’ve heard good things about them, though have heard some of the same issues as well. We track all of our stuff manually. I trust it much more that way and have done it that way for so long it works great for us.
John S @ Frugal Rules recently posted..Things That Make Me Scratch My Head
I’m going track my net worth and retirement goals manually. However, I plan on using this for debt repayment and savings.
Thank you for bringing us this financial tool. Actually this is new to me. Promise, I will try Planwise for our family financial planning.
My Wealth Desire recently posted..How To Make Money From Shrinking Japan Economy
I’ve been meaning to try planwise for a LONG time now. I currently enter all our expenses into an Excel spreadsheet I made. I like it because it helps us trend our expenses, though since buying the house we haven’t had many “regular” months.
DC @ Young Adult Money recently posted..Why I am reconsidering getting my MBA
I know what you mean about “regular” months. I find that we have fewer of those with our house as well.
I enjoy Planwise. It is good for those that don’t want to sync to their bank accounts. I used to be a part of Mint, but lately dropped it because of security concerns.
Grayson @ Debt Roundup recently posted..Why Do Sales Make Us Irrational Shoppers?
Security concerns are a big thing for me as well. We had one credit card compromised and it was a headache. I couldn’t imagine if all of our accounts were.
Thanks for the review! You pretty much hit it spot on. We are working on a new feature Import from mint, which allows you to automatically import your expenses from Mint into Planwise.
You mentioned we don’t have anything set up for retirement savings and such. We have plans to add support for multiple accounts this year, along with some other cool stuff.
If you bloggers would be interested, you can actually partner with Planwise please, feel free to reach out and we can discuss the details( there aren’t much really)
Cheers,
RP
Ryan @ Planwise recently posted..Actual Cash Value
Ryan, thanks for the response. I’m can’t wait to see the new stuff that you have in store for us.
I track my expenses with excel and quicken. I’ll make it a point to look at planwise. I’m like you, I would like to use osme of the tools out there but will NOT use a tool that I have to put account information in. I’m convinced that anyone of them will get hacked eventually, it’s not a matter of if, bit a matter of when!
Jose recently posted..Estate Planning – Our Return From Miami
I share your feelings Jose. That is the reason I chose not to use Mint. Planwise doesn’t require any information other than financial numbers.
Thanks for the great review Justin! As @AverageJoe said, we are continual adding in new features and have plans for more updates down the road (such as optional bank feed integration).
Thanks Kira.
I can’t wait to see what your team adds in the future.
Sweet. I will have to check it out. I didn’t sign up for Mint because I didn’t want all of my personal and account information together in one place.
Holly@ClubThrifty recently posted..The U.S. Healthcare System and Your Finances
That’s preciously why I like what Planwise has to offer. Mint asking me for all my banking information right after signing in the first time felt like going too far on a first date.