FREE Financial Software – Quicken Online

My new year’s resolution is to no longer be broke in America in 2009, and one of the steps towards that direction is to keep track of my finances better.  The late fees and insufficient fund fees were bleeding me financially, and I just got so tired of juggling the bills. The insanity has to stop.  I am not any good with paper, so I had to find a software that will help me do that.

It is past midnight and I had been asleep for over two hours when I was woken up and felt the urge to go online and search for Quicken.  This is very strange in itself as I know what Quicken is and where to get it, and had no reason to Google it at all.  The first website displayed by Google was Intuit’s Quicken site, and lo and behold, the word “FREE” caught my eye.  “Quicken Online – Now FREE”, it screamed.  I had to check for more information to make sure it wasn’t free only for the trial period.  As far as I know, it is not a trial account and there doesn’t seem to be any hidden charges.  If you have evidence that it isn’t so, please let me know!

So I signed up, all the while expecting to be accosted with “Aha! Now here’s the catch!”  So far I haven’t encountered any.  What freaked me out was it asked for the login and password of my bank account, and I had to make sure that I was still on Intuit’s Quicken website by checking the URL.  Once I provided that, Quicken contacted my bank’s server and loaded all my transactions.  Just like that, everything was in place.

I am excited with the Quicken Online.  I love that I can access it from any computer with internet connectivity.  It seems easy to use, and it has financial tools for budgeting and setting up financial goals.  I was also pleasantly surprised that Quicken Online comes with Quicken Beam, a beta service that sends alerts to your mobile phone.  It can send you your account balance, your last 5 transactions, when your balance dips below your set amount, etc. 

If you have never used a financial tracking software before, now is a great time to start.  Get your free Quicken Online account now!