Keeping organized (Quicken, Mint, etc.)
 

Interested in learning how some of the Pros out there are keeping track of their often many credit cards, programs, etc. I currently use Quicken, but am likely to consider moving to Mint because it provides a good Android/iPhone interface.

When you sign up for a new card, do you have a particular strategy towards keeping all of your account information organized? Account numbers, associated rewards programs, what's left, what's available, etc.... Some of the recent discussion about spreadsheets has been good for tracking flights/planned churn/etc... but now I want to really focus on the day-to-day aspect- making sure I hit my monthly payments on time, making sure I cancel fee-based cards at 10 months, etc. Awardwallet.com is great for tracking the awards, but I want to really stay on-top-of the credit card aspect as well. Ex- even though they're spread out across many cards, keeping all purchases categorized & organized in such a way that a budget still makes sense.

Here are some of the 'big rules' I'm looking to implement:

• Have a good plan for how each spending target will be met before applying
• Use each card only for it's intended purpose
• Ensure online account access is set up for all cards for Mint/Quicken integration
• Upon receipt of a new card, note when the card should be cancelled
• Try to limit to 1 main spending card for day-to-day purchases (could be missing out a bit here.. maybe I'm lazy- Chase Sapphire covers a lot!)
• Auto-pay from Checking as necessary

How do the more experienced of you handle this stuff?

- John

I use Pageonce, Pocket Money, and Award Wallet on my iPad and iPhone.

Pocket Money works great for me, but I have to manually enter all my transactions and then reconcile them with Pageonce after they've cleared. It takes a little to,e, but if youre going to be using multiple credit cards thats how ot goes.

I like how it works like a simple accounting ledger. It helps with meeting a minimum spend on a card because I can show a future transfer from my checking for the required spend and it will show me how much I need to spend still.

I still use a spreadsheet to track application history and the vitals for my current and past cards. Also to track expected awards and their anticipated posting dates.

I find that Mint doesn't do a great job with credit card churning. It still reminds me about cards I canceled long ago, and doesn't refresh with new accounts.

I have accounts with Fidelity, and I use Fidelity's Full View. I set up reminders in Outlook for things I have to do. But I am not dependent on a mobile device for any of this.

If you click "Edit" on the overview page, it will list all of your accounts. Then you can expand the details of the canceled card and set the status to closed.

Thanks - that's a great tip, and I've cleaned up a lot already.

In the case of my Chase cards, is there any way to know which line item correlates to a specific card account, if the balance is zero? I have several that I've canceled, but one is still active with a zero balance, so I want to leave that one on.

I believe this is a re-branded version of Yodlee MoneyCenter. I'm not aware of any benefit to using any of the several private label versions because the generic version is free and your account persists even if you (for example) close your Fidelity account.

This said, Yodlee's customer service is about what you would expect for a completely free product and their emphasis is on adding features rather than making the core functions more reliable.

> making sure I hit my monthly payments on time,
> making sure I cancel fee-based cards at 10 months, etc

I use Google Calendar (GC) and Google Tasks for this.

I use GC when my statement arrives. Then I split my bill into four payments per week which is typically 28 days out of 30 days to pay in full. Then I use Google Tasks with sub-tasks as a way to manage each account's due dates such as meeting minimum spend by a certain date, 0% APR ends, or special bonuses are ending. Now that payment due dates are the same day each month, its gotten much easier to manage payments. I like to pay all my bills quickly, but when you sometimes front load your card to meet minimum payments, managing your cash flow is essential to avoid interest payments. :)

I couldn't find anything that did exactly what I wanted, and my spreadsheet was getting overloaded, so I wrote a small app for organizing offers/cards/churns and keeping track of where I am on my spend reqs. Shows me how much I have to spend, how much is left, status and dates of all apps, what rewards I'll get, etc.

For actual expenses and budgeting, I just dump the cards into Quicken along with my permanent accounts, then close/hide them once the spend is completed.

That's pretty impressive. I can already see how my spreadsheets are getting a bit cumbersome!

This is the strategy I plan on taking as well, with also keeping things in Mint.

2 other items I think I'm adding to my strategy:

1) Aligning credit card due dates. Even though most due dates are likely not important due to auto-pay and overall non-use once spending limits have been hit, there's something nice about the symmetry here. Seems to me most card issuers will set your due date to whatever you want it to be up-front.

2) Labeling the back of each card. I'm using a simple return address label on the back of the card to record what the bonus, spend limit, & required dates are.

Best financial program or app to manage all your credit cards in one place?
 

After reading so many different articles and opinions on the net (googling!), I just couldn't decide weather it is a wise idea or not to put all my CCs info into a website/app to track all my financials in one place..

What do you recommend? and what's your experience with any of these programs?


I found these (but please feel free to include any other programs):
- Page Once
- Mint.com
- Manilla

or the old fashioned Excel spreadsheets??

I use Mint- it's great.

I used to use Mint, but they kept having connection problems with Barclays (transactions didn't update for 3 months) and when I would get a new personal AmEx card, their system couldn't detect it, so I'd have to "add" that account again.

I switched to Yodlee about 8 months ago and like it much better. Slightly less intuitive, but the points and miles game isn't perfectly simple either. Big vouch for Yodlee from me.

Same here. Yodlee has better functionality than Mint, especially the ability to enter future transactions and and scheduled transactions, and then get a running balance - including future balance. That is a crucial feature for me, as an avowed manufactured spender, since I make payments on my credit cards several times a month, and I want to me able to see what my checking account balance will be next week if I make a large payment towards a credit card today.

However, Mint just offered support for Bluebird, which is nice. But again, without the ability to enter scheduled/future transactions, it's not useable enough.

I'm hoping Yodlee offers Bluebird support soon!

Actually Mint does allow you create new transactions so you can enter scheduled/future transaction. Click on Transactions and then you should see an add a transaction button on the top right hand just above the amount column.