Yodlee Hehoo

Something has got me singing this past year or so. I have been using a web site called Yodlee to assist me in keeping track of my financial accounts. The site is an aggregator of information from various accounts. I can’t actually do anything with the money in the accounts through Yodlee, but I can view, sort, and group transactions from bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, student loans, mortgages, and just about every other type of money-related account that involves me. The site can even keep a relatively accurate estimated home value (by tying into Zillow.com) in order to calculate my net worth. The only thing missing from the picture is the values of my assets around the house (only eBay knows what that is). There are also many useful features, such as charts, graphs, and email messages that warn you of all sorts of things that you might want to know about (such as a withdrawal over a certain amount, or a minimum balance alert).

I personally use Yodlee to send me an email every week that gives me a summary of my bank account balance, just to make sure that everything is going according to plan. I have done searches through my transactions for a particular merchant, and it returns any purchases made to them through both my credit cards and my bank account. I often give a brief scan to the balance of all of my accounts just to make sure that no irregular activity is going on, especially for those accounts that I don’t use very often.

Yodlee is very secure, requiring authentication to log in, with strong encryption, and periodic requests to enter a password. Even with all this in place, your account numbers and passwords are still hidden from view, and I don’t see how anyone could do any harm even if they did get your account (although I’m sure there is something, somehow).

Bottom line, I love the site, and if you do most of your transactions via a credit or debit card, it is a handy way to archive and organize your financial transactions in one place.