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August 26, 2005

Tracking Personal Spending & Online MMA Bank

As we do some personal financial planning, I wanted to share the results of any in-depth research I do so you can profit from it too.

I always wonder exactly how much we spend on various categories of miscellaneous stuff. We use Quicken, but we never enter minor expanses or save receipts. Well, we just got a Neat Receipts. It automatically scans any receipts and doubles as a full size 600dpi scanner. The software is very intellegent (optical character recognition, auto-rotate, internet receipt recognition database). It auto categorizes things like food vs clothes vs bills, and can tell what card you used to pay for something. It can sort by Rebecca's vs my spending, and feeds data to Excel, Quicken, MS Money, or QuickBooks. The portable scanner is a tiny thin thing, but large enough to feed an 8.5" paper of any length. Word of warning: It IS a color scanner, but the device is NOT good enough for photos. It feels like 10 bit color or something.

I went in search of an account to keep minimally funded to cover business expenses and receive business reimbursements, to separate those from my personal account. I put in some buffer money, and long term, this buffer amount should be the average balance. I pay off the corporate card from it, and receive my employer's expense reimbursements via direct deposit. I have about $4K of business expenses per month, so I wanted to make a little interest on the buffer and when there's a surplus.

For this purpose, I decided on a NetBank account. NetBank is the larget internet-only bank. A money-market savings account returns 2.6% annually and has an average minimum balance of $100. Paying the Corporate AMEX online is easy and free. If for some reason I need to make other deposits or withdrawls, it's easy. I can write checks from it, optionally get an ATM card, and I can make deposits via prepaid envelopes that they supply, or free at any UPS Store. There is a 6 withdrawl per month limit.

For more localized research on bank rates for loans and other personal investments like CDs and MMAs, cheout out BankRate. For high yield online MMAs, besides NetBank, I've heard good things about ING Direct as well.

Coming topics will focus on tax-advantaged saving and paying for graduate school, which in the end for both of us going back for 2 years together, will cost just around $180K. Yikes.

Posted by Jeff at August 26, 2005 03:17 PM

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Comments

Some where along the way we became official adults. Chad and I use MS Money and have modified the categories to track dinner/drinks, sporting events, Chad personal care products, Rae personal care products, Chad discretionary spending, Rae discretionary spening, and on and on. We download statements once a month from our bank's online site and use the credit card for most purchases to rackup the rewards points. We still keep receipts in a box, but write down what we withdraw cash for. Bankrate is great (espeically when seaking for CD rates), but we have the power of a credit union thanks to Dad's early job at Baxter. (I'll make this a post on our blog with more details)

Posted by: ravinia24 [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 31, 2005 11:25 AM

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