Archive for the ‘Websites for Debtbeats’ Category

Are you desperately keeping up the Joneses? That’s probably the reason why you’re reading a debt blog. But if you can’t fight the urge to spend like the folks down the block, there’s a new tool available to help you do it down to the last penny.

Bundle.com is a new service from Microsoft, Citibank and the rating agency Morningstar that lets you see what people in your area are spending their money on and compare it to your own.

It’s a cross between a personal finance website and social networking tool whose intent is to change the way that people talk about their money. Riding on the heels of established services like Mint.com and new sites like Bippy, Bundle’s first shot across the bow is a tool called Everybody’s Money, the first of several products they plan to launch in the coming year.  It allows Bundlers (Bundle-ites? Bundlebees?)  to see how their neighbors spend money on things like dining out, gas, entertainment and groceries.

Here is a snapshot of Bundle’s data from Washington, D.C. (Which is, not coincidentally, home to the Debtbeat HQ.)

Noticeably absent is the category for ”booze.”

In addition to the location search, data can be refined by age range, income level, family composition. There is a pretty nifty drilldown component to the dashboard, but it was fairly slow to load on my computer. You can even see which stores, restaurants and businesses people are spending their money at.

Bundle gets its data from federal government, spending transactions from Citi (although these are anonymous and aggregated) and from third party data providers. Their spending data is only updated once a quarter, which isn’t as great as we’d like to see given how drastically the ups and downs in the stock market and our overall economy are happening nowadays. But it is enough to capture seasonality in the information.

Users can comment on the different spending categories using their Facebook login, a common feature on sites today. There’s also integration with Twitter for users to share their findings.

What’s lost on me is how this can actually be a useful financial tool.  Interesting, yes. Useful? Only if you can explain to me how knowing that my peers spend more on food but less on travel will impact my future decisions.

We’ll keep this one on our radar, but check out Bundle for yourself and let us know what you think.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Debtbeat rule number two is Spend Less, but that’s easier said than done when we have been programmed to make cash registers go ka-ching whenever we see something new, shiny, cool or hot.

Without a little help from our friends we’re as good as toast. That’s where the pig comes in.

FeedthePig.org (as in piggy bank) is the online home of a personal finance campaign sponsored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and Ad Council. Their mission is to help young Americans understand the value of saving and their advice is applicable to young Americans of all ages.

You may have seen their “spokespig” Benjamin Bankes in one of several TV commercials like these.

The site offers savings tips cross a wide spectrum of everyday spending, including surprising topics like makeup and happy hours.

Some of the other features include:

• Choosing a personality similar to yours in the Me Save? tool then selecting spending habits you want to change.
• Syncing your Feed the Pig profile with Facebook or iGoogle to track what you can save over time.
• Finding out how much you can save no matter what course your life takes in the 5% Challenge.
• Learning more about the psychology behind money habits.
• Forums for talking to others about how they save.”
• Seeing more TV and radio spots.
• Links to their companion site, 360financialliteracy.org, which has advice for people at all stages of life.

You can follow the pig on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

So bookmark Feed the Pig and check in often to jump start your savings and learn more ways to keep more cash in your pocket that can be used to get out of debt.

Are the intimate details of your daily spending and personal finances too private? Then have I got a site for you.

If Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn don’t let you share enough of yourself to a dubious group of “friends” then I proudly present to you a new service called Blippy. The site, still in beta, allows you to send information on individual credit card purchases to your online social network. Why anyone would actually want to do this is another thing.

The New York Times broke the news of Blippy in a recent article which explains how Blippy got started, but not why it’s needed.

Blippy’s founder, Philip Kaplan, is an Internet mogul who doesn’t have any problem with TMI. On his wedding day he sent out the follwing tweet : “Getting married. About to walk down aisle. Putting phone on vibrate.”

Another of his other projects made him rich when in in 2002, he created the AdBrite network, which places ads on more than 100,000 affiliated sites and had 2008 revenue of $31.6 million.

Kaplan has had his finger on the pulse of the web for a long time now, so maybe Blippy does have legs.

Come to think of it, this may be a neat way to use guilt and shame to help you control your spending. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll whip out the Visa at the Pleasure Palace if you know that your mom will see the charge go through. Don’t panic just yet, the service does allow you to configure what charges get sent out and to whom.

In my opinion, if your credit card spending is prolific and cool enough to be tweeted out to the world, then you need to reevaluate what you’re doing in the malls. The only glamor Blips (or Bleeps, whatever) should be when you hit Costco, the consignment shop or Dollar General.

Still on the fence? You have time to think about it. Blippy is currently available by invitation only (the cool thing for new websites to do) and is slated for general delivery sometime in 2010.