Consolidating different bank accounts in one place ?

Do you think consolidating different bank account in one place will it work for personal finance tracking in india?

In my opinion its too risky even if one your account is compromised all your bank accounts and details will be compromised , so hackers have to just target one account making it an easy target seeing that even big banks cannot keep the hackers at bay.

Let us know your thoughts on this?

Keep tracking at www.trackspends.com

-Shubh

Trackspends for group/friends finance..

Today we launched the group finance tracker that will help a group or family to track their expenses in consolidated level and individual level.

How it works: Lets say you are a group of friends in metro living together and sharing a room or house. Now since you are together your expenditure will be mixed up sometimes you will pay for lunch sometimes your friend will pay for dinner etc.

Tracking and managing this after a month/week end how much u spend for these activities and who should pay to whom becomes very painful.

With trackspends.com you create a single account with primary mobile, and than add mobiles to your account as:

Name- akhil, Mobile- 9911191999

Name- ashu, Mobile -.....

And so on, now keep sending SMS with your individual mobiles as an when you pay the bills, at the end week/month you can view these expenses individually with names/mobiles and also the consolidated way.

We think this can be very useful with bachelors/students struggling to keep finances. Checkout at: Track spends my group tracker

Now track your expenses with SMS mobile app...

Today we have released Mobile SMS application for those who are too lazy (like me) to even search contact (Get the number to send the expense) and type in SMS for tracking their expenses. All you have to do is punch in your amount, some text and send. One more benefit we felt is that while sending SMS if you have to type in a amount lets say 76, u will have to type 4-5 times till the number comes in and than wait, than type next number, And than overall message.For one who is not a SMS fanatic this is cumbersome so use this App. I have created a short cut in my mobile for this application and now sending expense is just one button away in mobile.

You can download it from : http://www.trackspends.com/m/ts.jad Or http://www.getjar.com/mobile/32569/trackspends

First Installation time you need GPRS connection (Sorry couldnt avoid it :( ) download it, or connect to your computer or laptop and download/install it. But subsequently send SMS DOES NOT require GPRS.

For more SMS fanatic guys keep sending in your usual SMS way :)

Why does personal finance search leads to investment options like MF/Stocks etc?

I did a search for personal finance in google, the results in 80 % cases takes me to investment planning, How to buy stocks/mutual fund, How to plan for children studies/house by buying stocks/fund and lot more in buying different MFs, plans, stocks etc.

What are you looking for in personal finance? First thing i look at is assessing my existing savings, spends , assets, and income i.e my current financial status. So in this case i am looking for some tool or some way thru which i can assess my existing finance situation. Secondly how can i set some financial target like buying a house/car etc and when and how i can achieve it and then supposedly all those stocks/Mutual funds/insurances options etc as part of future planning.

So how do i solve the problem of figuring my existing financial status, easy part is to consolidate all your bank accounts and get the overall finance you have, For assets if you are like me just count on hands :) one house and one plot max and document it. Income details etc can be figured again from bank salary account.

Difficult part is tracking your spends especially if you have lot of cash transactions. I tried lot of options and because there so many different ways like apps, websites etc it becomes more difficult. Its like shopping more options you have to choose more difficult and more tiring it becomes.

Thats where we come to trackspends, what we do is just send SMS whenever there is any spends/expenses done be it cash or not. And we get it consolidate in www.trackspends.com .

You can also try it and use it, and send us comments/feedback on it, we want to make personal finance tracking simple and doable.

Growing usage of SMS in india...

Based on this review:

http://www.pluggd.in/india-mobile-market-report-sms-as-a-vas-service-297/

Looks like tracking your spends with SMS is one of the best options, simple and easily doable.

Moreover with SMS going to one paisa per sms with reliance announcement checkout:

http://www.ciol.com/Technology/Mobility/News-Reports/SMS1-paise-with-Reliance-Mobile/271109128284/0/

SMS continues to grow every year with more and more innovative ways of utilizing its potential coming in the forefront. Indians are using SMS as a mode of communication to keep in touch with friends and family. With select subscriber groups, SMS is a preferred communication mode over voice calls. On account of significant tariff disparity in the recent months, it has lost its due share of attention. Considering this, Reliance Communications with its 1st in the industry initiative, aims to revitalize SMS usage in the country", said Mahesh Prasad, President – Reliance Communications.


So keep tracking your expenses from SMS, "penny saved is a penny earned" www.trackspends.com

Track spends article in pluggd.in

Track spends coverage in pluggd.in

http://www.pluggd.in/track-personal-expense-sms-trackspends-297/


Keep tracking your expenses via www.trackspends.com

Most important thing in personal finance...

Most important thing in personal finance is knowing your personal habits of expense and saving. For example what is it that i spends most on, movies, outing, dinner etc. Once you know what is it you spend most you can either cut short these or have a cheaper option around it for example if you are movie fanatic may be watch movies in home instead of going to movie hall (At least once in a while to save bucks) and enjoy it.

Also know your savings for example i generally dont like buying clothes somehow i feel its ok to use the existing once till it lasts, its your choice offcourse.

Based on these habits you can come up with best way to plan your savings. And save money to do what u like.

So keep tracking your expenses/spendstrackspends.com

Plan your future by cutting the current expenses...

Excerpt:

Mumbai-based Abhishek Choudhary, 23, a financial services professional, earns around Rs 10 lakh annually, and is planning to pursue an MBA course abroad in the next two years. He has taken a home loan, which entails an EMI of Rs 20,000 and a 15-year repayment tenure. His monthly living expenses, including rent of Rs 11,000, amount to Rs 30,000. He has two regular and one single premium insurance policies.


To plan for above goal in next 2 yrs, Abhishek should reduce his expenses to 10,000 per month.

How to plan it?, by tracking the expenses and cutting down items that are not necessarry. For tracking expenses he started using trackspends.com and has now able to identify his expense target and items to cut-short.

Have a future goal of Higher studies, planning a long break or early retirement, cut your expenses by tracking them....

Here are some of the expert advice on personal finance in ET:

Spend less than you earn: Thinking anything to the contrary seems blasphemous, but try saying this to today’s youngsters. For a start, make an estimate of your monthly expenses, and ensure that you keep a maximum of two months’ expenses in the bank.

Review expenditure heads: There are certain unavoidable expenses such as house rent, school fees, electricity bills. Then there are some which can be controlled like telephone bills, eating out and gifts. One of my clients actually has separate envelopes for eating out, petrol expenses and the like. If the family falls short on an eating-out budget, it goes to a South Indian fast food joint instead of the boutique Italian restaurant.

Now reviewing expenditure heads bring out an interesting point, how do i review my expenditure offcourse we can use credit card and track everything online but these leads to Spending more than you earn, again expert also says that we should use cash in most of transactions that way we have a psychology if cash of 5000 Rs goes we feel something, whereas when we do transaction thru card its looks someone else is paying :) .

So do most of the transations in cash, and track it using trackspends.com

Keep tracking and saving .......

Spending Trends India

Here is an excerpt of spending increase in india:

-----

SPENDING

In the 80s, snacks included Campa Cola, and the local playboy rode a Yamaha RX100. In the 70s, if you wanted a Bajaj scooter, you went on a waiting list that ran in months, and even years. For many, the dream to own a car came true when Maruti 800 was launched in 1983. 1982 made entertainment more colourful with the launch of colour TV.

In 1970s, the waiting period for a Bajaj scooter after booking, could stretch months or even years.

After the economy opened in 1991, the Indian consumer changed forever. Sensing the change early, Shoppers’ Stop opened its first store in Mumbai in 1991. India saw the smiling faces of KFC and McDonald’s in 1995 and 1996, respectively. In 1999, Crossroads (Mumbai) and Ansal Plaza (Delhi) were the first malls to come up. Another turning point was when Big Bazaar opened in 2001.


Spending for indian consumer is now a graph with increasing trends (up, up, up!!) and the way its going except for few ditches in recession looks like it will never stop.

Even our parents now enjoy :) these malls and shopping experience we have.But the downside is that we always spend more, leading to a debt situation.

One way to do this is track your spends, and i am saying just track it DO NOT do anything just track it for a month, 2 month etc and u will automatically see that it reduces the spends somehow, when we see a consolidated spends for a month, we say oh! that thingy i could have ignored it was just trendy and i only used it once.

This is happening to us (Me and my wife) as we are tracking every expense with trackspends.com .

So why dont u give it a try?

Money saved is money gained....

Why we should to personal finance tracking ? And am one of the worst in it, not tracking any money and not even thinking how, where to spend or where i have spent it. Moreover tracking is pain in neck when u try u put all over sometimes in computer, sometimes in diary, in mobile application, in todo slips blah blah blah. And than consolidating these is way over job which forget it we are too lazy for all that.


So what i have done is sending sms thru mobile and capture ur expenses any where any place any time, and moreover capturing it in website, u dont have to consolidate it its consolidated at one place.

Now what do we gain from tracking our expenses, this is a million dollar questions and lot of people tried/preached and persuaded u should do it and fundas etc.

What i learnt apart from saving some stuff, you have control over money and literally mean control, now u can plan and buy things u always thought will buy with next salary but by the time u are there u are already in debt. Now u can see it and check it based on the proper data.

So lets start tracking our spends/expenses @ www.trackspends.com

Also provide your valuable feedback, comments, fundas .