Once upon a time, personal finances were relegated to stacks of messy piles that would often find its place next to a trashcan. Then came software packages like Quicken that allowed families and individuals to crunch financial information and make sense of it all through simple templates.

However, limitations soon become evident, as software’s ability to help users set budgets and manage personal finances day-to-day only went as far as the user’s own limited expertise.

Now there is a wave of new personal finance websites and applications like Mint that not only perform the tasks of conventional financial software, but that also serve to help individuals and families make day-to-day decisions about their finances.

This is the primary difference — and advantage — of these new cloud-based financial sites. While financial software passively absorbs the banalities of one’s utility bills and investment portfolio, sites like Mint actively advise users—effectively acting as a personal financial manager, helping users stick to monthly budgets and achieve long term financial goals.

Getting started with a personal finance site is also much easier than installing and inputting data into a software package. Logging in, a new user will be asked to provide either a bank account or credit card account number, the website then takes over to import all the relevant information about this primary account.

Many Americans already pay most of their bills through automatic payments drawn from their bank accounts, so sites like Mint are designed to prompt and actively acquire this information as well.

Users will be prompted to add more and more information about their financial lives to their personal page. This can include mortgages, investment portfolios, automobile payments, loans, and also things like projected spending on necessities, as well as the not so necessary.

What makes sites like Mint so extraordinary is that they not only process and aggregate this information; they also make sense of it and then take action.

Mint will calculate average spending and then lay it against a projected budget, providing comparative analysis with the deft and accuracy of a CPA with a Masters in Accounting . The site will not only alert users to the potential for overdraft fees, but will also alert them when spending threatens to overwhelm a budget or when expected income falls short.

Some still have lingering concerns about managing personal finances in the more ethereal realm of the cloud, where a faceless entity directs our most important financial decisions. But, of course, herein lies the true genius of sites like Mint.

Daily finance, budgeting and investing might seem like the more cut-and-dry, analytical parts of our lives, but actual personal finances are bound up with the most emotional decisions we make for ourselves, including how we support our families, and how we imagine our future. As such, these decisions are often made through the haze of our anxieties and desires rather than with a cool head, rationally calculating factors with an eye on the future.

Personal finance sites like Mint not only organize and simplify the various machinations of our financial lives; they also gently disengage monetary decisions from the sometimes-tumultuous emotional world of daily life.

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Author’s Bio:
Tony Radford writes for Accounting EDU, an online resource for individuals interested in career advancement, education, business, and finance tips.

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