Wealth Management Tools

[Superman]

While I am interested in a wealth tracking and management tools, I am concerned about providing my login credentials to Mint or Personal Capital.  In fact, the personal protection that my financial companies offer for illegal access is forfeited if I allow third party apps to access the accounts. 

I currently track manually via spreadsheet, and have downloaded both Mint and Personal Capital - but did not seem to make it too far without giving it account login crendentials??

Thanks is advance.

[TexasRunner]

Ya, those are basically worthless without giving the credentials.

One option is to build out your spreadsheet where the "download CSV" option on your various sites will drop the data straight in )IE add a tab for each CC / bank / whatever, and match their cell positioning, then it is just a matter of downloading the data.

A more mustachian response would be to ask why you have so many transactions that its hard to keep up with.  How much crap are buying on the daily?....   Hmmmmm?  (kidding, mostly)

I believe YNAB is that same way, though I may be mistaken.

[RyanAtTanagra]

Those are the same reasons I don't use those tools.  They especially don't work if you have 2-factor authentication, which I do for my main bank.  I know some banks will let you create a secondary read-only login specifically for sites like Mint, but mine does not.

So like you, I use a spreadsheet and update it manually.  I have no solutions to offer, just posting to commiserate :-)

[TexasRunner]

I know some banks will let you create a secondary read-only login specifically for sites like Mint, but mine does not.

I did not know that was a thing.  Thanks for posting.  I don't *really* mind Mint having access to my CC and various other lines of credit* (as I don't see a back-ended way to transfer funds that they wouldn't pick up on), but I REALLY dislike having my bank access out there.  A lot easier to initiate a transfer that can't be fixed from inside a bank.


*I image a line of credit, like a CC, would at best allow someone to transfer a balance onto my name.  This could be reversed.  In the event they report false transactions and order a new card, I would get notified so no issue there.  Not really sure how the line of credit side of things could be screwed with, though I image about anything is possible.

[terran]

I agree with not wanting to give logins to an aggregator. It is possible to manually enter things into personal capital. I gave up on it though. Most (soon to be all) of my investment accounts are with one company now that my wife's 403b is with them, so that mostly solves it for me.

[SwordGuy]

I know some banks will let you create a secondary read-only login specifically for sites like Mint, but mine does not.

That's awesome!  FINALLY!!!!

[Car Jack]

I'm basically distrusting of online linked data where my login info needs to go someplace.  I keep everything on a single Excel spreadsheet which I periodically update offline and only save it to a flash drive.