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Wesabe is new community niche site designed to help you take control of your personal finances. We've been [watching Wesabe develop][1] for a while, but now that it's live and kickin' I decided to dive in and give it a try.
Wesabe is a community site that lets users share their finance tips, suggestions and more in hopes that the advice will help you make better financial decisions and take control of your personal spending.
I should note upfront that I don't have a lot of experience with personal finance management, I haven't even seen my checkbook in two years, let alone balanced it. My finances are pretty simplistic, I round up whatever is under the couch cushions and deposit it once a week into a checking account. I tried using Quicken a few years ago, but found it tedious and in the end it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know -- I'm broke.
So let's just say I was prepared for Wesabe to bore me out of my skull and not much more. But as it turns out, I'm a huge fan of Wesabe.
Once you create an account Wesabe will let you upload your financial data using a desktop program which you can download (Mac & Windows) or you can manually export data from your bank or credit card accounts and upload it using Wesabe's web form.
I hesitated a bit about uploading my data, this is after all some pretty sensitive stuff, but after digging around a bit on site and reading some reviews I decided that Wesabe was probably just as secure as my bank website. For those that have similar concerns I recommend reading [Wesabe's security and privacy page][2]. Also bear in ming that Wesabe doesn't store you bank login information on their servers.
Imagine Quicken in a web interface with the tagging powers of Flickr and you'll pretty much have Wesabe pegged. Once I uploaded my bank data I used the Wesabe interface to add tags to all my expenditures.
Wesabe's tag system is incredibly smart, for instance I generally always fill up my tank at the Shell station near my house so I tagged one of those entries as "gasoline" and Wesabe added that tag to all the other entries with the same title. what's more, every time I upload a new statement Wesabe will automatically add that tag to the new entries.
One the right hand side of your account page there's a list of your tags and clicking a tag will take you to a page showing how much you spent on those items. As with any tagging-based site you can be a detailed and/or general as you want with your tags.
In addition to the organizational tools and account tracking Wesabe collects user submitted tips and displays relevant bits of advise based on how your tags overlap with other user's tags. Tips range from enlightening to obvious (hasn't everyone's mother been telling them not to grocery shop when you're hungry since you first moved out of the house?). If you have a tip to share you can add it to the site, or comment on existing tips with add insight or further suggestions.
Wesabe's third main feature is creating personal goals. You can choose from existing goals that other users have posted (such as saving up for new computer, paying off credit cards etc) or create your own. Like everything else goals are tied in with tips via tags, but you can also leave comments for the community.
There's a whole lot more to the site that I don't have time to go into, but I should note if you're not comfortable uploading your financial data you can still use Wesabe, you just won't have the personalized access.
My favorite part of Wesabe: at the bottom of every Wesabe page there's a "I'm Freaking Out" link that leads away from all things finance related and gives you a Flickr slideshow of kittens.
[1]: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/09/wesabe_promises.html "Monkey Bites on Wesabe"
[2]: https://www.wesabe.com/page/security "Wesabe"
[3]:
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