AskDong

I don’t know when they fixed it, but I can once again download all my Yodlee transactions in one fell swoop.  I had written a few months ago that Yodlee has ceased that functionality.  Of course what I found even more irking at the time was that they denied that there was any problem.

As a result over the last few months, I didn’t track my spending.   I didn’t know exactly how much I was spending on food.  I didn’t know how much gas I was using, or how much my rounds of golf were costing me.   I wasn’t in the dark, but I felt like I was in the shade.   Did I end up spending more?  Not at all.    Tracking my spending is useful, but ultimately I do it because for some warped reason I actually enjoy it.   At this point my budget is more unconscious habit than anything else.  I have a vague sense pretty much at all times about how much I should be spending.  You don’t need to breakdown every cent to do that properly.  Most of the time just knowing what your balances are is more than enough.

I still have one rather big gripe about Yodlee.   For whatever reason, I can’t seem to access Yodlee on my Mac these days.   Both FireFox and Safari on my mac endlessly try to reload the home page.   The page never gets loaded.  It’s very odd, but works fine on my PC at work and laptop.

I really liked your saving priority list. I found it very helpful and have a
saved it to my desktop as a reminder. In addition, I have had two questions
I’ve been meaning to ask you.

QUESTION 1
I recently heard about credit cards offering a percentage back towards funding
529 plans. Fidelity offers one that give 1.5% back. I am interested in this
type of card but wanted to know (1) can I fund a 529 account for children that
are not yet born? Perhaps I put the fund in my name till I have children? (2)
Is there a card that you recommend? (3) Can I still claim a tax credit for
contributions made to the 529 via the credit card?

QUESTION 2
Have you used mint.com? What are your thoughts about the utility of this
website?

-m

I’ll answer the 2nd question first because it’s more straightforward.  Yes.   I do use Mint, but not that much.  I’m still more of a fan of Yodlee as it has better overall coverage.   What Mint offers is a simpler view, and pitches of money saving alternatives.   For some individuals the offers are useful, but not me.  Generally speaking, I’ve already done my shopping when it comes to accounts.  The simplified view is nice, and I would be more apt to use if I were just starting with account aggregation.

In truth however, I’m looking at PageOnce.   PageOnce offers a very similar service to Mint, but like Yodlee is much  comprehensive.  In addition, PageOnce also offers an iPhone App.

529 Accounts

Yes, you can still can claim the tax (state) credit even if it’s funded from you Credit Card. I don’t believe the source of funding matters.  For the tax deduction it has to be a state sponsored plan for your state of Virginia.  I don’t believe Fidelity runs any of those plans, so it’s unclear in reality how you would be able to fund the 529 plan with a credit card.

While you cannot sponsor a 529 plan in the name of child that yet to be born, you can sponsor a plan under the name of another relative, and switch the plan’s beneficiary at another date.  The age of whom can be named beneficiary vary’s state by state.

While I don’t commute daily, I’m big proponent of FastLane, Masschusett’s version of EZ-PASS.   In the past year I’ve paid over $250 in tolls, and in the process saved an estimated and estimated $75 this past year in tolls.  That savings easily pays for the $20.95 I paid for the transponder.

Fastlane is great.  I love the convenience and the savings.  However, Fastlane must have one of the worst online systems that I’ve ever seen.  Funny, given it’s technological nature.  Not only does the fastlane system have an account website that looks like it was designed as high school project from 1999, but offers no meaningful information.   I only logged into the account this past week for the first time in probably over 2 years.

I had gotten an email a week ago saying that my credit card had expired, and I needed to update the account.  Of course, because I haven’t logged into the account in 2 years I didn’t know what my account number to login was.   Luckily today, I was sent a letter with instructions on how I could update my account information my mail.  That letter had my account number. With that number in hand, I was able to log into my account.

In the two years since my last login, the website has not improved one ioata.  I still get no account details.  It still looks like it was designed by an elementary school student, a talented elementary school student but a 2nd grader none the less.  Very disspointing.

The other day I attempted to download my transactions from Yodlee as I do every month. Yodlee is an account aggregation service that I’ve been using for years, and one which I have been very happy with.  I went to clink the “Export Transaction” and it was gone, nowhere to be found.  I didn’t know what was going on.

I contacted Yodlee for the first time ever, and got a response the next day saying that I could only download transactions from only one selected account at a time. I went to the site, and selected an account and found that I could indeed download transaction from one account at a time.  However, given that I use Yodlee to track and aggregate all my accounts, I found this “new” functionality defeated one of the biggest reasons I used Yodlee, the ability to consolidate all my account into one report that I can then import into Excel.

Daunted, I return to Yodlee and sent another message, asking “why they turned off this feature (downloading all transactions) that was critical to my use.” Yodlee responded thus:

“The ‘Export completed transactions’ option in Yodlee MoneyCenter has always been respective to the account selected under ‘Show from’.”

What? Am I imagining this? I know or at least thought I knew that I could export all my completed transactions. Hell I even have spreadsheets with ALL my completed transactions.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t download my transactions account by account and then put them together myself.  I respect Yodlee’s prerogative to change their product given that I’m not paying for it.  I’m tiffed that they’ve removed functionality.  Really, what can I do?  However, I don’t like being told that I don’t know what I thought I knew. Yes, I’m getting on the years. I’ve got back pain. I’m growing hair in unexpected places.  And, admittedly my memory is not what it used to be.  However, I am pretty sure I was able to download all my transactions not so long ago.

Are any other Yodlee users encountering this said same problem?

Last week, I was shamelessly reading People Magazine. The Pitt-Jolie twins were the featured topic. While I may at times slavishly follow the no holds barred divorce of Christine Brinkley and Peter Cook. The twins interest me, not so much. I’m not much of a baby person in print or in the flesh.

While my interest in twins was little too non existent, my interest in how much Angelina and Brad were paid was quite a bit. Apparently they were paid $16 million for the the first pictures. I don’t think I could I pay someone to look at my baby pictures. While Jolie and Pitt are set to donate their booty to charity, this is still another example of how the haves are in the position to have more.

I’m not making a political or social comment or at least I’m not trying to, but rather attempting to emphasize how success, financial and otherwise, is a function of success. To become rich, it’s easier if you’re rich already. In the blogging world, this is apparent in the way the more popular blogs are the blogs that most easily gain readership. This is an example of the Network Effect. More generally speaking there is something like the network effect in all aspects of life. If you ask Bill Gates, I’m sure he’ll tell you that making the first billion was much harder than making the 2nd. I say this not discourage anyone, but rather to give hope.