Additionally, due to inflation, the investments we make today may not be enough during retirement. While earning money is relatively easy (just need a good job, right?), having enough money to achieve one’s financial and life goals, or even becoming and staying wealthy is not at all easy or straightforward.
We may have a steady job today, but there is no guarantee that the job will last forever. Layoffs happen and life may get upended in a matter of days. I have personally seen many of my friends and colleagues, who had worked extremely hard in their companies, getting laid off, and then struggling for months to get another job. Even if they were to land a new job, in many cases, the new job would not pay them as much as they used to earn in their previous jobs. Similarly, factors such as life events, medical emergencies, recessions, economic downturns, inflation, wars, and such things beyond our control, have a negative financial impact on our personal finances. I feel that close monitoring of one’s finances is extremely important in helping successfully weather the challenges and dodge the curve balls that life constantly and unexpectedly throws at us.
Money management is quite a complex activity as most consumers have multiple Bank, Credit Card, and Loan accounts. An average US family has relationships with 10+ Financial Institutions. Having scattered financial data makes it very difficult to get a handle over finances. Hence, money management software applications can be of immense help in managing one’s finances. In the 2010s Mint and Quicken were the dominant products in this space. In present times, even though Mint has been retired by Intuit, users have a variety of options to choose from as there are quite a few money management products available. Despite these options, I feel that MoneyPatrol stands out due to the product’s ability to provide the granularity and comprehensiveness that many of the other products are lacking.
Let me share with you a few key factors why I feel MoneyPatrol is different from these other products:
Focus on data granularity: I have always been curious to see my personal finance data in different charts, trends, views, and drill downs so that I could slice and dice the data to get better understanding about my finances. Many of the existing products are limited to just showing high level data, and do not offer data granularity and details. At MoneyPatrol, we have tried to provide better visual displays of data and the ability to drill down and see transaction details to make it easy to see the historical trends and patterns in the user’s financial data.
Focus on data accuracy: While using other products, I have always struggled with the issue of data accuracy due to which I would not have much confidence in the data. At MoneyPatrol, we encourage users to review and verify their transactions, and while doing so they can recategorize transactions, clean merchant names, set up rules, add tags and memos, and reconcile transactions. This activity is specifically designed to ensure the user looks at each transaction, thus driving more trust and accuracy in the data.
Focus on data connectivity: Mint and many of the other products have always suffered from broken connections where certain financial institutions would stop syncing data. Due to this, I would never have much confidence in the data as there would be days or months where there would be missing data and thus making it difficult for me to track my finances accurately. At MoneyPatrol, we have tried to solve this issue by providing the option to link institutions via multiple aggregator gateways. These options ensure that data is always downloaded from financial institutions and that there are no missing transactions.
Focus on comprehensiveness: Many of the other products focus on specific areas or money management such as tracking transactions, budgeting, bills, net worth, or investments. At one point, I was using four different products, and it would be so confusing and cumbersome trying to combine and make sense of data from these different applications. At MoneyPatrol, we have built all of these features so that a user can get a comprehensive solution that helps with all activities related to money management such as tracking transactions in detail, and detailed modules focused on cash flow, budgeting, bills, balances, debts, net worth, credit score, receipts and detailed reports.
With that said, I would like to conclude by saying that while we have built MoneyPatrol as an analytics-driven personal accounting platform, we truly hope that this product provides value and plays an important role in your money management journey. I also would like to mention that we are still an evolving product. We are open to feedback and suggestions and will keep making improvements to meet our users’ needs. So, please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions. We hope that you will give MoneyPatrol a try and see for yourself how you can benefit from using this product.
