Everyone should have what I call Total Situational Awareness where their money is concerned. If you are like me and either have or plan to have savings accounts all over the place chasing the best rates for your money, then it can be hard keeping on top of where your money is, and what it is doing.

Throw in the odd current account or 3 and credit card or 3, and things start to get really complicated.

If something is difficult then it’s just human nature – we’re unlikely to continue doing it. Money management therefore needs to be above all else: simple.

The old method was by statements, but this wasn’t very dynamic, and didn’t make projecting easy at all. It merely looked backwards. Spreadsheets came next, first in Excel and more recently in Google Documents.

Then Web 2.0 hit.

Mint.com

Folks in the USA have a cool service called Mint.com. It’s a total money manager or account aggregator, and once you get over the initial fear of giving some random company your login details for your banks and cards, you start to realise just how valuable their service is. It accesses all your accounts in the background and provides you with a complete overview of where you stand; All your debts, all your savings, what’s left in your current account, how much you’ve splurged on your credit cards, and how your investments are doing.

It negates the need to login to 3, 5, or 10+ different financial providers and instead gives you a one-screen view of where you are right now.

The downside of Mint? it doesn’t work for us in the UK.

You Have Mail

An email arrived this morning from a guy called Scott who’d seen my blog, noticed the target market, and wondered if I’d be interested in their service. Ordinarily I’m not too keen on unsolicited commercial contact, particularly from marketing companies, but to his credit he had clearly read my blog, knew what it was about, and bothered to find out my name and my circumstances before writing.

This wasn’t your average spam run, but a hand-crafted contact. I don’t mind those at all.

Kublax.com

Mint I can understand, after all money gets minted. But Kublax? What the heck is Kublax? I’ll let them explain:

The word Kublax is a combination of “Kuber” and “Laxmi”. In Indian mythology, Kuber is the god of wealth and Laxmi is the goddess of fortune, riches and splendour.

OK, that’s a bit random, but I can see it catching on with time. After all I thought ‘Ubuntu’ was a silly name for a Linux distribution, but it is now one of the most popular in the world.

It’s essentially a UK-version of Mint, and I have to say I’m thrilled. I’ve only just created an account so all I can offer right now is my first impressions, but rest-assured I’ll be revisiting this topic once I have played with it some more.

Interestingly, Kublax isn’t a 5-minutes-ago startup, either. It was one of the 2007 SeedCamp winners and officially launched September last year.

First Impressions

I always make a point – particularly with these kinds of services – of reading the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policies. I’m pleased to report that I can’t find any surprises. It does what it says on the tin, they won’t sell you out, and won’t share your details with the mafia. UK Data Protection laws apply as I’m pleased to see their service is hosted in the United Kingdom (at Rackspace no less, for the geeks amongst us).

The signup process couldn’t be simpler. They don’t even want to know your name. Just supply an email address, a password, a bit of demographic information and off you go.

The site itself is clean, well presented, easy to use and above all fast. There’s a useful introduction video to show you the highlights, and more information available if you want to convince yourself a bit further.

When you first login, it prompts you to start adding accounts. I skipped this step – just to be difficult – and started browsing around the tabs instead. There is a lot of potential here if you use it right. You can set up budgets, budget alerts and compare your debt repayments (anonymously) to others around you to see if you’re paying more than you should be, as well as the more traditional side of money management of seeing where you stand, how you are doing and where you seem to be heading.

This is where they make their money. Kublax is free to use for the ordinary consumer. It’s essentially commission driven and their aim to sell you financial products you might find useful. I can live with that. It’s unlikely they’d know better what I need than I do, but if it makes the service free them I’m happy.

Their suggestions might surprise me down the road, and in general it’ll be useful for those who are not keen on spending their life researching finance like we PF bloggers do! If they make some commission out of me, who am I to complain if it fits my money goals?

Some Interesting Statistics

One of the services I find most interesting is the ability to compare your spending with other nearby individuals based on country region. Alternatively you can get an overview of the average spend of the entire country.

You can do this on aggregate as above, or to your own spending. Guys, do you spend more on cash withdrawals for impromptu nights out than the average? Girls, is your shoe budget getting out of hand? Kublax can tell you all this and more.

To Be Continued

This is just a first look at Kublax. I’m going to start using it and I’ll come back to it in a few weeks and months after putting it through its paces. If you’re cutting edge, come and sign up and we’ll do this together. If you’d like to play it safe and see if they empty my bank account before diving in, then keep checking back.

The Kublax Review is to be continued…

• Personal Recessions
• Dig Yourself Out of Debt: Cleaning Up
• Dig Yourself Out of Debt: Avalanches and Snowflakes
• The Importance of Family & Friends
• A Guide to: Individual Savings Accounts (ISA)

A few weeks ago I decided to start looking into savings accounts properly. For the first time in 5 years, I will soon – I hope – actually have money to save after seriously paying down debt. If I’m totally honest, I was completely at a loss where to turn for advice, so I engaged myself on a rate finding mission. The credit crunch has brought the Bank of England base interest rate to its lowest since records began – yet there are still good products out there if you don’t mind rate chasing after the introductory offers run out. I’m not adverse to doing this, as it’s a small amount of effort for potentially, hundreds of pounds of profit a year.

After weeks of research, I’ve concluded and personally recommend the following:

Instant Access Savings - ING Direct are by far the best provider right now in terms of rates and flexibility. They are offering 3.2% AER (3.16%) on their standard savings account with no limits on access. After the initial 12 month period, the rate drops to an appalling 0.5% which effectively makes it a BoE base rate tracker. However for those initial 12 months, you’ll be doing well with ample time to reassess nearer the end of the introductory offer. Their online interface is amazing, and it makes it nice and simple to sub-divide your ‘account’ into pots for specific things.

One word of caution however: Don’t be fooled by their claim you can have an account open “in about 10 minutes”! It might take 10 minutes to fill in the online paperwork, but it takes many weeks to get it activated and ready for use! Believe it or not, this includes snail-mailing a bank cheque (cheques? I had to order a new cheque book just for this! How antiquated… but worth the effort).

If you’re not keen on ING, or want a better raw rate, consider Egg: They’re offering 3.25% again fixed for the first 12 months but with slightly less ‘zing’ in their interface. Egg are part of the Citigroup of companies.

Regular Savings Account – This is basically a product that gives you an incentive to save every month, usually from £25 to £500 a month. If you don’t make a deposit, then you get penalised for that month. If you’re able to keep it up for the year though, they can pay really well. Right now Halifax are offering 5% and win hands down against the competition.

Cash Mini ISAs – Finally, no savings roundup would be complete without mentioning ISAs. If you don’t have one this year, there is still plenty of time. It’s a tax-free way of saving, and at the moment the best rate seems to be the Barclays Golden ISA, paying 2.58% AER. If you’re new to saving like me, then fill your cash ISA first! It’s tax free and a great way to ensure the government doesn’t start pinching your hard earned pennies. Each ISA can hold £3,600 of cold hard cash, and you get a new one each year.

Most banks are paying around much the same rate at the moment, so to keep things simple check your own bank before moving elsewhere. For the sake of a few percentage points, it’s probably not worth the hassle of transferring any you have right now.

Found better rates? Tell the world in the comments!

• Cash ISAs vs. Regular Savings Accounts
• 6 Mistakes That Doubled The Price of My Car
• Frugal Friday! 5 Easy Ways to Spend Less
• The Long Term Cost
• Job Front Update