Filed under: Finance

I'm not a parent, nor am I kid -- but that doesn't prevent me from appreciating a totally neat iPhone app called 'Kids Eat For' (I guess the domain with 'free' on the end was already taken?)

Basically -- and this is about as basic as apps get -- this app just shows you where the nearest restaurant with a kids-eat-for-free deal. The developers say that the database is kept up to date, with new deals added daily and expired deals removed -- so you don't have to have one of those embarrassing moments when it comes to paying the bill... and you actually have to pay for your kids. Oops.

I guess you'd be able to trade in your iPhone to pay the bill, if it came to that.

Or, wait a second... if you didn't splurge and buy an iPhone in the first place, maybe you could afford to feed your kids proper home-cooked food instead, rather than going out and gorging on crappy ribs and all-you-can-eat wings at the local Armadillo Willy's (what on earth is that?)

At just $3 -- and yes, this is sadly only for restaurants in the USA (at the moment!) -- Kids Eat For must surely be a must-have for all parents. Well, parents with iPhones.

BillShrink is a web service that helps you find the best deals on cellphone service, credit card accounts, and even the best gas prices. Since launching a year and a half ago as a wireless comparison engine, the BillShrink team has steadily continued adding new services. Now BillShrink has added bank accounts to its lineup.

In order to find the best savings accounts and CDs, you enter the amount of cash you have saved, an estimate of how much you expect to set aside each month, and where you live. You can also choose additional details like the services you need from a bank including online bill payment check writing, nearby ATM access and direct deposit.

Once you enter all that info, BillShrink will spit out a list of options for your area that should help you save money. For instance, BillShrink may recommend opening a new bank account or a bank account at one institution plus a CD at another.

[via TechCrunch]

Intuit, the company behind financial management app Quicken, has purchased Mint.com, a web-based personal finance tracker, for $170 million. Quicken already has a web version that plugs into its desktop software, and Mint apparently isn't going to replace it. Meanwhile, Intuit doesn't have plans to change the way Mint works, and the CEO of Mint is joining the company to direct its online operations.

That's not enough to reassure some Mint users, though, who are fleeing the site in fear of Intuit's awful user experience and propensity to milk its customers for fees.

Felix Salmon, a blogger at Reuters, describes Intuit as "The Borg," and plans to deactivate his Mint account (although he admits he doesn't use it often). Users in Mint's forums are also not convinced that Mint will be helping to improve Intuit, rather than being swallowed and ruined by it.

What do you think? Is the Intuit Borg going to assimilate Mint, or will it stay as it is? Will you be keeping your account, or canceling it? Take the poll after the break!

Portfolio Viewer is a slick desktop application for keeping track of the value of your stock portfolio. While it doesn't link to your investment account for actually making trades, the program does plot user-entered transactions on a chart and keep track of historic stock and fund prices.

You can create multiple portfolios like, say, one for your retirement account and another for your investment account. You can use the application to lookup stock and fund ticker symbols. And you can view detailed information in several handy graphs that show you the change in value of individual stocks or your entire portfolio over time. There's also a pie chart that shows how your funds are allocated.

Portfolio Viewer can import your investments from Quicken, Microsoft Money, or Excel files. And since the application is based on Adobe AIR, it can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

[via RefreshingApps]

There's a lot of great financial tracking software out there now. Sites like Mint and Rudder that link up to your bank account and track your spending automatically are great, but what if you don't want to give your account information to a finance site? Texthog is a lot like old-school DIY checkbook balancing, except replacing pen and paper with SMS, email and Twitter.

You can send a transaction to Texthog through one of the aforementioned mobile methods, or just log into the site and add one later. Logging in is also good for changing dates and such if you text a transaction to Texthog after the fact. You can also tag and organize your expenses, and generate spending reports. It might be more work than letting some automated service track your account, but it's also more accurate, because you're recording expenses as you charge them, rather than when they eventually clear your account.

Last week Microsoft announced that it would be discontinuing Microsoft Money, the company's personal finance application. Download Squad readers came up with a number of great suggestions for anyone looking for a replacement. But the 800 pound gorilla in the room is Quicken. And now Intuit, the company behind Quicken are reaching out to Microsoft Money customers by offering tools to import Money data to Quicken. The company is also offering discounts of up to $50 on Quicken software.

Those coupons start at $20 off the price of Quicken Deluxe, bringing the price down to $39.99. You can also get $30 off the price of Quicken Premier or Home& Business, or $50 off the price of Rental Property Manager. Or if your finances aren't that complicated, you could just try Quicken Online for free.

The coupons are good through July 31st. Microsoft will stop selling Money at the end of June, although support will be available through January, 2011.

No, that headline doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't making money as in cash profits anymore. But Microsoft has decided to discontinue Microsoft Money, its personal finance application.

Microsoft will stop selling the application in June, although it will still be supported for another 18 months or so. After that point, you'll still be able to use the software to manage your finances, but it won't be able to get automated feeds from banks, credit cards, and other financial institutions. You'll have to download or enter that information manually.

Normally, users get 2 years of service, but if you purchase Microsoft Money this month, the product will still only be supported until January, 2011. It might be time to look at Quicken or another personal finance package. What do you use to manage your finances? Pen and paper? Mint? Let us know in the comments.

[via CNET]

Early morning Tuesday a software malfunction caused a security breach at Rudder, a web based financial management service Download Squad has covered in the past.

It seems a number of Rudder users received email intended for a ton of other users, and in some cases one user received hundreds of emails intended for other users of the service.

Soon after, Twitter went crazy with tweets and retweets about Rudder's security breach, and before you know it a mishap affecting hundreds of users was being widely commented on by thousands of people.

So how serious is it, really?

For a while now the top contender in iPhone finance apps was Bloomberg Mobile. Enter DailyFinance's iPhone app [iTunes link], featuring real-time quotes, portfolios and watchlists and some rather impressive charting tools. Mike Rose has a nice write-up over on TUAW, and the DailyFinance site has a good summary of features and a demo video. It's a free download, so try it and let us know what you think in the comments.

Editor's Note: DownloadSquad's parent company Weblogs, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL.

At SXSW 2008, Download Squad had the opportunity to talk to Saul and Sunir from the online-invoicing service FreshBooks, and we were really, really impressed with their customer dedication and the overall vision for the service. Today, FreshBooks has just released public industry bookmarks, making it easy for freelancers and small businesses to compare their billables with others in their field.

The benchmarks are similar to the industry data FreshBooks made available to customers before, but instead of compiling metrics from the previous 18-months (and that information is still available), snapshots for segmented industries are available on a quarterly basis to anyone who is curious.

The data is anonymous, released quarterly and primarily sourced (which prevents survey manipulation of data). Right now, FreshBooks has industry bookmarks available for web professionals, IT services, design, marketing and service providers. This is a real advantage for users who might dabble in more than one area, say both web development and design, to keep tabs on how both markets are performing.

In economically uncertain times, knowing what others are billing and having the ability to watch trends can give a small business or freelancer insight into overall market health. If I see my billables declining (and I'm not purposefully taking on fewer projects), but the overall market is remaining steady, I know I need to start evaluating my business practices.

Even if you don't use FreshBooks for invoicing -- and if you haven't tried it out, give it a shot, its interface and ease of use is top-notch -- you can still take advantage of this information. FreshBooks' co-founder made a video explaining the benchmarking data in-depth here.

FreshBooks has free accounts for users who invoice fewer than three active clients and larger packages start at $14 a month.

Trying to figure out where to tighten your belt during the financial crisis? You might want to take a look at Shoeboxed. It's an online service that helps you keep financial records by recording receipts that you mail, email or upload. The latest big feature addition is automatic receipt sorting, which comes in handy when you need to know where your money is going.

Anything you send to Shoeboxed is now labeled with the common tax category it belongs to: food, clothes or electronics, for example. You can even add your own custom categories, but you'll have to apply those yourself. When you need to tinker with your Shoeboxed data even more, it can be exported to Excel or Quicken. If tax season always sneaks up on you, Shoeboxed could be the help you need to make sure your records are all in order.

[via CNET News]

Rudder is a personal finance management site that pushes your banking info and upcoming due bills to your email inbox. This may free you from your compulsion to log in to your online bank site. Generally, there are all kinds of tools available from banks nowadays which push account updates to you via text, email, voice mail, etc.

The nice thing about Rudder is you can add multiple accounts like your credit cards, checking/savings accounts from other banks and roll them into your Rudder account so everything is all in one place. Each morning, you get an account update of all your finances in your email.

Rudder also reminds you when your bills are due and tells you to pay them. If you heed the reminders, you might be able to stave off those $39 late fees on your credit card bills.

Each daily activity report provides you with reminders of which bills are due, an activity feed of account transactions, account balances, and then tells you what's left. The What's Left feature looks into the future and does the math based on your upcoming bills, future paydays and calculates the statement balance for your credit cards. You then get a nice picture of your what you can spend or save after your bills are factored in.

Rudder isn't Quicken or Mint.com. It doesn't have cool categorization features or fancy pie charts and it doesn't compare your spending with others in different cities. It does, however, provide a nice way to keep tabs on your personal finances all in a nice email delivered daily to your inbox.

Invotrak is a simple to use, online invoicing tool for small businesses or freelancers produced by Draconis Software. While we have covered it before some new additions make it worth another mention.

Basically this is a simple invoice app that you can use to create and track invoices and time sheets for yourself or your small business. You can use limited services for free or pay for three levels of account depending on how many invoices you plan to send.

Updates features include: the ability to upload invoices you have created yourself, add line items from time sheets to the invoice and adding reports to your invoices. You can also save your invoices as PDF or TXT files.

You can also read the Invotrak blog to get tips on using the new features and general small business tips - like how to get paid on time.