Image
Top
Navigation
April 24, 2009

Rudder – Personal Finance in Your Inbox

ss-rudder

This is most certainly the time for financial management tools to attract new users. Financial advisors have for years said that people need to get their personal budget in order before anything else. Well, now two things are colliding: the financial crisis and an array of innovative online money management apps to help budget and track personal finances. Rudder.com is one of these services and provides powerful but easy-to-use financial tools to help you meet your life goals.

To be fully effective at organizing your money you need to budget your spending: know precisely how much money you have going out and coming in. Rudder does this by allowing users to manage all of their bank accounts in one place. Users can set up bill reminders to avoid late fees and the ensuing dip in credit rating if you’re late paying a bill, as well as know how much money you have left to spend at the end of every month. The most unique feature of Rudder is its ability to deliver all of your financial updates via a dashboard that is emailed to you. Often the biggest failure point for online finance tools is the fact that most people forget to log into the website often enough to alter their spending. With Rudder, your alerts and spending summaries are sent directly to your email inbox so you can’t hide from your habits.

You can’t do much better than Rudder, even with the fair number of alternatives. Tracking monthly finances and seeing not just how much you’re spending, but how quickly you’re burning through your savings, is very useful. Rudder is a strong contender for one of the best money apps out there.

Practical Uses:

  • Visually see your financial “burn rate” and determine if you will have enough money to pay your upcoming bills
  • Manage business expenses by combining expense accounts/business credit cards all in one place
  • More effectively track your entertainment expenses so you can work towards saving more of your hard-earned money
  • Use Rudder to manage your household budget and give visibility to your spouse who may not be handling the day-to-day expenses

Insider Tips:

  • Use the budget software to track how much you’ll have in the future based on last months bills, so you won’t ever overspend
  • Create a VERY strong password – with numbers, upper and lowercase, to ensure increased security
  • Make sure that your email program can handle HTML (rich text messages) such as Gmail or Yahoo – this will ensure you get the full benefit of Rudder’s recap emails
  • Add widgets to your Rudder home page, depending on the nature of your accounts, such as a bill widget that lists your monthly bills and their due dates

What we liked:

  • It’s a well-designed and maintained site that costs nothing to use
  • It has access to over 500 banks – both mainstream and obscure. If your bank isn’t listed, you can ask Rudder to investigate adding it to their database
  • It’s a secure site, which may be the most important feature for an application that accesses financial records

What we didn’t like:

  • No current iPhone support or native application – short of viewing your Rudder emails

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: 2008
  • Privately Held
  • Headquarters: Houston, TX
  • Founded by: Nikhil Roy
  • Web site: http://www.rudder.com

Costs:

  • Free

Comments

  1. Henry – Thanks for the post. We certainly appreciate it. Just wanted to let you know that we do have iPhone App.

  2. Dan

    Go figure, once something comes that does what you want, it disappears.
    The last day of operation for Rudder is October 31, 2010.
    I just recieved an email from them about it. 🙁

  3. Rudder has been valuable. The website articles are great, only dropped in for a quick read and ended up reading a lot more. Thankyou and keep up the great feeds.

  4. this is great on iphone apps. Keep on sharing good post.

  5. The post is written in very a good manner and it entails much useful information for me. I am happy to find your distinguished way of writing the post.

  6. Hi Guys, My new advertising AdsLog portal allows you to add and search free classified ads in over a thousand categories. USA Now!

  7. I have been searching for a long time for some information to install rudder on my system. This page was very helpful and I have now successfully installed it.Thanks.

    • A psychiatrist is a phasiciyn who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. I have a bachelor’s degree in the social services field. For several years, I have worked with children who have been diagnosed with mental disorders. It is upsetting to see children victimize at an early age and even more disturbing to see them as predators as early as 5 years of age, however knowing that I am doing my part to assist them in becoming functioning youths and adults is rewarding. The empathy, confidentiality and maturity of a medical assistant are definitely needed in this area. I enjoy establishing a rapport with these clients and helping them to find adequate coping skills to deal with their disorders, therefore I would like to work for a psychiatrist.I would not like to work for an emergency phasiciyn for several reasons. I will explain a few. Patients who come to the emergency center typically have serious injuries or trauma. I would not like to have my mind constantly focused on who is coming thru the door and how sever the prognosis is. Knowing myself, I know that would be my focus and I would not be very productive. Also, in the emergency room the staff has to be prepared for anything, I would prefer an area that focuses on a particular specialty. Most importantly, I do not wish to see excessive amounts of blood loss on a regular basis. Actually, not even a minimal amount of blood loss on a regular basis. Giving my opinion and thoughts about this specialty, I would not be an effective employee.

  8. Hiya! Quick question that’s totally off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My blog looks weird when viewing from my iphone4. I’m trying to
    find a theme or plugin that might be able to fix this problem.
    If you have any suggestions, please share. Appreciate it!

  9. I have read so many content about the blogger lovers except
    this article is truly a fastidious post, keep it up.

  10. Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it
    seems as though you relied on the video to make your point.

    You clearly know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos to your
    weblog when you could be giving us something informative to read?

    • The specialist I would most like to work with is an Obstetrician. I have two cherdlin of my own and learned quickly that each birthing experience is unique and very different. I think it would be amazing to go to work every day, and never know what will happen. I also love babies! After I had my youngest child the doctor advised me not to have any more cherdlin so I feel like getting to go to work every day and see babies being born would be magical, but I would also get to go home and sleep peacefully! I am not sure how else to explain my wanting to work with an Obstetrician, but to say I have always thought it would be fascinating. Another specialist I would like to work with is Psychiatrist. I have a family history of mental illness and also addiction and have found all of my psychology classes intriguing. I am captivated by what goes into making each person who they are, and listening to every person’s story. I want to help people that are having struggles with their everyday lives find some kind of peace and happiness.I know we are supposed to pick one or two specialties we wouldn’t want to focus on, but I do not want to work under any surgical specialty. Blood does not make me squeamish but cutting into the body does not intrigue me. Cutting into another person’s skin is not on my list of top jobs I would like to do. I have great respect for neurosurgeons and cardiovascular surgeons, but it not something I want to help with.

  11. au casio

Submit a Comment

Cancel reply