Rudder Review

Rudder is a free financial tracking tool, specifically designed to streamline and help manage your personal budget. The general state of the economy has forced people to re-examine their finances and get a better grasp on their monthly expenditures. Several personal finance websites have been growing in popularity, among them Mint, Quicken Books, as well as the subject of today’s review, Rudder.

Look and Feel

The site itself has a very clean web 2.0 look, with big icons and tabs to help you navigate. You can see a few screenshots of the email that will be delivered to your inbox, as well as learn more about the service and how it works. The light blue background doesn’t provide much contrast against the white background, but everything is easy to read and navigate.

Signing Up

Signing up on Rudder is simple, you enter and verify your email, create a password and you’re in. One thing to note is that the site does not ask for any other information (name, Social Security number, zipcode etc), in order to provide additional safeguards for your privacy.

Add Bank Account

Next, you are asked to add your bank account. I was a bit hesitant to enter my bank account number and PIN into their system, the McAfee, TrustE, and Verisign security logos did help assuage my worries. Rudder also states they use the same data services as 4 out of 5 top US banks. I wouldn’t mind seeing more information on these data services, but I imagine the more information disseminated, the more confusing the explanation.

Once I entered my checking account and PIN, Rudder automatically uploaded my transactions. However, Rudder did not recognize my direct deposit as income so I had to add that designation manually.

Add Bills and Complete Set-Up

Next, I needed to upload any bills that I pay on a regular basis. For this, I selected my Citi credit card. Since I was already signed up for online access, this was also a snap. I entered my online account info, and Rudder pulled that information into my account.

In additional to my credit card bill, I set up reminders to pay for my electricity and my cell phone bill. Since Rudder doesn’t know what those bills are, you set up a payment reminder about your bills.

So now I’ve got my income entered, a few reminders set about bills I need to pay, and my credit card all linked up through Rudder. Here’s what my account summary looks like.

You can see that it shows my account balance, and any upcoming bills. There is an array of moveable widgets you can add to monitor your spending and savings. Once you’ve decided on a layout, a copy of this dashboard can be emailed to you daily. You can set the frequency in which you want to receive emails, (daily, weekly, monthly) but you will always receive alert emails if you are over your credit card limit, or a bill is outstanding. It’s up to you if you would rather view your dashboard as an email, or to login to the site.

Overall Impressions

Rudder provides an up to date financial picture in one easy to use location, either via email or through their website. There are other personal finance management tools that have more functionality and flexibility, but are more complicated and difficult to set up. Rudder delivers a straightforward way to manage your finances and plan for your future without complicated financial tracking.