How I Manage My Life Online – Social Networks, Emails, Bank Accounts, Instant Messenger, Password Manager!

Some of the things that make my life much more enjoyable are warm towels out of the dryer, the delicious food from Baja Fresh, my Mom being my free on-call personal assistant, and of course life out on the lake wakeboarding while others are at work.

Life online is far different… with countless email accounts, logins, bank accounts, credit cards, life online becomes convoluted quick! As a technology consultant it is imperative that I know great solutions to not only manage my life online, but help my clients efficiently and effectively manage theirs. The great thing about these solutions are that they are FREE! They don’t charge you. I’m not an affiliate where I’m making money off of promoting them. I just simply enjoy and couldn’t manage life online without these online tools. So here they are.

Mint.com

Free Personal Finance Software, Budget Software, Online Money Management and Budget Planner

You’ve got online banking, you have paypal, you have a savings account, possibly and e*trade account, multiple credit cards, car payments, of course some assets, and much more. Mint.com combines all of these into one easy to use web-based application to manage your personal finances like no-other! The other day I got an email from Mint.com saying this.

Hi there,

The interest rate on your American Express credit card has increased by 6.00%. As of November 02, your old rate of 11.24% is now 17.24%. You may want to investigate … Here is their number: 1-800-297-1234.

Cheers,
The Mint Team

So I did what Mint.com told me to do and called them and had my interest rate lowered. WOW! I wouldn’t have even known my interest rate had changed, nor would have called. This is one very very small aspect of the greatness I have seen so far. Being able to set budgets and categorized everything is just phenomenal. You have to check it out for yourself.

LastPass.com

LastPass Password Manager, Form Filler – The Last Password You’ll Have To Remember

Everyone knows the pain of forgetting passwords and then having to have them reset and sent to your email (if you can remember which email you used or still have the email account you originally set it up with). Last pass works with multiple browsers to safely fill your password fields. I say safely, because anyone can sit down at your computer and open up your browser’s tools and unhide ALL your passwords. Not very secure. LastPass enables you to login with one master password to start the manager. You can also install the toolbar on all your computers and they will all keep current off of one password database. Whether I’m on my desktop, notebook, or netbook, I can create and save passwords that I will have access to.

Digsby.org!

Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networks

Save the best for last? Of course. Are you currently using any kind of social media? I’ll answer that for you, YES! That’s probably how you ended up here (not here as on earth, but on my blog). Digsby is AMAZING. I have all my email accounts, social media networks, and instant messengers setup. It combines all of them into one easy to use application. I can get status updates instantly, get notifications of emails, new FaceBook messages, and update my status to all my accounts simultaneously. Most social networks let you hook up with twitter to sync your status. This is far better, because you can pick and choose which ones you want to update. From your windows toolbar you can preview emails, delete them, or mark as spam without even logging in! Also integrated is FaceBook chat. So when you are talking with someone you don’t have to use the one that pops up on the browser. Plus digsby can log all of your chat history! I could go on and on and on, but check it out.

So There It Is…

The online tools I use have made life online so much easier. I hope you’ll enjoy these and find them useful. Feel free to leave a comment if you are already using them or have tried them and what you think.