Personal financial management (PFM) refers to

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

that helps users manage their money. PFM often lets users categorize transactions and add accounts from multiple institutions into a single view. PFM also typically includes data visualizations such as spending trends, budgets and net worth.

History

PFM started in 1983 with the founding of

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application Tu ...

. Scott Cook and Tom Proulx, the company’s founders, witnessed the rise of the personal computer and saw an opportunity to develop personal financial software. Their flagship product,

Quicken Quicken is a personal finance management application originally developed and offered by Intuit, Inc. Intuit sold Quicken to H.I.G. Capital in 2016, and H.I.G. sold Quicken to Aquiline Capital Partners in 2021. Quicken runs on Windows and Mac ...

, became a standard for many households and was eventually followed by

QuickBooks QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. First introduced in 1983, QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward Small and medium-sized enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses and offer On-premises sof ...

, which helped small businesses manage their finances. Around the same time, a similar competing product introduced by MECA Software, conceived by MECA President Gerald Rubin, and designed by author

Andrew Tobias Andrew Tobias (born April 20, 1947) is an American writer. He has written extensively about investment, as well as politics, insurance, and other topics. He is also known for writing ''The Best Little Boy in the World'', a 1973 memoir – origin ...

called Managing-Your-Money (MYM) came out, first running on the Apple-II, and later the IBM-PC. Later in 1990 Microsoft released their own PFM platform called

Microsoft Money Microsoft Money was a personal finance management software program by Microsoft. It had capabilities for viewing bank account balances, creating budgets, and tracking expenses, among other features. It was designed for computers using the Micro ...

. Microsoft worked with Intuit and CheckFree in 1997 to create

Open Financial Exchange Open Financial Exchange (OFX) is a data-stream format for exchanging financial information that evolved from Microsoft's Open Financial Connectivity (OFC) and Intuit's Open Exchange file formats. History Microsoft, Intuit and CheckFree announc ...

(OFX), which allowed financial institutions to exchange data with web users, paving the way for online PFM software.

Yodlee Yodlee is an American software company that develops an account aggregation service that allows users to see their credit card, bank, investment, email, travel reward accounts, etc. on one screen. Money by Envestnet Yodlee (formerly Yodlee Labs an ...

was founded in 1999. Originally a site that let users view email, banking, news, travel, and shopping in one place, it soon pivoted to focus exclusively on banking, allowing users to view their financial accounts from different institutions all at once. A wave of online PFM tools launched around 2006, with

Wesabe Wesabe was a personal finance management website established in December 2005 that analyzed a user's financial data to provide appropriate advice on how to save money. The site went live in November 2006. The company behind the website announced on ...

and

Mint MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaA ...

at the forefront. Mint was acquired by Intuit in 2009 for $170 million, and Wesabe went under in 2010. Wesabe’s CEO cited the fact that Mint automatically aggregated accounts and transactions as a key reason that Wesabe lost market share to Mint. Since 2008, PFM has expanded in scope. Financial advisory companies such as LearnVest, Personal Capital and

Credit Karma Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007, which has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include monitor ...

integrate PFM into their software. Nowadays, there are also other companies providing personal financial management platform products for banks and fintech companies, such as

Meniga Meniga is a software company founded in Reykjavík, Iceland in 2009 by Georg Ludviksson (CEO) and brothers Asgeir Asgeirsson (CTO) and Viggo Asgeirsson (CHRO). Meniga provides digital banking solutions, and was one of the first companies to use P ...

MoneythorMX
Strands an
Tink
among others.

References

{{reflist Personal finance Financial management