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 consist ...

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 ...

. 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 businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as c ...

, 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 Micros ...

. 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 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 Personal finance is the financial management which an individual or a family unit performs to budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life even ...

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, XaAE ...

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 LearnVest was an American financial planning company founded by CEO Alexa von Tobel. It sells personal finance software. History Alexa von Tobel entered Harvard Business School in the fall of 2008, but took a leave of absence and launched Learn ...

Personal Capital Personal Capital is an online financial advisor and personal wealth management company headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA with offices in San Francisco, CA, Denver, CO, Dallas, TX and Atlanta, GA. History Personal Capital was founded by Bill ...

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
MoneythorMX
Strands an
Tink
among others.

References

{{reflist Personal finance Financial management