managing your personal finance

Suaad Sait is co-founder of Workstreamer, a business listening platform that delivers actionable, real-time information to business professionals.

As businesspeople, we now have an unlimited amount of constantly updating information at our fingertips. It holds the promise of great value (and more importantly, profit), but it is also voluminous and fleeting.  Powerful new search engines, newfangled social CRM systems, and a preponderance of social sites and services leave us sitting at desks, feverishly fetching news and updates throughout the day in an attempt to stay up-to-date.

The trick, of course, is making sense of all that data, and putting it in context of what companies — and who exactly at those companies — matter most. Increasingly, we have the palpable desire to turn good data into good decisions and profitable relationships. But how can you take advantage of that tsunami of information without risking death by data? How can everyday businesspeople get value out of these data-heavy services and sources? 

Relationships Still Rule

The answer to these questions starts by first acknowledging that it’s the same as it ever was: Business is still all about relationships.  This should be soothing to many for whom the data web is a brave new world. 

The business world still runs on relationships, and data is as much at home at a cocktail hour or on a conference call as it is in a slide deck. The game has not changed much at all. The difference is that today’s business data has put everything in stark relief, at very high resolution. Opportunities and risks have been amplified.

For example, if I notice a partner’s company’s stock surge at the opening of the market and tie it to a news item on quarterly earnings, I can now send a timely congratulatory note and schedule a follow-up meeting to discuss leveraging that momentum for a proposed joint venture.

Or, say I am alerted to an old college friend changing his contact info on a social network, and as a result, track down a few details on his role at a new company. I might subsequently notice via a status update that he is departing for my home city in a few days, and now I can initiate a reconnection and invite him to participate on a panel I’m organizing.

Today’s most actionable business data comes from living and very human sources like social networks, wikis, microblogs, crowdsourced contact directories, collaboratively filtered finance communities, real-time search engines, hyperlocal news sites and more. Managing that data can involve a lot of mixing and matching, comparing and contrasting.

Relationships Run on Data

Strategic relationships with colleagues and contacts both create and consume data. In fact, data isn’t cold and impersonal at all — that’s an important misconception to put to rest. Many of your most successful and trusted business relationships now likely run on data.

“Networking” in the traditional sense used to take a lot of time and effort.  But in truth, all networking has ever been is the act of information-gathering — of scouting and collating.  We used to start with an idea of a person we were trying to do business with, without nearly enough relevant information about them. That has changed as a result of the personal data now available via social media sources.

Now, when you finally meet someone in person, or run into them at a conference, the interaction can be immediately more rich and productive precisely because of data — you can get right to the heart of the matter because you’re having a more informed, in-depth conversation that matters.

From crunching data and doing your homework, to finding a path through your existing relationships, to setting up that first meeting with a timely and well-researched missive, the new data-driven way of doing business can be infinitely more productive.

Conclusion

Remember the under-the-table note sharing going on in high school? 

Well, imagine having the smartest kid in school organize, prioritize and collect notes for you, no strings attached. That’s the kind of information advantage that is now available to us, through an ever-growing array of new social business tools. And it’s not considered cheating, either.

But even despite all this new data and these new tools, relationships are still the beginning and the end of every business decision. 

There is little doubt that there will be a fundamental overhaul in the skill-set of the average businessperson in the next five years as companies grapple with, and realize the upside of making better use of data, both internally and externally.

Today, the technologies and techniques that were once the exclusive domain of Wall Street analysts and Silicon Valley engineers are finally trickling down to everyday businesspeople.   But no matter how the world has changed, listening is still paramount -– listening to customers, listening to prospects, listening to colleagues, and listening to entire companies –- indeed, listening to data.

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Mint.com helps Web users who are willing to enter their bank and credit card account information track their spending and savings. Now another start-up called Wikinvest wants to do the same thing for investments.

Wikinvest, as we have written about, is a site with user-generated information about stocks — Wikipedia meets Yahoo Finance. On Wednesday, it will introduce a tool that imports information from a user’s brokerage and investment accounts and arranges it in a readable way.

“Today, lots of people are paying more attention to the markets, but there is no good way to do this,” said Michael Sha, a co-founder of Wikinvest.

Some people enter the data manually in spreadsheets. Others track their personal investments on sites like Yahoo Finance and Google Finance, but few do so, Mr. Sha said, because it requires entering each investment manually.

Brokerage Web sites track investments, but many people have several accounts, and these sites rarely include information like news reports.

Wikinvest will sync with 25 brokerages, including Scottrade, Charles Schwab and Vanguard. Users enter their brokerage account log-ins on Wikinvest, and Wikinvest will import their investment information and present it in easy-to-read columns that show things like the 52-week price range for stocks and recent news headlines and Wikinvest articles that could affect investments.

Charts compile all a user’s investments, across brokerage accounts, taking into account information like deposits and withdrawals, dividends and fees, and compare performance to the rest of the market.

This could be useful for people managing their own money or for people who want to monitor what a financial planner is doing with their money, Mr. Sha said.

Having the information compiled in one place could also be useful when tax season comes around — Wikinvest could automatically fill in Schedule D forms, he said.

In the next few weeks, Wikinvest will add personalized, real-time e-mail alerts about news related to stocks that an individual owns. The company is also building versions for the iPhone and iPad.

The service is free, and eventually Wikinvest plans to make money off of it by running various types of ads.

These could include suggesting an index fund similar to one that somebody owns but with a lower fee, or suggesting investments catered to someone’s risk level, asset level and interests. Wikinvest could also refer users to accountants, brokers or financial planners.

“The relevance of having your portfolio data with alerts is even more relevant when it comes to making decisions,” Mr. Sha said. “We can target better ads.”

This is also like Mint, which makes money by suggesting credit card or bank accounts with lower fees, for example, and then earning an affiliate fee when users sign up.

Many people might be hesitant about entering their brokerage log-ins and passwords on Wikinvest.

“Hopefully the value we can provide as a result is worthwhile,” Mr. Sha said, raising an issue that was also addressed in a recent Times article. “A lot of work was done by Mint to pave the way in getting people comfortable.”

The site has taken pains to secure its hardware and encrypt its Web site, said Mr. Sha, who previously worked on fraud prevention at Amazon.com.

Even if an intruder broke into the Wikinvest site and could see a user’s balances, it is impossible to trade or access brokerage accounts from the site.

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If you're reading this article, you have more of an interest in taking control of your financial situation than most. In reality, many people don't actively seek out information about how to effectively manage their money or even maintain the family budget. Instead, you'll see a lot of people rely on tips from a broker, friend, or brother who may not have put any research into their own decisions themselves. When it comes to something as important as their own financial well-being, people for some reason seem remarkably disinterested in becoming educated in things like how to properly save for college, what to do to secure a comfortable retirement, or even how to manage the monthly bills.

But you are reading this article which means you are interested. In that case, let's take a look at some of the best resources out there for financial education and money management.

If you're saving for college, go to www.savingforcollege.com - There are many options out there for saving for Junior's college bills. This is a great site for learning not only about 529s and Coverdell Education Savings Accounts (a lesser known option in addition to the 529) but also for help in figuring out how much you should save, applying for financial aid, tax consequences, and getting in contact with a financial professional.

If you're saving for retirement, go to www.401k.com - This site, run by Fidelity (who happens to be one of the retirement plan powerhouses), is the best place to get all the basics. The planning calculators available are particularly enticing as they cover everything from saving to budgeting to the growth of your money. Plus, if you're ready to invest, Fidelity is more than happy to help.

If you're learning about investments, go to www.morningstar.com - If you're a beginner, mutual funds are probably your best bet for dipping your toe in the water and Morningstar is the recognized industry leader in fund analysis. This site has the potential to be a bit overwhelming with the abundance of information available so you may want to stick with the basics before diving in. The Personal Finance section may be the ideal starting point.

If you're learning about the stock market, go to finance.yahoo.com - This site is my personal favorite and I keep it open during the day while at work. It's a great place for learning about and following the stock market and provides regular contributions from a number of financial experts.

If you're managing credit card debt, go to www.annualcreditreport.com - If you can get past the infomercials and catchy jingles, there's only one website that is authorized to provide you a free annual copy of your credit report and that's this one (the others usually require a subscription to a credit monitoring service which costs money). Everybody should have a copy of their credit report in hand to protect against unauthorized activity in your name and potential identity theft. There's probably no better free money saving idea out there than this.

There are a lot of great resources today to guide you in the journey towards financial independence. The biggest challenge is taking that first step. Financial literacy is an ongoing effort that few people ever really master but taking the time to learn will keep you several steps ahead of the pack.

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