Now that you have done a full account inventory and closed your inactive accounts, it is time to making tracking your accounts and organizing your statements easier and quicker. I use a few free tools to keep my accounts and transactions organized, and you get them setup in just a few minutes.
TripIt
Four Free Tools I Use to Make Life Simpler
I often share cool ideas to save you time and money, but they are usually very topic oriented. Here is a list of my top four free tools to bring everything to one place to save you time, money, and headache.
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6 Best Mobile Apps to Save You Time
Earlier this week, I shared my 5 best mobile apps to save you money. Now, it is time for my favorite time savers. I use these for my to-do lists, idea tracking, businesses, and general productivity.
TripIt Makes Travel Planning Easy
I travel a lot. If you are anything like me, you like having your travel documents, plans, and information all in one place. I used to print out a stack of papers for each hotel, flight, rental car, and other reservation during a trip. Thanks to TripIt, that is now a dead practice. This site is the Mint.com of travel.
What Is TripIt?
TripIt is a web application that works in conjunction with your Android, iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows Phone. It creates itineraries for your upcoming trips that are consolidated into one location for easy and instant access.
From the TripIt website, I ensure everything I could want to know for upcoming travel plans is entered in as a Trip.
How Does TripIt Work?
Every time I make a flight or hotel reservation, I get an email confirmation. I gave TripIt access to my Gmail inbox and it regularly searches it for new confirmation emails. If it finds one, it creates a new trip and ads the information for easy access.
When you click on the trip (see above), a screen opens up with every flight, confirmation number, hotel, maps, links to directions, weather forecasts, and anything else you might want. You can add restaurant and show reservations too.
If a plan does not import automatically, you can forward the confirmation email to [email protected] and it is added for you. If the site can’t read the email, which is rare, you can always add it manually.
The Social Aspect
I have seven friends currently active on TripIt. I can see their upcoming trips and annual miles traveled. It is a fun way to interact with friends. You can also automatically post to Facebook, but I don’t.
I only add people on TripIt that I actually want to know where I am. Anyone you connect with can see your general plans for your trip, so only allow people you trust to connect. Outside of those people, everything is secure.
Automation and Time Savings
Outside of saving a few trees and printer ink, this site is a huge time savings. I know I can just pack up and head to the airport without worries of forgetting anything. When I get there, I just open up the TripIt app and check in for my flight. When I land, I just open my phone to grab directions to the hotel or rental car reservation information.
It is so easy that people might not get how it works. The thing is, there is not much to get. It just does everything for you so you don’t have to waste time.
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