Interesting idea, but I wonder how personal the "personal advice" will be. There will have to be some way for the virtual advisor to 'learn' from its customers, otherwise it will basically be the financial equivalent of taking a "What Does Your Eye Colour Say About You?" quiz on Facebook. If it's the former, it'll have a shaky start, but as more people use the service, MoneyRight could become a fairly useful tool.

It probably won't be any more comprehensive than what you already can obtain with Quicken and other programs. It will be more mathematical than advisory. I wonder if there are any licensing requirements for financial advisors in any state and whether this would really qualify as financial advice? They're not giving investment advice so that wouldn't apply.

@hungryhomer: What does my eye color say about me? My eye color says I have hazel eyes!

I think my license says that too.

Who needs facebook?

/offtopic

I can't provide a personal review of the new site, but I would be tempted to try something else from Lending Tree.
We did our refinancing through them in 2006, and we found it to be an exceptionally easy process.
They clearly knew what they were doing. They didn't try to pressure us into cashing out equity or getting an ARM, accepted all the documents as .PDFs in E-mail, and just generally made everything painless.

If it works at all, it will work better than Mint.

I like the idea, but I can never get Mint to download my transactions or remember account information for more than a day or two at a time.

They're just using Thrive's software (justthrive.com). It's a decent program, but after using Thrive for a month I switched to Mint and never looked back. Their "financial advice" is worthless and my accounts are never up to date (it take almost 3 days for a posted transaction to show up). The savings tool is neat (but a bit complicated, you can do the same thing with online calculators).

Hm. I just signed up, and I have to say its not quite as slick as Mint. It also isn't as budget friendly- it suggested I spend less on transit, but that isn't an option with how much my farecards cost. Same with education- it suggested I spend less on my student loans... HA!

I did like the feature on the home section about how much house you can afford. No idea how they crunched that number, but its nice to know.

@oldgraygeek: Same, my dealings with them were also top notch.

HRHK: You're absolutely right on the budgeting piece - I work on the Thrive team that powers MoneyRight and our budgeting piece was an early iteration that we haven't had time to replace (so many new features, so little time). But fear not! Engineers are busily coding in the background, and launching later this week is our improved budgeting feature.

First, the new budgeting feature won't tell you about your student loan - we consider that a bill, and your budget should really only include your purchases, where you have a choice about what you're spending.

Second, when it tells you about your farecard, you'll have the ability to manually change the budget or even tell us that you don't want us to budget that category anymore.

What it will do is still give you a full automatic budget, as best we can based on your own transactions, as well an introducing the concept of "actions", a brand-new feature that is pretty unique. So give us just a few days to get that released, then try it again...you can let me know at matt@justthrive.com anytime about whether you likes the changes or not and suggest any improvements you'd love to see.

And on a side note, we're also improving the housing section...probably won't launch until September/October, but when it does, I really think it will do more than ever to help people start saving for a home (and improving their current home financials).

Thanks for the feedback!

@Travishamockery: If you have that problem with MoneyRight, just shoot us an e-mail at moneyright@lendingtree.com and we'll get it figured out. Or better yet: just give us a call! =]

@CFinWV: Glad that LendingTree has been a powerful resource for you! We're certainly trying to do more to help consumers, and I think we're well on our way - there is always more we can do and we'll always be improving!

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): =]

@hungryhomer: I can actually speak to that: I'm the Matt Wallaert, the Lead Scientist at Thrive, the team at LendingTree that powers MoneyRight. I'm a behavioral psychologist and head up "new stuff" in MoneyRight, so the "personal" in "personal advice" starts here.

My eye color says I'm a scientist, and love data. =] So here is a bit about how MoneyRight works in terms of adapting to you.

First, it is working with your data, which is unique and different then others'. Your balances, your interest rates, your transactions. That is why you have to link up your bank accounts: we need up to date, accurate information that we can use to generate your advice.

We then feed that into our various features, so that it can start to offer you personalize your advice. We'll estimate your credit score and show it to you, set a target, and then give you advice about how to improve your specific score.

We'll look at your retirement savings and help you build a plan that is specific to you, based on your age, what you have, what you can save, and when and how you want to retire. This is all unique to you - it takes into account your preferences, your biographical information, and your financial information, and then uses them together to help you get to the right place.

I could go on about the other features (housing advice and debt-to-income and budgeting...the list is long) but I just want to give you enough to make this point: you're absolutely right, we could always make it more personal. Ideally, we'd have someone who knew you, and knew all the right financial steps, and could sit with you. But we work hard to give you the advice that you need, that is personalized and customized to you, and we'll always be doing more to do better. We'll never be perfect...but we'll always be trying to be.

Their login system is on the fritz for me or something. I got locked out. It said my password was not right and my security question answer was wrong, but I'm 100% sure it was right.

@nirvaeh: Sorry to hear that it isn't working for you; I just tested it and it seems to be working for me, so hopefully it isn't a system-wide problem. Give LendingTree a call at 1.800.555.TREE and they'll help you set it right.

@matt-at-Thrive: Hey, tip of the consumer hat for responding here! It has a lot of potential. A feature I'd like to see is a way to tie in your free annual report so that you can be better matched with potential credit card and mortgage offers. I'll be a first time home buyer in a few years, and I'm really hoping to avoid as much paperwork as possible.