I just reduced yet another website from my life by registering our T-Mobile account at Yodlee MoneyCenter. One less password to remember :). Yodlee is effectively doing the same things that T-Mobile website would have done for me (may be a bit more); it’s just that now I can glance at the phone billing/payment details along with the information from all other accounts (credit cards, PayPal, etc.). I find that very convenient and it also feels a bit more organized. I thought of sharing this because, according to my hypothesis, most people default on their bills just because they are disorganized….and systems such as Yodlee might just help.
For those who may not have read about how I use Yodlee for managing my credit cards, read this to come up to speed. If you are not using Yodlee yet, give it a try. It’s a very simple (and free!) and effective way of putting all (almost all) of your financial transactions in order. In my case, except rent, laundry expenses, and a few bucks in cash, everything gets managed through Yodlee via credit cards.
OK, coming back to the cell phone account, here is how simple it was to set it up. I will include a few snapshots in the following for ease of communication.
Once you log in to Yodlee MoneyCenter, T-Mobile appears as a standard option under the “Add and Manage Accounts” tab. Btw, although I am talking about T-mobile wireless, you can add accounts from many other service providers (cell phones or land lines) and follow the same procedure. In the image alongside this paragraph, you can see a list of communication companies that appear in Yodlee’s standard list.
Once you add the account, just enter the login/password information (your phone number/password for T-Mobile website) and you will be ready to go! A snapshot of this is shown below. Notice the three options at the bottom of that image. Customize those alerts according to your liking and kiss goodbye to your cell phone bill late payments and overage charges.
After everything is set up, if you have a cell phone bill pending, Yodlee will show that bill under the “Bill Reminders” tab. You can then either go to the T-Mobile website to pay your bill (inefficient way) or pay using a credit card (or a bank account) registered with Yodlee (efficient way, will take just 2 or 3 clicks). Here is a snapshot of a typical bill reminder:
To further automate the process, you can set up recurring bill payments or *autopay* using a credit card or a bank account as the payment source. This means that you won’t have to worry about when the bill arrives and how and when it gets paid. Btw, you can setup autopay directly on T-Mobile website too…but like I said before, personally I like it better when Yodlee does that for me.
So there you go, one step towards efficiently managing your phone bills (and hopefully other bills too). Go ahead and experiment with using Yodlee; if you run into problems or have questions, head over to the Yodlee Forum and voice your concerns.
..And just in case you are wondering, this is not a PayPerPost or ReviewMe post (I don’t participate in those); nor am I related to Yodlee in any manner. It’s just that I have been using it for a while, and I have become a great fan.
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Yodlee is great! Thanks for your posts with such detailed info. That is what inspired me to give it a try. No more logging into 15+ sites to view and pay bills. It saves a lot of time. I second the addiction to Yodlee.
I’ve been thinking about checking it out for a while, since my mind is all over the place and there are too many bills to think about. Being able to put most of my bills on there will make life a lot easier. Thanks for the reminder.
Great site. thanks.
I use Bank of America’s Portfolio Manager and pay cash for my bills.
Would Yodlee allow me to pay someone (e.g. Mortgage Company) with a credit card when they otherwise don’t accept them for payments?
Jessy and MoneyFwd: Thanks….MoneyFwd, I am sure you will love it.
Clever Dude: I see where you are going with this. I wish it allowed me to pay my tuition with a credit card..that would have assured me thousands of reward points every year.
So the answer is no, they don’t allow it unless the parent company website allows it (to the best of my knowledge).
Btw, Bank of America’s Portfolio Manager is Yodlee itself. Yodlee releases their latest versions for public use. This way they get *free* testing of their product. After this, the product is finalized (sort of progression from beta to stable) and sold to banks and other financial institutions. So your Portfolio Manager at BoA is just an older version of the current Yodlee MoneyCenter available through Yodlee website.
I am a little paranoid about opening a Yodlee account. Isn’t it like putting all my eggs in one basket? Sure its convinient, but is it safe? For some reason if my account is hacked don’t I end up serving ALL my financial info to the hacker on a single silver platter?
I know some of you yodlee addicts will jump out to list for me all the security features yodlee incorporates, and I dont doubt you at all. But security is never a 100% and I am only human (and could fall for phishing, using a predictable password etc).
Ispf: There is a way out of that. Just register your credit cards and bills with Yodlee and keep the bank accounts to yourself (if you are paranoid). Also, there is an option to disable the *auto-login* as additional measure. Moreover, it doesn’t display your full credit card number anywhere, so even if it gets hacked (I don’t think it will…but say it does), no one can have your credit card numbers. The only way that can potentially damage things is that if the hacker goes to your credit card’s website and asks for a balance transfer or something (which takes like 4~5 days processing time) and the check will have to be drawn on a different name and address (and there will be additional verification before he/she can successfully do this)..in all probability, the credit card company will smell fish here. Even if it goes through, your credit card will show the balance must faster (than the time it takes to deposit and clear that check) and you will have time to take corrective action. Plus, your credit cards are covered for fradulent charges by credit card companies.
I realize I am going overboard trying to explain this, but if you think of it..the probability of someone stealing your wallet is much more than this.
Hey Golb, Thanks for the reply!
“…the probability of someone stealing your wallet is much more than this.”
Hmmm… when you put it that way, it does make a lot of sense
I will look into it some more this weekend. If I get an account, I think I will take your suggestion and leave the bank accounts out until I have more confidence in the system. Any referral offers with this? If so, pls mail me. TIA.
ispf: No referrals for this one. I think that’s why they can keep it free…for their MoneyCenter service, they don’t take money from anyone, nor they give money to anyone.
I say it a lot, but the reason I feel safer using Yodlee is that it lets me check all of my accounts every day. If it weren’t for Yodlee than I have a lot of accounts that I wouldn’t pay attention to until the statement came. With Yodlee I can log in each morning, scan the recent trasactions and make sure nothing fishy is happening across any of my accounts.
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